The Covenant of Grace

The covenant of grace is God’s promise of eternal life to a people in Christ, first announced to Abraham, fulfilled in Christ, and which forms the church.

This is one of two main covenants in the Bible. The covenant of works was that arrangement between God and man in Eden. The conditions were “perfect and personal obedience” (WCF VII.2) for life, and the threat of death for disobedience (Gen. 2:17).

One of the first facts that we learn in distinguishing between these two covenants is that they represent two different ways of relating to God—either by His promise or by our own performance. This is important to accurately understanding and believing the gospel. On the other hand, we can press this distinction to the point of oversimplification. For example, it is common to hear that the difference between the two covenants is that the first was conditional and the second is unconditional. That would certainly be true if we were specifically addressing the question of how one qualifies to be a beneficiary of the covenant, that is, of its ultimate promises. As glorious as this truth is, if we inflate it as the answer to every question we might miss that there is conditionality in the covenant of grace as well. This is one reason among many for making a careful study of it.

Scriptural Foundation of the Covenant of Grace

As the first gospel promise is said to be the protoevangelium of Genesis 3:15, so it would make sense that the covenant of grace is first suggested there: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Reformed theologians have also spoken of a covenant of redemption made in eternity, of which the covenant of grace is the historical manifestation. Essentially it is made to Christ (cf. Heb. 7:21), so that the introduction of it to elect sinners is the unfolding of an even grander scheme. One can say that its enactment precedes Adam leaving Eden; and the establishment of the covenant to Noah is said to be a confirmation of a covenant already in existence: cf. Gen. 3:15, 6:18. Further confirmation of the covenant of grace dimension in the Noahic covenant comes from the fact that the word hen first used in 6:8 and berit first used in 6:18. Normally “cut a covenant” is used in the ceremony passages, but there is also “establish” or “make firm” a covenant. In 6:18 it is the latter. That shows that this covenant already existed.

Having said that, it is to Abraham that the promises were first set forth in a more comprehensive way.

At what point in time was it enacted? In a general sense we can say the Genesis 12 was its first announcement, Chapter 15 its ceremony, and Chapter 17 with its sign to the male members. Because it was designed by God to be gradually unpacked, it is difficult to answer more specifically about a point of enactment.

A group of later Old Testament texts show how subsequent covenants are like the unfolding of these promises first made to Abraham, whether to Moses (Ex. 19:5, 20:1, 24:8), to David (2 Sam. 7:9-13), or to a future reconstituted Israel (Jer. 31:31-33, 34:8). Likewise the New Testament will make important commentary on those covenant promises in such a way that show Christ as the ultimate Promise-keeper and the church as the ultimate recipient of the promises (Mat. 26:28, Acts 2:38-39, Rom. 4:9-25, 9:1-25, Gal. 3:6-29, Eph. 1:3, 2:11-19, Heb. 6:17-18).

Characteristics of the Covenant of Grace

Parties of the Covenant. Reformed theologians are not entirely agreed on every detail here. There are four basic alternatives: 1. God and “the sinner,” 2. God and “Abraham and his seed,” 3. God and “the elect sinner in Christ,” 4. God and Christ. Each has unique difficulties that exceed my space. To briefly summarize: while God and Christ are parties of the eternal pact, we must agree with Vos that the third option is best, since the historical revelation contains the undisputed covenant elements.1 

Now if by “parties” we are asking the question only on the level of sinful human recipients, then our answer must be more layered. We must also be aware of our audience. Since Abraham was both the father of that biological people and of those of faith (e.g. Gal. 3:8-10), it follows that the covenant was applicable to each, yet in two different respects: the first, in a typological relationship (real history and yet pointing forward as a type to Christ and the church); the second, in an ultimate relationship, such that the promises are said to be everlasting.

Its Promises. There were seven promises to Abraham in all.

