How do you think of your Christian life? Is it to be defined primarily as a relationship with God or is it better thought of as following a set of rules? If the latter, then you are probably thinking of Christianity as living decently so that you’ll have a good relationship with God at the end — He’ll let you into his kingdom because you’ve been good. If the former, you may be thinking that God is love and so He’ll let you into his kingdom regardless.

But you may be the kind of person who knows that apparently simple ques­tions can have not so simple answers. So you may say, and say rightly, that the Christian life begins in a new relationship with God through Christ, and that this relationship has its own particular obliga­tions. In other words grace (the new rela­tionship established with you by God) and law (the rules or obligations in the relationship) are not mutually exclusive.

Of course we can all think of Bible verses that seem to state that grace and law are polar opposites. Christians are “not under law but under grace”, we are told (Rom. 6:14). Yet the immediate con­text reminds us that this fact is no excuse for sin but rather leads to heart obedience issuing in righteous behaviour. Words like “grace” and “law” may represent mutually exclusive ways of salvation, but grace and law may also have a harmonious relation­ship in the believer’s life. Similarly, all good parents love their child but that does not mean there are no obligations. The fil­ial and the legal, the loving relationship and the response of obedience, go together.

Other Bible passages strongly reject obedience to God’s law as the way for sinners to be accounted righteous. God’s law can show up our sinfulness, but cannot give us power to fulfil its demands. The law condemns us, and we cannot be justified by our endeavours to keep it. We need a Mediator, and we need God’s unmerited favour and powerful love, if we are to have a new relationship at all. We also need His grace through the Spirit to live a godly and obedient life in that rela­tionship.

Now let’s consider how things were in the beginning. Whatever else Genesis 1-3 may or may not teach, it certainly teaches some fundamental and vital truths just as valid for 21^st-century man as for those who came out of Egyptian slavery under the leadership of Moses. Prominent in the narrative is a unique creature made in God’s own image and likeness who is blessed by God and given authority over all the creatures with a view to his labours imitating God’s cycle of work and rest.

In Genesis 2 the divine human relation­ship is more closely illustrated. The first man is described as the result of the careful craftsmanship of God, just like a man who forms a bowl on a potter’s wheel.

But there is more. His special relation­ship to God is expressed in the divine inbreathing, and his being placed in a spe­cial garden. The garden is intended as a central sanctuary for man where he might fulfil priestly duties, “to worship and serve/obey” (to give the words of 2:15, traditionally rendered “to dress and to keep it”, their correct meaning). From there he is to go out to fulfil his kingly duties in subduing the earth. The woman formed from him complements him so there is an ideal human relationship as well as an ideal relationship with God.

The tree of life in the garden speaks of endless life (Gen. 3:22). Whether the life intended is a mere continuance in the presently possessed life in a kind of con­tinuous test or probation, or whether it involves an elevation into a life beyond even the possibility of loss, is a question which, given man’s disobedience, is some­what hypothetical. However, the covenant with Adam and the covenant of grace with believers do not differ in their goal but only in the way the goal is reached.

In the first covenant made with man, Adam had obligations, works to do; in the second, the obligations are met by “the last Adam” on our behalf, and He (Christ) also pays the penalty of our rebellion. Thus, Jesus is the altogether righteous one, who worshipped and served perfectly (cf. Mt. 4:10), and through Him we have eternal life as a free gift. Even the earthy, natural body we share with the first man will be trans­formed to suit our new nature. It will be a spiritual body, that is, a body dominated and empowered by the Spirit of God and so fitted for eternal embodied life in a renewed creation (1 Cor. 14:44-49).

How do we describe this original rela­tionship of God and humanity? It is cer­tainly not a narrowly legal, contract rela­tionship dictated by a far-off Sovereign, but nor is it a close, loving relationship without obligations. The legal and the fil­ial belong together. Indeed, God stoops down to be near to man. Even the rare compound name in Genesis 2 and 3, LORD God, suggests that the God of might who is also the personal God of love is dealing with man in a special way. Strikingly, in the transaction in 2 Samuel 7 (which Psalm 89 terms a covenant), the same compound name occurs. God can­not but love the creature He has made in His own likeness. So He establishes this committed personal relationship requir­ing a committed personal loving response. The ultimate blessing will come only in the way of obedience.

We can call this many-faceted relationship by various names, such as a covenant of love, covenant of life or covenant of works. Covenant of works is the common term and highlights the obe­dience required by Adam, which was the crucial issue for the relationship. We ought not to be sidetracked by debate over whether such obedience merited reward. The generality of our tradition answers in the negative. It was not deserved, but it was promised in the abounding goodness of God. The key issue is that obedience was required. Indeed, if it was not required of Adam we might well ask why it was required of Jesus.

