Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.”
So God created man in His own image;
He created him in the image of God;
He created them male and female.God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”
So the heavens and the earth and everything in them were completed. By the seventh day God completed His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it He rested from His work of creation.
The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
—Genesis 1:26-28; 2:1-3, 15-17
Right here, in the beginning of the Bible, God reveals how he relates to his creation in general, and his image bearers in particular.
Covenantal Relationship with God
Westminster Confession of Faith 7: “Of God’s Covenant with Man”
1. 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.
2. 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.
Not all agree that God in fact made a covenant with Adam. This covenant of works is not universally recognized. Is this “covenant of works” a biblical fact?
Understanding what covenant is will be helpful.
Covenants in the Bible
Covenant is a big category in the Bible. It has been compared to the hidden structure of the house.
Covenants in Scripture are made between people, and between God and people. Covenant, without context, is an agreement between two parties. Covenant with God will have more nuance than that.
Two kinds of covenant between God and man are bilateral and unilateral. Bilateral means there’s conditions that need to be met. Unilateral means they’re completely on God’s side, he does all the fulfilling.
We use “covenant” at the concept level, meaning even if the word “covenant” is not present in the text. The word doesn’t need to be there; the characteristics of covenant are there. That’s a common challenge to the covenant of works in the Garden, “The word is not there.” That’s okay. Later Scriptures will refer back to something and use the word covenant. It doesn’t need to use the word covenant at that time for it to be there.
Structure of the Covenants
Covenants in Scripture bear many similarities with ancient near-eastern covenants (Fesko, Last Things First pg. 78). Michael Horton, following Meredith Kline, makes a big deal of the similarities between ancient Hittite (Suzerin-vassal) treaties and the covenants in Scripture. Meredith Kline was not the first to see this, so it’s not a novel idea. Many have noticed that the structure of Old Testament covenants matched ancient Near-eastern treaties, especially Hittite. This is especially true of the Ten Commandments, the covenant made at Sinai. The features of these treaties are: Prologue of history of relationship between the two parties, stipulations (requirements), blessings and curses.
Meredith Kline’s belief was that God put his structure of covenant in language that the people would understand. We can understand that.
A very interesting feature of near-eastern covenants is covenant documents. There was always a written form of the treaty; drawing up the terms. Always a covenant document that goes with the covenant made. Two copies were made (Suzerin, vassal), kept in their respective temples of worship.
That is another parallel! With God’s covenant at Sinai, there were two tablets. How do we usually think of the two tablets? In pictures, there’s five commandments on one,and five on the other. As if God couldn’t fit them all, write smaller, whatever. However, it is likely that each tablet has all ten. God’s copy, and the people’s copy. Two copies of the covenant terms, kept in the ark as a testimony to the people. God testifies to the terms of the covenant. According to Michael Kruger, this has been observed by Old Testament scholars for generations.
The significance of this is that the people would have been expecting a covenant document when God made/expanded the covenant throughout history. In the New Testament as well, Christians would have expected new word-revelation to come with the new covenant that Jesus said he made, meaning that the New Testament was expected. Canon was not an early church invention. When you have a new covenant established, you have new documents to accompany it.
Evidence for Covenant in the Garden
“This is what the Lord says: If you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night so that day and night cease to come at their regular time, then also My covenant with My servant David may be broken so that he will not have a son reigning on his throne, and the Levitical priests will not be My ministers.”
—Jeremiah 33:20-21
When God creates, it is covenantal. Despite the lack of the word “covenant” in the creation account, it is revealed in Jeremiah that there is covenantal activity going on. The absence of a word doesn’t mean the doctrine is not present. We operate on the concept level, not the word level.
Evidence in Genesis 1-3
The Holy Spirit was present, and in the Bible the Spirit is witness to covenantal activity. (Fesko, Last Things First pg. 84)
The exodus, the baptism of Christ, and the consummation. And in the beginning we see the Spirit of God brooding over the deep.
Other evidence is the presence of sanctions. In Genesis 2:16-17 the language parallels Mosaic commands:
Genesis 2:17 You shall not eat
Exodus 20:13-15 You shall not murder (commit adultery, steal, etc.)