1. A great nation (Gen. 12:2).

2. Blessed to be a blessing (Gen. 12:2-3).

3. Your name great (Gen. 12:2).

4. The land (Gen. 13:15).

5. Innumerable offspring (Gen. 13:16, 15:5, 17:5-6).

6. Kings from his line (Gen. 17:6).

7. An everlasting covenant (Gen. 17:7, 13).

All the blessings of Abraham—the Spirit, the world, eternal life, but ultimately “I will be your God” —cf. Gen. 17:7, Num. 6:24-26, Acts 2:38, Gal. 3:15, Rom. 4:13

Its Unity and Diversity. Berkhof’s syllogism is helpful:

“1. There is but a single gospel by which men can be saved; 2. The gospel is nothing but the revelation of the covenant of grace; [Therefore] There is but one covenant” (cf. Gen. 3:15, Ezk. 16:60-62, Gal. 3:8, Rom. 11:29, Heb. 13:8).2

What we call the Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New Covenant are more properly conceived as “administrations” of the one covenant of grace. The Old Covenant is essentially that dimension of the Mosaic that is ceremonial and national beginning at Sinai and applying to the typological people. However, that same people, as flesh and blood people, were more than types and shadows, and as such were members of the community constituted by promise in Abraham. More on that below.

Its Particularity. God divided between the two seeds, between Noah and his generation, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, covenant children and others: cf. Gen. 3:15, 6:8, 17:18-19, 1 Cor. 7:14. It may seem paradoxical, but there was always a particular spiritual seed (the elect) at the center of that mixed body of the church. O. Palmer Robertson speaks of a “genealogical principle”3 whereby God fulfills His ultimate promise through families. Within that, there are particular promises to families. All of this throws us for a loop until we go deeper; but covenant theology is not surprised by mixed bodies and apostate children. This was the case right from the first couple’s first child Cain.

Its Conditionality. Vos said, “The covenant is unilateral in its origin, bilateral in its essence,”4 specifically “faith”—cf. Gen. 15:6, Rom. 4:3; “walk with God.” cf. Gen. 17:1, Eph. 2:10. In Genesis 17 we see this in particular. Not only circumcision as a sign, but there is a general principle of “walk before me and be blameless” in the early verses. The point is not contrary to grace, but makes sense in light of the doctrine of sanctification. It also makes sense of the fact that Abraham was father of Israel in two senses. The relevant sense here is that Israel of old would be the typological, physical people, for whom disobedience led to eviction from the land as a type. Hence the most immediate narrative function of this condition would be to mark for the reader God’s reason for punishing those people later on.

But what does this conditionality mean for the real individuals that play the leading role in the story? As we observe the analogy of faith—interpreting Scripture in light of Scripture (and that of the clearest parts)—so we observe the rule of faith—interpreting  doctrine in light of doctrine (and that of the most essential doctrines). Here that means subordinating the outworking of election to the invisible Author and act of election. God chose Abraham, as He had chosen Noah. Abraham obeyed, but not perfectly. He went in faith, building an altar as Noah had. He also failed to separate from Lot at first and twice acted in fear toward his neighbors regarding Sarah, as surely as Noah had gotten drunk. Thus when Paul says of Abraham that “No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God” (Rom. 4:25), this is a relative statement in the particulars, but absolutely true as to the general trajectory.

But why does Genesis 17:8 speak of the immediate promise of land as “everlasting”? And how could it be everlasting in any event, given that those people were carted off into captivity and their line of kings broken? As a general interpretive rule, understand “everlasting” to be fixed to the ultimate fulfillment of each promise. Here one can see Joshua 21:43-45 as a lens through which Romans 4:13 becomes the long-distant target. So, the immediate fulfillment in the Old Testament of the land promise is both real yet typological (see Hebrews 4 also on that), and then the ultimate fulfillment is also real and eschatological. To put it one more way, Canaan of old is the “shadowlands” of Zion to come. Genesis 17 can speak of the two “points” as if a single object of promise. As to all of the other promises that can be called “everlasting,” that brings us broader rationale. In Abraham, there were two “Israels” in a sense. Romans 9:1-8 and other places speak to this. But the short summary is that those of faith in the Old and New Testament were elect by God unto salvation, such that God never forsakes true Israel, but the apostate children of the flesh in all generations fall away not from actual salvation, but from a false profession.

