The importance of the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son can never be understated. If God has promised to redeem a people for Himself through the obedience, sacrifice, and mediation of the Son from all of eternity, then we should have the strongest confidence in the perfection of the Son’s work. Believers should take great comfort in knowing that all the Father gave the Son will come to Him since the Son did everything that He contracted with His Father to do for their redemption. 

The Bible is structured by architectonic principles. Reformed theologians have, by and large, agreed that all of God’s special revelation is structured by a Covenant of Works and a Covenant of Grace. This is not to say (as many have wrongly charged) that Covenant theologians do not believe in a difference between the Old and New Covenants. Neither does it mean that they do not believe that there are distinctions between the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic, and New Covenant. Rather, it is to say that the biblical teaching about Adam and Christ (Rom. 5:12–21) is the structuring principle of all of God’s pre-lapsarian and post-lapsarian dealings with mankind. Prior to the fall, we were represented by Adam in the Covenant of Works. Had Adam, as federal representative, obeyed he would have secured eternal life and holiness for all his offspring. After the fall, mankind can only be saved by God’s grace through faith in Christ who obeyed for His people in the Covenant of Grace. The Adam/Christ structure of Scripture is what theologians have sometimes called the bi-covenantal structure of revelation.

However, insistence on a bi-covenantal structure of biblical revelation does not negate the reality of an eternal Covenant of Redemption (i.e., the pactum salutis). In fact, the better part of Reformed theologians have affirmed the existence of a pre-temporal intra-Trinitarian covenant in which the Father and the Son enter into a contract together on promises and obligations for the salvation. The Covenant of Redemption made before the foundation of the world is based on the agreement of the Father and the Son as to the Son’s obedience, sacrifice, and mediation. Some have considered such an arrangement to be distinct from the Covenant of Grace, while others have considered it to be the eternal aspect of the Covenant of Grace. What we can agree upon is the fact that before God created the world, the three persons of the Godhead entered into an agreement with one another for the plan of redemption.

Charles Hodge, in his Systematic Theology, set out what he believed to be the eight promises of the Father to the Son in the Covenant of Redemption. He wrote,

“The promises of the Father to the Son conditioned on the accomplishment of that work, were,

(1.) That He would prepare Him a body, fit up a tabernacle for Him, formed as was the body of Adam by the immediate agency of God, uncontaminated and without spot or blemish.

(2.) That He would give the Spirit to Him without measure, that his whole human nature should be replenished with grace and strength, and so adorned with the beauty of holiness that He should be altogether lovely.

(3.) That He would be ever at his right hand to support and comfort Him in the darkest hours of his conflict with the powers of darkness, and that He would ultimately bruise Satan under his feet.

(4.) That He would deliver Him from the power of death and exalt Him to his own right hand in heaven; and that all power in heaven and earth should be committed to Him.

(5.) That He, as the Theanthropos and head of the Church, should have the Holy Spirit to send to whom He willed, to renew their hearts, to satisfy and comfort them, and to qualify them for his service and kingdom.

(6.) That all given to Him by the Father should come to Him, and be kept by Him, so that none of them should be lost.

(7.) That a multitude whom no man can number should thus be made partakers of his redemption, and that ultimately the kingdom of the Messiah should embrace all the nations of the earth.

(8.) That through Christ, in Him, and in his ransomed Church, there should be made the highest manifestation of the divine perfections to all orders of holy intelligences throughout eternity. The Son of God was thus to see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied.”1

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