There are several lines of argument for the covenant character of the original rela­tionship. First, the narrative of Genesis 1 breathes the idea of God as the sovereign, humanity as His royal son in a manner no one in Moses’ day could miss. In Adam we see a royal figure, a son of God as Luke puts it (Luke 3:38). God’s intention is cer­tainly to crown him with glory and hon­our as he multiplies, fills the earth and subdues it.

Humanity as a unified organism is to reveal the divine likeness in this cre­ation in the most adequate way. God is the supreme Lover and wants the very best for him. Love cannot be coerced, so God creates in covenant so that humans, moved by love, may love in return. We note from the blessing of humanity in Genesis 1:28 that all are included in the first man as their representative.

Second, in the special creation of one in God’s own image, there is God’s bless­ing, but there are responsibilities and there is a threat for disobedience. The word covenant may not appear in the text but the elements of a covenant are all there. God’s threat of death for disobedi­ence carries the necessary implication that obedience means life. Saying No! to God means death; saying Yes! means life. This reminds us of the provisions of God’s covenant with the people of Israel: life and death were set before them too (Deuteronomy 28). The same is true under the Gospel of the new covenant.

Third, the first use of the term “covenant” in Scripture is in regard to Noah (Genesis 6:18). God promises to “establish” His covenant with him, and the Hebrew term implies the confirma­tion of something already existing. This is evident also when God blesses Noah after the Flood (Genesis 9) in similar terms to the blessing in Genesis 1:28, and calls it a covenant. Also, the dis­puted text in Hosea 6:7 is best rendered: “Like Adam, they (Israel) transgressed the covenant.”

The actual dis­obedience described in such simplicity in Genesis 3 is no petty thing. It is rebellion against the LORD, an abuse of man’s freedom that has no excuse. It is the set­ting of the human’s will against his Maker, a claim to autonomy which seeks to over­throw the Creator-creature distinction.

The humans come under God’s con­demnation, and their relationship with each other is corrupted. And that scenario works out for everyone afterwards — even the righteous Noah cannot bear the weight of the world’s redemption (Genesis 9:20-29). The covenant idea helps explain this as noted below. The Latin term for covenant (foedus) is the source of our term federal, hence covenant theology is sometimes called federal theology. Its leading idea is the committed personal relation of God and humanity through representative heads, Adam and Christ.

The truth of an original covenant rela­tionship is not a case of mere academic debate.

The covenant affirms the intimate bond of love between God and humanity. You can’t have a deeper or more intimate relationship than this.

The covenant provides the means by which God may crown the creature with glory and honour such as could be attained no other way. After all, a creature cannot have rights over against his Creator as if he could earn blessings, but God in His covenant may promise such blessings.

God’s covenant relationship with His creation, and particularly with humanity, assures us of a predictable world and a consistency in God’s relationship to it. The great power of God as Creator and His authority as Governor of all might suggest insecurity if we were not assured of God’s covenant dealings. He will keep His covenant promises.

The idea of a covenant with our repre­sentative head better accounts for the uni­versal spread of sin to Adam’s descendants than does natural transmission/propagation, for it operates on the basis of representative headship and imputation. We may not fully under­stand this, but it is also the case with Christ:

For just as by one man’s disobe­dience the many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one man the many will be made righteous. Rom. 5:19

The covenant of works with Adam is implicit in the fundamentals of his­toric Christianity, but is explicit most ade­quately in Reformed theology from the late 16^th century. It owes much to Amandus Polanus (1561-1610), Professor of Divinity at Basel, and Robert Rollock (1555-99), the first principal of the University of Edinburgh. It achieves explicit confessional status in the Irish Articles of 1615, which were probably the work of James Ussher, the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin. It is outlined more fully in the Westminster Confession of 1646, and is the standard presentation by Reformed thinkers worldwide in the 17^th century and later. Although not explicit in the Dutch creeds, one of its finest expo­nents is Herman Bavinck (1854-1921), whose great Reformed Dogmatics is cur­rently appearing in English for the first time.

There are many practical implications of a consistent covenant theology out­lined elsewhere in this issue of Australian Presbyterian. The outline in the Westminster Confession properly under­stood does not support an oppressive legalism — anything but. It provides a Biblical framework for careful reflection and judicious development. Certain it is that if we get the covenant of works wrong we imperil our grasp of the nature of the salvation achieved by the Son of God as the “last Adam”.