Its Surety. Christ has met our obligations: cf. Is. 42:6, Gal. 3:13-14, 4:4-5, Heb. 7:22, 8:6, 9:15. Think of the ceremony in Genesis 15. God walked through the torn animal pieces without Abraham. In no ancient Near Eastern religions did gods make covenants with people. The true God calls down on Himself the maledictory oath on the occasion of not meeting the covenant. In a mutual covenant, both parties walked between the pieces. In the Suzerain treaty, the vassal walked between the pieces with the suzerain (the greater king). Yet here the Great King takes the position of the vassal. God was pledging to Abraham His own death (impossible as to His deity) if He did not fulfill His promise. Yet the promise kept was precisely the death of His Son (as to His humanity).

Its Ecclesiology and Sacramentology. Believers, their children, all who dwell in your tent, and false professors being “in the covenant, but not of it” [Bavinck]: cf. Gen. 17:10-13, Heb. 6:4-6, 10:28-29, 1 Jn. 2:19. Circumcision and baptism are the sign of entry; Passover and the Lord’s Supper are ongoing memorial. The sign’s substance does not change: cf. 1 Cor. 5:7, Col. 2:11-12. The function of a covenant sign is to nurture the soul into believing the promise: “He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe” (Rom. 4:11). Why is the sign given to Ishmael? Because he is a member of Abraham’s household. Verse 12 includes even foreigners. This refutes the Baptist argument that the old covenant sign was essentially about ethnicity.

Relating the Abrahamic and Mosaic Administrations

The Mosaic economy does not contradict, alter, or amend the Abrahamic Covenant. That was Paul’s point in Galatians 3:17-19. That is why the question about the addition of law in verse 19 came up to begin with. The question makes no sense unless one is assuming the perfection of the One who gave the covenant and therefore something of its own perfection.

Even if we examine the relationship between the covenant of works and covenant of grace, we will discern clues about the unity of the Abrahamic and Mosaic—not because the latter is essentially a covenant of works, but because God’s whole creation-redemption narrative has a basic unity to it. The author, parties, presence of condition, promise of life, and aim of God’s glory are all the same from Eden to the call of Abraham on down to Sinai. On the other hand, how God and man appear to each other, the way of life presented, the certainty of works, and how the covenants are revealed differ.

The principle that grace perfects nature is operative here. Everything that is redemptive maintains creational aims. The mandate to Adam continues, as redeemed man is being redeemed precisely as an image of God. Common grace elements point to the original creation and yet are also subservient to redemptive designs. Finally, Christ fulfills the condition of works. He ultimately is the fulfillment of the Man who has dominion in Psalm 8 (cf. Heb. 2: ), yet in such a way that the church dutifully carries this mandate

In favor of not viewing the Mosaic as a covenant of work was the fact that so much of the law has to do with the provision for the forgiveness of sins. The original covenant required perfect obedience but with no provision. The Westminster West school would object that the Mosaic requires perfection absolutely, yet not perfection for the typological role that Israel played. Michael Horton wrote,

“As Paul’s critics had confused the principles of law and promise, they had also confused the relative fidelity required in the national covenant and thus they remain in the typological land with the absolute faithfulness required of every person in order to fulfill all righteousness and thus appear safely in God’s heavenly presence.”5

While we agree with Horton’s distinction here and agree that we should not confuse the typological with the absolute, we will insist that Israelites were made more than mere types, and thus their motions in the narratives serve as more than simply shadowy ways that human beings will fall short leading us to Christ. They will also serve as examples (interestingly, Paul uses the same Greek word, typoi, for this in 1 Corinthians 10) in all of the continuous arenas of morality; and their offices and institutions will, in many ways, conform to natural patterns that transcend even their theocracy.

