Peter DeBoer
[Source: The Standard
Bearer, vol. 21, no. 21 (Sept. 1, 1945), pp. 489-491]
The covenant of grace is the gracious relation of living
fellowship and friendship between God and His people in Christ wherein He is
their God and they are His people. In that covenant God forms the elect to be
His people, makes them partakers of all the benefits of Christ and leads them
on to eternal glory. This He does through the Holy Spirit who dwells in Christ
as the head and in His people as the members of His body.
The question that interests us just now is, Was the
covenant of Sinai a manifestation of the covenant of grace or must it be
conceived as a covenant of works … And in case the answer is that the Sinaitic
covenant is itself a covenant of grace, another question immediately arises,
what were the peculiarities of this dispensation of the covenant and what
purpose did they serve?
First of all, then, it must be made clear that
though there are different dispensations of God’s covenant, God is one and His
covenant is one. There are indeed different dispensations of God’s covenant.
After the fall there is, first of all, the dispensation of the covenant from
Adam to Noah, during which there is indeed no formal establishment of a
covenant, but its essence is there. It is not only suggested but implied,
for example, in the protevangelium of Genesis 3:15: “And I will put enmity between
thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy
head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” God will put enmity between the Serpent
and the Woman, between his seed and her seed; what is this but the gracious
promise to heal the breach caused by sin and to save the woman and her seed?
For the seed of the woman, according to Galatians 3:16, is Christ, together with His
people. Though there was, therefore, no formal establishment of the covenant,
its essence was there. This promise was realized before the flood in the
spiritual seed of the woman that was born in the line of Seth. These were
called “the sons of God.” They called
upon the name of God and sacrificed to Him. And Enoch, the eighth from Adam,
prophesied of the final day of Christ’s coming (Jude 14, 15). These saints lived by faith,
and by faith sacrificed, and received testimony that they were righteous (Heb. 11:4).
The covenant with Noah also is the covenant of grace, and
not a separate covenant established also with all the wicked, a so-called “common
grace” covenant. Indeed, after the flood, it is a fact that Noah and his family—the
visible church—are also all mankind, but that is due to the fact that the
wicked world has perished in the flood. The covenant which also embraces all
the creatures is the covenant of grace. However, to establish this properly
would require a separate article, and would lead us too far from our discussion
of the Sinaitic covenant.
The covenant of grace attains a new phase in its
development when God establishes a formal covenant with Abraham. What is new is
not that the way of salvation is other than before or after, nor that the
covenant becomes a covenant of works, but that the covenant is now formally
established and limited to Abraham and his seed. Now God bestows upon Abraham
and his seed the sign and seal of circumcision. Volume 2, and part 3 of “The
Christian’s Reasonable Service,” à Brakel briefly summarizes the arguments that
incontrovertibly prove that the covenant with the patriarchs was a
covenant of grace. He writes:
That the covenant established
with Abraham is the covenant of grace is plain: (a) Because Christ was its
Mediator (Gen. 12:2, 3; Gal. 3:17). (b) God was its God,
its shield and great reward (Gen.
15:1; Gen.
17:8). (c) By it, Abraham was made a father of believers (Gen. 17:2, 4; Rom. 4:11). (d) It had to be received
by faith (Gen. 25:6; Gen. 17:3; Rom. 4:18-20). (e) It had
circumcision as a seal of the righteousness of faith (Rom. 4:11).
But now the question arises, What about the covenant at
Sinai with all its laws and ordinances? Was not this a covenant of works? Was
it not law, and as such a direct opposite of grace? There are some that take
exactly this position and deny that the covenant of Sinai is the covenant of
grace. Over against this, we maintain that also at Sinai God maintains His
covenant of grace, and that the Sinaitic covenant is a further development in
the realization of that eternal covenant of God.
We must bear in mind that, though the dispensation
changes and the covenant assumes a somewhat different form, the covenant with
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob remains; it is even the foundation and essence of the
Sinaitic covenant (Ex.
2:24; Deut.
7:8). Besides, the law did not set aside the covenant of promise
(i.e., the covenant with Abraham). Paul teaches that the law at Sinai did not
come to set this aside—Galatians
3:17 says, “And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed
before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years
after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.” The covenant of Sinai therefore is essentially
no different from the covenant with Abraham. Just as God gives Himself freely and
graciously to Abraham, without any merit on his part, as a shield and great
reward, as a God for him and his seed, and now, upon that ground, calls Abraham
to walk before Him, so too God chooses Israel, delivers them out of Egypt,
gives Himself to them, and now upon that ground calls Israel to walk before Him
as His people. The first words of the law, and its foundation are, “I am the
Lord thy God, who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house
of bondage” (Exod. 20:2). And
that is the essence of the covenant of grace. The Lord is Israel’s God apart
from any worthiness on the part of Israel, and He remains this eternally. God’s
covenant with Israel is an eternal covenant, and no sins and iniquities on
Israel’s part can disannul it (Deut.
4:3; 32:26; Psalm 89:1-5; 105:8; Is. 54:10; Rom. 11:1, 2).
