Covenant Theology 1: The First Relationship between God and Humanity (Covenant of Works and Grace in Gen 1-3)

We all like friendships but do we need them? Science and the Bible teach we need them. (1) Scientists have discovered brain cells called “mirror neurons.” They activate the parts of our brains we need to do what we see other people doing. This means God designed our brains to learn from others. We cannot learn love, compassion, or mercy from a book. Our brains learn from seeing and imitating. (2) Thinking we can live without relationships is denying reality. We were born from the relationship of our parents and into relationships with parents and siblings. Without relationships, we would not go far in life as a baby or child. (3) Our brains are not fully developed until we are 25, but even in adulthood, relationships matter. Scientists have shown that healthy, intimate, safe relationships shape our brains to allow us to better navigate stressful emotional and social situations. Unless we heal from unhealthy relationships in our formative years, our brain will not be healthy. We will struggle to regulate our emotions, and control our temper. We will need more time to calm down from stress. We will act in ways that push people away and not draw closer to them. That was the science lesson. (4) Science teaches that God designed our brains for relationships. The Bible teaches that God intends our most important intimate relationship to be with him. God wants us to know him, love him, and trust him. Even more importantly he wants us to know that he loves us, he knows us, and he is with us in good times and the bad. God wants us to run to him while we experience hardship, and turn to him in joy, thanksgiving, and praise in the highs of life. Genesis 1–2 presents the world before sin. This is how God intended it. After the creation of man in Gen 2:18, “the Lord God said, ‘it is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Gen 2:18 teaches us that every one of us needs human companionship, relationships, and community. At times we try to fill the void with pets. Pets can do a great job at providing company. But we all know that our cats and dogs cannot know us in an intimate way like our fellow human beings. We all want to be known and to be accepted for who we are. We have related to others in more or less intimate ways our whole lives. We need to love other people. We need to truly care for people, hear their dreams, their fears, see their strange sides, good sides, their bad sides, and have them know that we are not going anywhere. We need people in our lives who will do the same for us. These relationships are a mark of a healthy church! We all long for intimacy. No human relationship ever delivers it perfectly. Only God can meet our deepest needs for intimacy, and that is what the Bible is all about. The Bible records the history of God’s relationship with humanity from creation to the end of history so that each one of us can enter into a relationship with God. Relationships with God are called Covenants. We will look at God’s covenant with the first human beings, Noah, Abraham, Israel, David, and the New Covenant. Now, we will look at God’s relationship with Adam and Eve before the fall, after the fall, and what it means for us.  (WSC questions 12-21).

First, we see God’s relationship with Adam and Eve before the Fall (Covenant of Works/Life). 

Gen 1–2 teaches us everything the world was meant to be. We can learn from God’s relationship with the first humans because God does not change nor do his plans. The word “covenant” is never used in Gen 1–3, but the elements of later covenants are present so it is not wrong to refer to God’s relationship with Adam and Eve as a covenant. In this series, I will look at each covenant, with covenant categories: parties, signs, blessings, curses, and the domain over which the covenant applies. We will now look for these elements in Gen 1–3. 

(1) The parties of the covenant are God and Man. In Gen 1, we see the Bible never tries to prove God’s existence. In Gen 1:1, the Bible begins with, “In the beginning, God!” He is the creator of all things (Gen 1:1). He is the one who decides what is good, and what is evil. When we look at our world, night and day, seasons, the land, the sea, the sky, animals, plants, we can see that Genesis 1–2 shows us that God created a world fit for human beings to thrive. In Gen 2:18, we see that God has man’s best interest at heart. God says: “It is not good that the man should be alone.” God identifies a human need and then fulfills that need by providing him companionship. God is one party of the covenant. He is the all good, wise, powerful, king of the universe. The second party of the covenant is Man. In Gen 1:26 we read, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” God created vegetation, plants, and fruit trees according to their kind (Gen 1:11), all sea creatures and flying creatures according to their kind (Gen 1:21), he made all land animals according to their kind (Gen 1:24). God did not make humanity according to its kind. God made us in his likeness, in his image. God is our father. We are uniquely created for a relationship with our God. 