There are ten indications that the Mosaic covenant should really be viewed as an administration of the covenant of grace. The difference between the Abrahamic and Mosaic administrations is that between the patriarchal and national stages of the development of the people. Those ten are as follows.

1. The Abrahamic Ground of the Exodus. In Exodus 2:23-25, God’s response to Israel’s groaning was to recall the covenant to Abraham. Everything God would do through Moses was a fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. Israel was delivered in the exodus because God was faithful to the promise He made to their fathers (cf. Ex. 6:4-5).

2. The revelation of the divine name. In Exodus 3:6, 15, God identifies Himself with the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — cf. 6:2, 8. Here we also see an expansion, so that more about God’s name is revealed in the Mosaic: that is, “LORD” (6:2-3). This is central to God demonstrating His power in hardening Pharaoh’s heart, so that He can reveal what He is like (cf. Rom. 9).

3. Moses almost killed for disobeying the Abrahamic Covenant. In Exodus 4:24-26 Moses was almost cut off for not having circumcised His own son. But to what arrangement does the duty of circumcision belong? The answer is that it is the sign of the covenant of grace.

4. Precursors to the law’s specifics before Sinai. A sizable portion of the Pentateuch happens at Mount Sinai. The summation of the will of God in the Decalogue is the defining characteristic of the Mosaic administration, but the law existed before Sinai. In Exodus 16:23 they were blameworthy for gathering manna on the Sabbath. Apparently the prohibition already exists. The same can be seen in the unacceptable sacrifice of Cain or the rules for sacrifice prefigured in Noah’s clean animals. Thus there was something right and wrong in religion already present. Here is a covenant principle: law derives from covenant stipulations. This is why the Puritans spoke of the grace of law. The children of Israel were given law as a gracious rule for life. The question becomes: How then did the pre-Mosaic saints know to do this? The answer is partly given by Paul in Romans 2:14-15 concerning the natural law, but a special revelation element would also have been passed down.

5. Monergistic redemption. In Exodus 19:3-6 we have the proper ordering of God’s sovereign grace. First, there is gracious redemption, and secondly, the walking with God to secure enjoyment of it. The commandments are not given in Egypt. He does not say, “If you keep them, I will save you.” They cannot be the means of redemption. Ephesians 2:8-10 recalls this same pattern. BY grace … THROUGH faith … FOR / TO good works … that we should walk in them. Works do not become our salvation, but they do belong to our salvation.

6. Abrahamic Form Re-Stated. Again in Exodus 19:5-6, what Robertson called the “Immanuel Principle,” namely that God would be with us as our God, is present, as is the conditional language of walking with Him. This is the same as in Genesis 17. Paul restates the principle in the form of receiving the inheritance (cf. Eph. 1:11, 18). Jesus is the true Firstborn, but He shares the inheritance with us; and we are God’s inheritance. So we are His treasured possession. They would be a kingdom of priests. Priests give the blessing to the people (cf. Num. 6:24-26) — so Abraham was commanded to bless the world (cf. Gen. 12:1-3).

7. The Book, Words, and Blood of the Covenant. In Exodus 24, we see the book and the blood. The Ten Commandments are called the “words of the covenant” (Ex. 34:28).  In 34:10, it says “I am making a covenant,” but this does not mean it is just now starting. The blood does not only show the seriousness and threat, but it is also the provision to be restored. Exodus 24:8 is fulfilled in Christ’s death (cf. Matt. 26:28). Hebrews tells us that Christ’s blood really forgives those sins under the first covenant (cf. 9:15). So those whose sins are forgiven in the Old Covenant are also included in the Abrahamic covenant. Yet they are included under the “old,” and hence the old is formerly considered within the Abrahamic, even while the dead works of its members are treated, materially, as that which is passing away.

8. Moses’ Mediation was FOR the Abrahamic. In Exodus 34, when God’s anger would wipe them out, Moses appealed to the promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, and thus God maintained the people under Moses as a continuation of that promise. Was Moses more loving than God toward the children of Israel? Exodus 3 has already given us a glimpse of God sending to help them and Moses trying to escape. Ultimately he is appealing to things in God. This tells us that the more unified the covenant is, the more glory there is for God, because it highlights more and more divine attributes that were perfectly exhibited in the one design.