The blessings or benefits that God bestows in this
covenant with Israel are the same as those bestowed on Abraham—but now more
completely specified. The one great promise to Abraham is this: I am thy God
and the God of thy seed after thee (Gen. 17:8). And this is the chief contents of God’s
covenant with Israel. God is Israel’s God, and they are His people (Exod 19:6; 29:46, etc).
Because of this, Israel receives many blessings, not only temporal (the land of
Canaan, fruitfulness of man and beast, prosperity and victory over its enemies,
etc.), but also spiritual—God’s dwelling among them; the forgiveness of sins (Exod. 20:6; Ps. 32, etc.); the right to and
blessings of sonship (Exod.
4:22; 19:5, 6; Is. 63:16, etc.); sanctification (Exod. 19:6; Lev. 19:22, etc.). All these
spiritual blessings are not set forth as clearly as in the New Testament. The
Spirit was not yet poured out, and they could not have understood them in all their
spiritual reality. The natural is first, and afterward the spiritual. All the
spiritual benefits were therefore set forth in types and shadows. Moses took
blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying that it was the blood of the
covenant which the Lord had established with them (Exod. 24:8). This represented the blood of Christ (Heb. 9:19, 19; 12:24).
The forgiveness of sins was bound up with the sacrifice of animals—animals
without blemish—all of which foreshadowed the Christ. The Passover Lamb pointed
to Christ (John 1:29). The
dwelling of God, though real, was in the shadow form in the temple.
Sanctification was symbolized in levitical, ceremonial
purity. Forgiveness and sanctification, regeneration and eternal life were the
benefits of the old covenant as well as of the new. But the conscious
possession of this gift was not nearly as rich in the Old Testament as in the
New, from the time that the Spirit was poured out. In order that Israel might
be brought to the glory of the New Testament, God placed Israel under the law
as a taskmaster to Christ (Gal.
3:24).
When God established His covenant with Abraham, Abraham
received the command to walk before the Lord and be perfect. Israel is,
likewise, admonished and charged to walk before the Lord as His covenant people
in a new obedience. The entire law, iterated on Sinai, means to cause Israel to
walk in the way of God’s covenant, It is an unfolding of the word to Abraham to
walk before God and therefore is no more a rejection of the covenant of grace or
an establishment of a covenant of works than that word was to Abraham. The law
of Moses does not stand opposed to grace, but is subservient to grace and was
thus understood by the true Israelites. The law, looked at apart from the
covenant of grace, is indeed a letter that killeth, a ministration of
condemnation. One of the purposes of the law was to awaken the consciousness of
sin and the need of deliverance, and so cause Israel to look for the
fulfillment of the promise and the better covenant. The law was the
schoolmaster to Christ. The law stood in service to the covenant of grace,
therefore; it never intended to teach that man by his own efforts could attain
to righteousness. The daily sacrifice was a testimony against righteousness by
works, and pointed forward to the Christ to come. The law did awaken in the
people of God the desire for the better covenant. The law was added that the
people of God might look forward to the better and eternal manifestation of the
covenant in Christ. Christ did not come immediately after the fall—He could
not; the way had to be prepared, sin had to develop, and the longing for
redemption had to awaken. There was preparation necessary. Not as though God
needed it, for He did not, but men needed to be prepared. God leads everything
gradually toward the cross.
When Christ appears in the flesh the covenant of grace
enters its final phase. The believers in the Old Testament knew that the
covenant of Sinai was only for a time, and they therefore looked forward to the
better covenant. The New Testament was not something wholly new, but the
fulfillment of the Old; the covenant of grace, in its Sinaitic form, was
temporary and in the form of the shadow; in Christ came grace and truth, the
fulfillment. The Old and New Testament are essentially one covenant (Luke 1:68-79; Acts 2:39). They have one gospel (Rom. 1:2; Gal. 3:8; 2 Tim. 3:15). There is one Mediator,
of the new and of the old (John
8:58). There is one way of salvation: by faith (Rom. 4:11; Heb. 11). The Old Testament and the New are related as
promise and fulfillment, as shadow and body (Col. 2:17), as child and man (Gal. 4:1, etc).
Christ did not come to abrogate the law but to
fulfill (Matt. 5:17).
Everything is fulfilled in Him. He is the true servant of the Lord, the real
sacrifice, our Passover; His church is the true seed of Abraham, the temple of
God, Jerusalem. Nothing in Israel, in the Sinaitic covenant, is lost, but all
reaches its fulfillment. Hence, the New Testament covenant is the better
covenant. In the New Testament dispensation of the covenant of grace,
everything to which the Sinaitic covenant pointed is fulfilled and attained.
Hence, the new covenant is a better covenant with a better sacrifice, a better
high priest, etc. When we say “better” we have in mind the book of Hebrews of
which “better” is the keyword. Nothing of the Sinaitic covenant goes lost;
everything is maintained in the New Testament form of the covenant in the sense
that it finds its fulfillment there. Hence, it would be a great sin to return
to the first principles, the rudiments of the world, and to reject Christ and
the fulfillment. It would be a denial, not only of the New Testament
fulfillment, but of the Old Testament promise—it would be a denial that Sinai’s
covenant was the covenant of grace. Such many of the wicked Jews indeed sought
to make of it, changing Sinai’s covenant into a covenant of works. The result
was that they attained not to righteousness, for they sought it of works and
not by faith (Rom. 9:30-33).
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