“Covenant puts boots on theology. It grounds biblical theology in history. It situates gospel hope in real life. It strips doctrine of any romantic gaze, and cloaks it in flesh, in substance, in life-giving truth. What water is to a fish and oxygen is to mammals’ lungs God’s covenant is to our spiritual lives.”

Many in evangelical and even reformed churches lack appreciation for the biblical concept of covenant, finding it obscure and even arcane. The irony is stark. What many perceive as academic smoke is actually just the opposite.

Covenant puts boots on theology. It grounds biblical theology in history. It situates gospel hope in real life. It strips doctrine of any romantic gaze, and cloaks it in flesh, in substance, in life-giving truth.

What water is to a fish and oxygen is to mammals’ lungs God’s covenant is to our spiritual lives. Covenant makes theology sing; it gives theology its very life. As the authors of the Westminster Confession of Faith rightly discerned, covenant, in fact, gives us God himself.

In the opening paragraph of chapter 7, “Of God’s Covenant with Man,” they write, “The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.”[1]

Yielding to the Bible’s teaching on God’s transcendence—He is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, the Confession rightly affirms the infinite incongruence between God and man. Such incongruence on its own terms renders fellowship an impossibility, human expectation an absurdity, and even reward for obedience fanciful fiction. Though the language style of Westminster Confession 7.1 might sound strange to our ears, its message blares lucidly: without the covenant, we “could never have any fruition of Him as [our] blessedness and reward.”

Apart from the Creator God establishing a covenant, we remain outside the fruition zone! Even before the corruption of sin, mankind’s essence as creature disqualifies him to expect anything from God, to hope for anything from God, or to aspire to any sweet fellowship with his Maker. No covenant, no relational realization. No covenant, no hope. No covenant, no sweet fruition. Creator and creature remain out of reach.

Covenant Kindness

This incongruity, incompatibility warrants further pondering. What could a creature possible due to earn favor with the Creator? The infinite God needs nothing and owes no creature, even man himself, anything! Even the most extraordinary human feat could fall only interminably short of the Almighty and his infinite glory. We marvel at a juggler who manages 6 or 7 balls at a time, but what could begin to impress the Creator who “juggles” every atom in the universe simultaneously, effortlessly, and flawlessly by the Word of his power?

The incongruity of reward pales before the inconceivable disproportionality between the Creator and the created in terms of their respective beings (ontologically). On what basis would we dare interface with the Creator of the universe? What standing could a creature have before the Creator? Even the most carefully crafted finite words woefully understate this grand disparity between God and man, Creator and creature, the Infinite and the finite. Illustrations are tempting, but the attempt itself reduces the distinction to creaturely rhetoric, making the very attempt foolhardy.

So what then? How can Scripture even speak of divine human fellowship or of divine reward for obedience? One answer. Covenant. As the “divines” (the title commonly given to these seventeenth century ministers of the gospel) put it, God acted. He stepped down; he bent over toward us. Since we could in no way get to him, he came to us. He chose to lower himself to our level, and did so out of his own pleasure and wisdom (see Ephesians 1:3–14). His stooping instrument of choice was the covenant.

Rather than leave man in an essential yet impossible obligation, God kindly situated creation and mankind in covenant relationship with him. Promises, reward, and fellowship exist by covenant. God’s covenant dealings began with creation, with Adam himself. “The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam; and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.”[2]

This relationship, by its very existence, exposes us to the benevolent heart of God. To Adam, Eve and their progeny he came and kindly so. Adam and Eve’s Garden of Eden fellowship with their Creator came because God stooped down to his image-bearers by a creation covenant.[3]

Like a nanny whispering into the ear of a small child in words the young one could understand,[4] God bends over, speaks to Adam and Eve understandably, warmly, and meaningfully. He gave their moral and personal obligations clearly defined parameters: they knew what he expected, were given what they needed to meet those expectations, and were offered promises according to those covenantal expectations. Covenant defined and bounded the divine-human relationship. It does so to this very day.

This divine stooping to issue covenant promise breathed heavenly vitality into man’s purpose, hopes, dreams—his entire life and future. Covenant turned the impossible into the attainable, that is, the achievable sweetness of permanent fellowship with the Creator. In this covenant obligation, God gave explicit command—a command not to eat of a particular tree in the Garden of Eden. Covenant obligation was now explicitly defined; covenant blessing was now explicitly in view.

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