9. David made king over whole nation at Hebron. 2 Samuel 5:1. This is the same Hebron at the oaks of Mamre (cf. Gen. 13:18). To Abraham God said here you will rule over all the land. Recall that one of the promises to Abraham was that kings would come from him. Then David realized that God had “exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel” (5:12). David’s rule is a picture of God’s rule in Israel: “Then Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD” (1 Chr. 29:23). So it is no coincidence that at Pentecost the promise of Joel 2 was, more nearly, the fulfillment of the royal promise of the anointing Christ, now exalted on the throne (Acts 2:33-36), of which the outpouring on the disciples that day was the overflow of royal commissioning. A further implied promise came through the Abrahamic formula that their children are still included (Acts 2:39). Hence the fulfillment of David’s throne, the giving of the Spirit, and the better promises that included the children were all sent in one heaven-to-earth motion. The point for our consideration is that the national character (formulated at Sinai) of the covenant of grace was in fact part of that same covenant, even if David’s literal-historical throne was typological.

10. God’s assurances to the saints’ doubts are similar in form. The similarities between God’s assurances to Moses are similar to the words of promise to Abraham. As Genesis 15 contained a historical prologue—“And he said to him, ‘I am the LORD who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess’” (v. 7)—so too, more famously, did the law on Sinai. Then there was the covenant ceremony itself, given for further assurance. It is in answer to how he will know that God performs the cutting of the covenant (v. 18). The children of Israel will be led through the wilderness by a pillar of fire and cloud, and Moses encountered the burning bush: cloud and fire. It is possibly related to the fire on the altar and smoke going up out of the tabernacle.

Different Viewpoints

Opposing views have varied as to how much, or in what sense, they are set in opposition to the historic Reformed position. Indeed, some will challenge the very notion that there is a singular “position.” There are disagreements over the terms we use, the concepts we have in mind, the elements of each covenant or administration thereof, or applications to the membership of the church, sacraments, or to ethics and eschatology. I will only mention four main opposition views here.

1689 Federal Baptists are those Baptists who trace their theological lineage back into the Reformed tradition and as such embrace the basics of covenant theology. They see the weakness of Presbyterian Covenant Theology to be our view of covenant-breaking, or else the problem of apostates treated as members of the covenant community. The fundamental mistake that our 1689 brethren make is to see “covenant of grace” and “covenant community” as logically coextensive terms, reading this equation even into how they hear their Presbyterian interlocutors. They then reverse-engineer this mishearing into how we include children and conclude “dilemmas” such as that either children are members of the covenant of works (not grace) or else do not need to be regenerated. Some even imagine that this is what we must be reading into 1 Corinthians 7:14 about the child “made” holy. Inferences from non-existent premises aside, the simple fact of the matter is that “covenant of grace” and “covenant community” are not logically coextensive and no traditional covenant theology argument ever depended upon such a thing. The covenant is the enactment of God and the phenomena of that arrangement being fulfilled in history. The community that results from that is just that—a result, an effect—and as such can be as much a mixed body as the field in the parable can be both the Master’s singular field with a singular good seed and a

The Bible does not say—and no covenant theologian has argued—that, in the most literal and expansive sense, “all the generations” of the believer are included. This language is used of Noah and Abraham because of their special place in a new administration of the covenant. But if we take the view of the individual believer (including Noah and Abraham incidentally) there is a decisive break that God makes when the unfaithfulness of the fathers removes the next generations from the covenant. There is no covenant promises where there is no community of faith. We see this principle in the judgment fixed to the Second Commandment. And we see it elsewhere. So it did not take long in the case of descendants of Cain, Ham, Ishmael, Esau, and so forth, for their sons and grandsons to be rightly classified as outside of the covenant of grace. A moment of reflection will resolve this problem to be no real problem at all.