(2) The terms of the covenant are the responsibilities of each party. (a) The first terms of the covenants relate to our nature. As children of a God who is good, wise, powerful, and king, we are called to live in ways that God calls good, according to his wisdom. God delegates the ruling over creation to us. The first commandment is found in Gen 1:26, “And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over creeping things that creeps on the earth.” In Gen 1:28, “God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Being human means being kings and queens over creation. God’s will for humanity is that they would multiply to fill the earth and rule as his representatives. Application: In 2021, human beings are still made in God’s image to rule and care over creation. As a whole, the rate at which we cut trees and eat meat is unsustainable. Half the earth’s animal species live in tropical rainforests. In the last 50 years, we have cut down around one-fifth of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. As we destroy rainforests, we destroy the habitat of these millions of animal species. 137 species of life become extinct every day because of human activity. The amount of land and resources it requires to raise cattle for our current eating habits are not sustainable. Ruling over the earth, and the animal world well requires wisdom. We must consider our lifestyles. Living sustainably by buying second hand (in US, on average, each piece of clothing is worn 7 times before being tossed), avoiding overusing wood, cutting down on our consumption of meats that take a toll on the environment is part of taking our God-given commission seriously. (b) Another term of the covenant is another command, connected with the covenant elements of blessings and curses. In Gen 2:8, “the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.” In Gen 2:16–17, “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.” In Gen 2:9, we read that in the middle of the garden of Eden there was, “the tree of life… and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Eating from the tree of life allowed a person to live forever (Gen 3:22). We see there was an agreement in the original relationship between God and Man. God is all good, all-powerful, and all-wise God. Man had no need for the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He needed just to trust God. The commandment not to eat from the tree is a call to trust in God. 

(3) The following are the curse and blessing of the covenant. In the commandment of Gen 2:16–17, God warns the man that the day he eats of the tree of knowledge he will surely die. This threat has a hidden promise. If Adam kept the terms of the covenant and trusted God in obedience, he would have had eternal life, and experienced eternal bliss, in this perfect Garden, in God’s presence. The curse accompanied disobedience. If Adam disobeys, he will forfeit paradise and would surely die. 

(4) The text does not mention a sign of the covenant. If there was one, it could be the tree of life. As long as they were in the covenant, they had access to the tree of life to live forever. In a similar way as long as we are in the New Covenant, we come to the Lord’s Table to feed on the body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of sins. 

(5) The domain of the covenant was all people in all places. Adam was to multiply and spread.

Second, we see New Terms to The Covenant after the Fall (Covenant of Grace). 

In Gen 3, we learn that Adam and Eve did not keep the terms of the first covenant. They ate the forbidden fruit. Because of Man’s sin, in Gen 3:22–24, God bars Man’s access to the Tree of Life: “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever… the Lord God sent him out of the garden of Eden… at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” So, what now? In the original relationship between Man and God, the requirement for a relationship with God was perfect obedience. Man disobeyed and forfeited his right to eternal life. But God is gracious. We read in Gen 3:15 that God renegotiates the terms of his relationship with mankind. Following the first sin, there are specific consequences for Man, Woman, and the Devil. Particularly to the devil, God says in Gen 3:15, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” This verse goes beyond explaining our fear of snakes. This passage teaches that there will be enmity between the children of the woman and the children of the devil. However, one particular descendent of the woman will bruise the head, not of the devil’s children, but of the devil himself. There are no conditions or terms tied with the promise of the destruction of the devil. It is a free gift that is fulfilled in Christ (Rom 16:20). In the first arrangement, God required perfect obedience from Man. Once they failed, God graciously promised that a human being would destroy the works of the devil. The promise drives the story of the OT. The NT shows its fulfillment.

What does this all mean for us? 

We live a long time removed from that first relationship between God and Adam. We now live in the last covenant, which is called the new covenant. Here are the similarities. (1) The work of one man affected the relationship with God for the many. Because of Adam’s sin, all sinned and are separate from God (Rom 5:12). What Adam did, we all did in him. Because of Jesus’ perfect life, sacrifice for sin, and his resurrection, all those who trust in him benefit from his perfect life and live in his resurrection (Rom 6:4). (2) The first covenant teaches us who we are as God’s image-bearers and who God is. We learn of God’s intentions for the world he created. God created humanity to enter into a covenant/relationship/partnership with him. He wants us, his representatives, image-bearers to fill the whole earth. In the New Covenant, God still wants people to glorify him all over the world. So now that mankind has filled the earth, God wants Christians to make disciples of all people that the earth would be full with kings and queens who rule in a way that reflects his character. This will be fully accomplished in the New Heavens and New Earth. (3) The original terms of the Covenant, never go away. The only way anyone can have a relationship with God is by living perfectly. We know that humanly speaking this is impossible. In the OT, God sends many prophets to teach God’s people that God will offer a way for salvation. Jesus fulfills these expectations. He meets the requirements of a perfect life that we need for a relationship with God. He died to also pay the judgment that Adam’s sin and all our sins deserve. The same way we all live in Sin, because of what Adam did. We also get to live in a relationship with God, because of what Jesus does for us. We can believe the right things, practice the right behaviors, and go to the right church and still not be a Christian. Being a Christian means we are in a relationship with God. We are studying past covenants, to better understand our relationships with God, his love, mercy, his call on our lives, that we would please him in our lives.