God’s Covenant (2)

Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 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.” Genesis 2.15-17

A bridge of many spans
It might be helpful, in trying to understand the Bible, to think of it as a bridge. It has a single roadway which leads from eternity past to eternity future, passing over the river of time. It is a bridge of one single arching span; its structure – like its roadway – extends from before the beginning of things to after the end of history. One perfect arch connects the distant past with the distant future, and suspends the road that passes over time.

That arch is God’s covenant.

Two large sub-spans arch under the single span supporting the bridge of Scripture. We call these the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. They overlap a bit in that section of the New Testament which we call the gospels, and they share the same shape as the overarching span, God’s one covenant with His people. They are separate spans, because they are intended to support the roadway at particular places as it passes over time, under the single arching span, toward the final destination for which the bridge has been constructed.

Within the two sub-spans, and under one single span are several smaller arches, each anchored at a point on the roadway and spanning toward another point somewhere further along the path. These arches are not separate spans; they are aspects of the structure of the one overarching span, and they support, depend on, and build toward one another, overlapping as they do.

These arches represent the various covenants of God, enacted at different times in Scripture as aspects of God’s one overarching covenant.

We want to look a bit more closely at these covenants, so that we can understand their role in supporting the storyline and structure of Scripture.

In the beginning
God’s covenant begins at the beginning of Scripture. From the get-go, we see God doing things that He will do over and again in Scripture, each time with a little different application, but always reflecting the same basic elements, and always gesturing toward the same ultimate destination.

God’s covenant began with Adam and Eve, whom He graciously created and established in an environment lush with bounty and bristling with promise. Having created our first parents entirely as an act of His grace, God then offered them a wonderful promise: Life! Life with Him, amid all His bounty, increasingly and ever more abundantly, presumably forever and ever. God’s purpose in creating Adam and Eve was to bind them to Himself in perfect peace, so that they would know His glory and fill the earth with it.

But there was a catch. Adam and Eve had to receive the promise of God on His terms. And why would they not want to do that? After all, He had created them. He had filled their environment with good things. He had given them one another to enjoy, assist, and nurture. He had provided everything for them, and everything was very good (Gen. 1.31). So why would they not want what God was offering? Why would they want anything other than more of the life they were enjoying? All they needed to know was how to achieve that.

And that was simple enough. To gain the promise of God, and thus to know fullness of life with Him, all Adam and Eve had to do was abstain from eating from a certain tree in the center of their garden. That’s it. Two other mandates accompanied this one, of course: be fruitful and multiply, and exercise dominion over the earth. But our first parents’ ability to fulfill these instructions would hinge on their willingness to obey the command not to eat from the tree in the center of the garden.

God graciously made and blessed our first parents. Then He held out the prospect of eternal life and increasing abundance with Him. All they had to do to demonstrate their understanding of and gratitude for His gracious work and offer, and to show their willingness to be enjoy life on His terms, was obey one very clear command.

The covenant violated
Well, we know what happened. Adam and Eve violated God’s covenant, and, as a result, they forfeited (for the moment) the promise of His covenant, and came instead under its sanctions, concerning which they had been warned by God. He had told them that if they failed to uphold their end of His covenant, they would die. And die they did – spiritually, morally, relationally, culturally, socially, and, ultimately, physically.

This first arch under the sub-span of the Old Covenant follows the pattern all Scripture will take, and provides a footprint for other arches to follow. God’s grace, followed by God’s promises, offered according to God’s commandments, bolstered by God’s warnings and sanctions: this is the form every next stage of God’s covenant will take, as the one overarching covenant of promise unfolds along the roadway of Scripture toward the goal of eternal life with God on the other side of time.

For reflection
1.  How was God’s grace evident in the covenant He made with Adam and Eve? Does His grace continue to operate like this? Explain.

2.  Summarize the promise God offered Adam and Eve. Is this promise still valid? In what ways?

3.  Adam’s and Eve’s disobedience introduced sin to the world, and changed the world drastically. But did sin change God? Or God’s way of relating to His people? Explain.

Next steps – Conversation: Do you think God was being “reasonable” by withholding the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil from Adam and Eve? Does it matter whether we think God was being reasonable in this matter? Why or why not? Talk with a Christian friend about these questions.

T. M. Moore

You can learn more about God’s covenant and why it’s so important by ordering T. M.’s book, I Will Be Your God, from our online store (click here). For a deeper study of God’s covenant, order the workbook, God’s Covenant, from our online store (click here).

To learn how God’s covenant defines the shape of Scripture, and guides our approach to understanding and using the Bible, enroll in the course, Introduction to Biblical Theology. It’s free and online, and you can study at your own pace or with friends. To learn more and to register, click here. This week’s study is Part 1 of a series on The Word of God, and is available as a free download by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.