Dispensationalism. Seven dispensations are held not to be administrations of one covenant, but of various probations. Grace is the sixth, and it refers only to the offer to the Gentiles. Since I have written in detail about this elsewhere, I will direct the reader to that article. Suffice it to say here that the fundamental difference boils down to hermeneutics. For the dispensationalist, when a promise in the Old Testament is made about Israel, for example, relating to the land, then the fulfillment of that promise in the New Testament must be about future Israel in the land. For covenant theologians, we see the New Testament taking those Old Testament prophecies and applying them to the church finally about the new heavens and the new earth. And the church is made up of both believing Jews and believing Gentiles.

New Covenant Theology. From Jeremiah 31 it is argued that the promise of the New Covenant is that everyone in it would know the Lord in the sense of being regenerate. Therefore the covenant of grace can only be to the elect, and thus only believers should be considered “the church.”

As far as Jeremiah 31:31-34 is concerned, we see that God considers the covenant He made with their fathers to be the one after he had taken them out of Egypt, so he marks the contrast between the old and new by the Mosaic rather than the Abrahamic. The rest we must infer from premises gathered from places like Galatians 3, where it was the gospel that was preached to Abraham, the gospel that came to full bloom in the new covenant.

You will never find the Mosaic law criticized in the New Testament. When Jesus brings a criticism, it is against the Pharisees’ interpretation and their hypocrisy. It is never “Too much law” but always “not deep enough law.” No doubt there is complexity in Paul’s epistles about this very issue. Did not Peter warn us (2 Pet. 3:16) about how the unstable would get lost in Paul’s distinctions and take the easy route of twisting his words in favor of their own simple-minded errors? The Apostle speaks of continuity and discontinuity. That is, he tends to stress discontinuity between the New and the Mosaic (e.g., in terms of letter versus spirit), and continuity between the New and Abrahamic (e.g., in terms of promise and fulfillment). What makes a theologian is to reconcile such initially awkward tensions. What makes a heretic or a simpleton is to quickly choose one over against the other.

Republication is a view among some Reformed theologians—and by “some” I stress the very minority report that tends to come from Meredith Kline’s rendition of the covenants that has made its home at Westminster Theological Seminary in Escondido, California. For this brand, the entire character of the Mosaic covenant is like the original to Adam because of the principle in Eden and at Sinai: “Obey and live; disobey and die.” They would cite what seems like a radical contrast in Galatians 3 and 4 between the Abrahamic and Mosaic, as if they were two different covenants. R. Scott Clark especially has attempted to show how this way of viewing the covenants is in fact the true heir of historic covenant theology. It is the brand that Michael Horton has set to dogmatics and that David VanDrunen has applied in his radical two kingdom view of politics.

A basic objection along these lines is this: How can the Mosaic not be a republication of the original, but at the same time be a codification of what was already given in some way to those under Adam through Sinai? Or, to put it another way, how can we say that the moral law is Scripture’s “lenses” that magnify the natural law revealed in the created order, but then deny the concept of “republication” of the same? Several answers can be given, but the first is to point out a confusion of categories. The law of Moses can be a clarification of the law of nature without the whole covenant administration being a republication of the whole original covenant relationship. Laws derive from covenant relationships, but they are not co-extensive with the whole. The key is that the moral law is the same in the covenant of works as it is under the Mosaic—and for that same reason the moral law is the same in the New as it was in the Old. Whatever else is “Israel-shaped” (or priest-shaped) as opposed to “human-shaped” (or image-of-God-shaped), the bottom line is that human beings do not become un-human when they become redeemed. We suspect that underneath the surface of virtually all of these alternatives to classical Reformed covenant theology is the residue of old Gnosticism and its younger modern sister Pietism.

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1. Geerhardus Vos, Reformed Dogmatics (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012-14), II:97.

2. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1932), 279.

3. O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing, 1980),

4. Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, II:77.

5. Michael Horton, God of Promise (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), 38.