The Divine Covenants

The Everlasting Covenant (Part 1)

The Bible opens with a brief account of creation, the making of man, and his fall. From later Scripture we know that the issue of the trial to which man was to be subjected in the Garden of Eden had been foreseen by God before the foundation of the world as part of His plan. In other words, God knew that the man would disobey the rule that was established, therefore the Fall, and so God had already made provision for recovering His people.

That provision of grace which God made for His people before the foundation of the world involved the appointment of His Son to become the Mediator, and the work which He would perform in that capacity.

This work involved assuming a human nature, offering Himself as a sacrifice for sin, His exaltation in the nature He had assumed to the right hand of the Father, His supremacy over His church, the blessings He was empowered to dispense, and the extent to which His work would be made effective in the salvation of souls. These were all matters of a certain arrangement between God the Father and His Son Jesus. It is called the Everlasting Covenant.

The first time we see a hint of this covenant is in Genesis 3:15.

· Gen. 3:15, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike His heel.”

 So immediately after the Fall, God announced to the serpent his ultimate doom through the work of the Mediator, and revealed to sinners the channel through whom salvation was to be available. For a considerable time God continually revealed His plans, largely through covenants that He made with the fathers, and these revelations were the results of His plan of mercy to the sinners. We need to understand these facts before the other covenants become meaningful to us. 

God made covenants with Noah, Abraham and David. But were these fallen creatures able to enter into covenants with God? Were they able or qualified to be in a position to stand for others? Well, the question answers itself. What for instance could Noah possibly do which would insure that the earth would never again be destroyed by flood?

These subordinate covenants were nothing more or less than the Lord manifesting in a public way, the grand covenant; making known something of its amazing contents, confirming their own personal interest in it and assuring them that Jesus, the great covenant head, should be the seed that should spring from themselves. This is what accounts for the expression we find in Genesis 9:9.

· Gen. 9:9, “I will now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you.”

But you will notice that there are no conditions attached to these words or work to be done by them; only a promise of unconditional blessings. Why?  Because the “conditions” were to be fulfilled and the “work” done by Jesus, ands nothing remained but to grant His blessings on His people.

So when David says in 2 Sam 23:5:

· 2 Sam.23:5, “Is not my house right with God? Has He not made an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part? Will He not bring to fruition my salvation and grant me my every desire?

He simply means, God had admitted him into an interest in the everlasting covenant and made him a beneficiary of its privileges.

So when Paul refers to the various covenants God made with men in the Old Testament times, he refers to them not as “covenants of stipulations” but “covenants of promise.”

· Eph. 2:12, …remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.

So what we have here are the continuing revelations God made to His original plan of mercy. It was a process of gradual development culminating in the Gospel of grace. They are the great landmarks of God’s dealing s with men. As revelations they show a greater and greater degree of fullness and clarity of the plan of salvation through the mediation and sacrifice of Jesus. Each one of those covenants consisted of gracious promises that were ratified by sacrifice.

Each covenant came at a particular time in history. Just as Genesis 3:15 was given immediately after the Fall, so we find that immediately following the Flood God renewed the covenant of grace with Noah. In much the same way, at the beginning of the third period of human history, following the call of Abraham, God renewed it again, only it was a much fuller revelation. It was now known that the coming deliverer of God’s people was to be of Abraham’s stock and that all families of the earth should be blessed in him, intimating the inclusion of the Gentiles. In Gen. 15:5-6, He took him outside and said, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars---if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness. The great requirement of faith was then fully made known.

In Abraham’s victory over Chedorlaomer there was more than a hint of the victory of Jesus over the world of sin. We’ll say more about this later. In the miraculous birth of Isaac we have an intimation of the supernatural birth of Jesus, the promised Seed. And in the deliverance of Isaac from the altar we have a representation of the resurrection of Jesus.

We often ask the question, “Did the people of the Bible understand the role they were occupying?” Well, we can’t speak for each one but let’s look at John 8:56.

· John 8:56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

The speaker is Jesus!!!! These words of Jesus clearly intimate that Abraham had a spiritual understanding of these things.

In the Sinaitic Covenant God further revealed the contents of the Everlasting Covenant in type as He described the details of the tabernacle. Everything about the tabernacle was a type of Jesus, as we saw a few years ago when we studied Genesis and Exodus.

So far we have made some general statements about the relationship between the Everlasting Covenant and the subsequent covenants God made with His people. We are going to look at each of the covenants in some detail later, but one thing we need to keep in mind. All of the covenants should be understood first, in their plain and natural sense but it should be clear that the higher meaning is a spiritual one. One way to approach these covenants is to remember that things of earth have been used to represent heavenly things. So we need to look at the covenants both as to the letter and the spirit.

Now one thing to remember in this study is this: there is no one verse in the Bible that expressly tells us that there are three divine persons in the Godhead; even so by carefully comparing Scripture to Scripture, we know that this is the case. In the same way, there is no one verse in the Bible which categorically says that the Father entered into an agreement with Jesus that said that once He (Jesus) executed His part of the plan, that He would receive a certain reward. But again, carefully studying the Scriptures we have to conclude that there was a covenant between the Father and Jesus before creation took place.

Additionally there is no one chapter or one book in the Bible where all truth can be found. It is the responsibility of the student to diligently search the Scriptures for hints and pictures in which the truth is revealed.