—The Scriptures must not merely be read as 66 individual books but as one unified and cohesive story. Understanding the Covenant of Works helps readers of the Bible understand this one grand story of how God saves sinners through His Son.

In the Garden of Eden, there lived a king named Adam. God gave Adam, the first man, a mission to further this kingdom over all the earth. God would reign through the man He had appointed as the federal head of the human race (cf. Gen. 1:31). The key to this paradise was that Adam would serve as a king under authority. He was to live gladly under God’s kingship over him and love God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength.

This relationship between God and Adam is expressed through a covenant commonly called the Covenant of Works.[1] Adam represented all mankind in the Garden and his meeting or failing the conditions of this covenant not only would affect him but all his posterity. Before fleshing this out, we need to consider Genesis 2:15-17 which says,

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’

No little controversy lies at the heart of this text in terms of whether or not it actually presents a “Covenant of Works.” Caution must be exercised here as the love of God and His Scriptures demand rightfully dividing the Word of truth. Careful consideration of this text, however, not only proves a Covenant of Works, but also sets the entire trajectory of the rest of the Bible. That is, to miss the overarching point of Genesis 1-3 is to miss one of the crucial storylines of the Bible. Not only was the Covenant of Works the key to Adam remaining in his Edenic paradise, but it is also the key to any other soul entering into an eternal paradise with the triune God.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached it this way,

The doctrine of the divine covenant lies at the root of all true theology. It has been said that he who well understands the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace is a master of divinity. I am persuaded that most of the mistakes which men make concerning the doctrines of Scripture are based upon fundamental errors with regard to the covenants of law and of grace.[2]

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