My momās experience illustrates the importance the beginning of a story holds for making sense of things, which certainly applies to the Bible as well. If we want to understand the climax of the biblical storyāwhich comes with Jesus in the New Testamentāwe must first understand the beginning. We need to understand how we get there. What were things like when the world was created? What was the goal? What should have happened? What went wrong? How did humanity go from a state of blessedness to a state of misery? How does this beginning anticipate the work of Christ thousands of years later? To answer such questions, we need to consider carefully what is said about Adam and Eve. We need to start at the beginning.
CONTEXT FOR COVENANT:
CREATOR RELATING TO CREATURE
The Bible begins with creation. More accurately, the Bible begins with God creating the heavens and the earth (Gen 1:1). We must recognize an important distinction from the outset: God is the Creator; everything else is created. This is often referred to as the Creator-creature distinction. Only God is self-existent. God does not need his creation. He does not owe his creatures anything. He is not in our debt. As created beings, all people are dependent on God for life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25). All people are created in the image of God and owe him obedience, for he has authority over us. From the time of Adam, God has related to people by means of covenantāthereby offering rewards for obedience, while also threatening curses for disobedience.
Parents of small children may strive to exhibit a high level of competence and social decorum in the professional world. But when they play with their children, parents will often get on the floor and roll around. They donāt speak the language of the office; they speak in ways that their children can understand. They use words like peek-a-boo, blankie, and dolly to relate to, enjoy, and teach their children. Yet parents will also have rules for their children in order to help them thrive and succeed. A child may not be allowed to play next to a busy street. This is not because parents want to rob their children of joy, but because the traffic is dangerous and allowing a small child to play next to the street does not promote a full, blessed life. Children must trust that their parents have their best interests in mind.
This imperfect analogy reflects how God interacts with us. He relates to us and speaks in ways we can understand. His covenantal rules have our best interests in mind. This is an extremely practical point. A study of Godās covenants should address how we relate to and live in fellowship with God each day.1 And as we will see, obedience to God and fullness of life in the context of the covenant always go together.
ADAM AND THE COVENANT OF WORKS
Covenant with Adam. I mentioned above that the first covenant in the Bible was made with Adam. Yet this is a contested point. It has often been debated whether God actually enters into a covenant with Adam. For example, the term covenant (Hebrew: bÉrĆ®t) is not used for Godās interactions with Adam in Genesis. But thatās not all there is to say.
The best reading of Genesis 1ā3, in the context of all of Scripture, is that God enters into a covenant with Adam. Before we can talk about the law given to Adam, we need to see several reasons why the term covenant is appropriate to describe Godās interactions with Adam before sin entered the world.2
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1. Elsewhere in Scripture God enters into special relationships with key people by means of covenants. Examples include covenants with Noah, Abraham, and David. Likewise, in Genesis 2:15-17 God enters into a special relationship with a key personāAdam. Though the term ācovenantā is not used here, the concept is present.
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2. Covenants have stipulationsāthings that must be done or avoided. Adam is required to love and obey God fully. In Genesis 1:28 Adam (along with Eve) is commanded to be fruitful and multiply and govern the world as Godās image bearer. In Genesis 2:15 Adam is placed in the Garden of Eden to work in and guard it. Further, he is encouraged to eat from any tree in the Garden but is expressly prohibited from eating from one treeāthe tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17). This specific test sums up all that is required of Adam, denoting the presence of covenantal stipulations.3
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3. Covenants have consequences, depending on whether one obeys the covenant stipulations. These take the form of rewards (blessings) or punishments (curses). In Genesis 2:17 death is threatened for disobedience. The positive side of this, which is implied by the text, is that a greater experience of life would have been the reward for Adamās covenantal obedience. If Adam did not sin, he would not have died. Instead, he would have experienced the increasing fullness of life represented by the tree of life, which bestowed life sacramentally (see Gen 3:22).4 Adam would have been fruitful and multiplied, and expanded Godās dominion throughout the earth as Godās vice-regent.5
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4. Though the term covenant is not used in Genesis, Hosea 6:7 most likely does refer to a covenant with Adam: āBut like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.ā Hosea likens the faithlessness of Godās people in his day, who had violated the covenant, to Adamās violation of the covenant in the beginning.6
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5. The way that the New Testament treats the work of Jesus in relation to Adam (e.g., Rom 5:12-21) makes the most sense if both Adam and Christ are covenant representatives, whose actions count for others. Just as Adamās actions brought death to all humanity āin Adam,ā so Christās actions bring life to all those āin him.ā Iāll address this point further in chapters five through ten.
Covenant of works? If there was a covenant with Adam, what were the dynamics of that covenant? The focus of this book is on the relationship of law and covenant. We therefore need to look in more detail at both the stipulations and the consequences for Adam, since these have implications for what follows in the Bible.
The covenant with Adam has various names, such as the covenant of life, the covenant of nature, the covenant of creation, and (most commonly) the covenant of works. Bringing the above observations together: the covenant of works teaches that Adam was created by God upright (see Eccles 7:29) but not yet possessing the fullness of eternal life. God condescended to Adam and entered into a covenant, and Adam was obligated to love and obey God fully. Adam was also given a specific test: he was prohibited from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If Adam passed the test, God promised to grant him eternal life. If Adam sinned, he would die (Gen 2:17).
I believe this is the most biblical way to understand Godās interactions with Adam in Genesis 1ā3. Yet the terminology ācovenant of worksā is often questioned. To many, this sounds dangerously close to saying that Adam was supposed to work his way to Godāthat is, earn eternal life. Doesnāt Paul clearly state that salvation is by grace through faith, apart from works (Eph 2:8-9)? Why, then, would theologians label the covenant with Adam the covenant of works?
Despite the infelicitous ring of this term to many ears, the covenant of works does not teach that Adam could earn eternal life. Letās start first with the term covenant. Adam was not autonomous. He was a created being with whom God made a covenant. This also means that there was absolutely nothing that Adam could ever do to merit eternal life, strictly speaking. Apart from the covenant, even if Adam had done all that was required of him, he would still have been an unworthy servant.7 This is where the concept of a covenant, with its attendant promises, is so important. Eternal life was only offered to Adam because God had sovereignly designed to grant eternal life according to the covenantal arrangement. The reward offered was not proportional to Adamās work; nor could Adam put God in his debt. Instead, it was Godās sovereign, beneficent, covenantal design to offer Adam much more than he, a creature, could ever earn.
Additionally, for Adam to realize the goal of eternal life offered to him in the covenant, he had to be perfectly and fully obedient. Another common misconception is that Adam was only bound to one act of obedience (not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). However, that is not the case. Instead, Adam was to be fruitful, multiply, and serve in the Garden (Gen 1:28; 2:15). He was required to love and obey God entirely. He was to serve God as prophet, priest, and king.8 That is, Adam was entrusted with the revelation of God (prophet), he was to serve in the sanctuary of the Garden of Eden (priest), and was created in Godās image as one with dominion over creation (king). The command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17) was a special, probationary test that summed up all that was required of Adam. To use modern language, Adam was required to obey the moral law of God entirely.9
The necessity of Adamās perfect obedience for eternal life is crucial for understanding law and covenant in Scripture. Whatever title one wants to give this first covenant, it establishes early in Scripture the coordination of law keeping and life. The pattern is already evident that blessing follows upon obedience, whereas curse follows upon disobedience. This needs to be appreciated as fully as possib...