The Trees of Life and Knowledge: Covenant Signs and Seals
They closely parallel the signs of the Abrahamic, Noahic, and Mosaic covenants. Circumcision, the rainbow, and the Sabbath. They are visual reminders of the covenant, blessing and curse, the promise of life or death.
The term sacrament . . . includes, generally, all the signs which God ever commanded men to use, that he might make them sure and confident of the truth of his promises. These he was pleased sometimes to place in natural objects—sometimes to exhibit in miracles. Of the former class we have an example, in his giving the tree of life to Adam and Eve, as an earnest of immortality, that they might feel confident of the promise as often as they ate of the fruit. Another example was, when he gave the bow in the cloud to Noah and his posterity, as a memorial that he would not again destroy the earth by a flood. These were to Adam and Noah as sacraments: not that the tree could give Adam and Eve the immortality which it could not give to itself; or the bow (which is only a reflection of the solar rays on the opposite clouds) could have the effect of confining the waters; but they had a mark engraven on them by the word of God, to be proofs and seals of his covenant.
—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.14.18
Even though there is no explicit prohibition to Adam eating from the Tree of Life, it’s obvious that the “…the use of the tree was reserved for the future…” (Vos, Biblical Theology pg. 27-28)
Jewish literature/apocrypha also recognized a covenant in the Garden.
Evidence from the rest of Scripture
Genesis 6:18, God establishes the covenant with Noah, and this is the first use of the word “covenant” in Scripture. There’s an important contrast with Genesis 15:18, the “cutting” of the covenant with Abraham.
But I will establish My covenant with you, and you will enter the ark with your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives. —Genesis 6:18
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram —Genesis 15:18
With Noah, what we see is the continuation of a preexisting covenant. There is an absence of covenant initiation language, which is present in the Abraham text.
It is very interesting that there are two ways of speaking about the making of a covenant in the Pentateuch and elsewhere in the Old Testament. One can speak of making a covenant firm. Sometimes your translations translate that as “establishing a covenant” and one way is to speak of “cutting a covenant.” The one, the latter, the cutting of the covenant, often refers to the inauguration of the covenant. The other phrase often refers to the confirming of an already established covenant relationship, to make that covenant firm. Is it not interesting to you that in Genesis 6:18, the passage says that the covenant was made firm? Now that is the first usage of “Covenant” in the Bible. But the very language forces you to understand that there was a covenant before it was mentioned. And the only question is, how far back did it go? Now we will look at that passage in detail because that is important. But it is very important for us to understand that the whole structure of the covenant of God with Noah implies with massive force that it is a continuation of a previously established relationship.
—J. Ligon Duncan, Covenant Theology (transcript)
Genesis 9 – dominion mandate reiterated
God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. 2 The fear and terror of you will be in every living creature on the earth, every bird of the sky, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are placed under your authority.
But you, be fruitful and multiply; spread out over the earth and multiply on it.”
—Genesis 9:1-2, 7
Hosea 6:7
But they, like Adam, have violated the covenant;
there they have betrayed Me.
There’s dispute over the translation of the Hebrew word for Adam or man, the other option resulting in “they, like man, have violated the covenant.” Contextually what is highlighted is specific, not general. Warfield comments in the text:
God in his great goodness had planted Adam in Paradise, but Adam violated the commandment which prohibited his eating of the tree of knowledge, and thereby transgressed the covenant of his God. Loss of fellowship with God and expulsion from Eden were the penal consequences that immediately followed. Israel like Adam had been settled by God in Palestine, the glory of all lands; but ungrateful for God’s great bounty and gracious gift, they broke the covenant of their God, the condition of which, as in the case of the Adamic covenant, was obedience.
—B. B. Warfield, “Hosea 6.7” pg. 128-29
Romans 5:12-19
Paul says that Adam was a type of the one who was to come.
Is one to conclude that Christ as the antitype merited the salvation within a covenantal context but that Adam, the type, was not in such a context?
—Fesko, Last Things First pg. 92
Christ was the mediator of a covenant, so Adam too was in a covenantal context. Both impute. Both have that headship, federal, representative relationship to “descendants.”
There’s the evidence. There was a covenant made by God with Adam in the Garden. We call this the “Covenant of Works.”
Now, what is it?
