One of the most precious treasures of scripture given to the Protestant Reformed Churches by our faithful God is the truth that God’s everlasting covenant of grace is unconditional. This doctrine he has been pleased to give us in the way of controversy and a hard-fought, costly battle. Out of that controversy our churches emerged with the doctrine not only intact but also brought to a higher state of development. Not only did it become more dear and precious to us as we strove to be faithful to his truth and suffered such loss for that faithfulness, but also we understood it to have greater depths, more glory, and more assurance. With its prominence it became a powerful source of blessings to us. So we must stand in awe of the blessings of our God to us in giving to us such a precious doctrine.

This same controversy and suffering extend into the present. We continue to stand nearly alone in our witness to this important doctrine. Conservative Presbyterian and Reformed churches continue to insist on the conditional covenant. While many of these churches claim to have no official view of the covenant, their unofficial view certainly prevails, and that unofficial view is that God’s everlasting covenant of grace is conditional. This unofficial view not only casts out any notion that the covenant of grace should be unconditional, but it also brands with a hot iron the doctrine of the unconditional covenant as “hyper-Calvinism” and casts out that doctrine as a pariah.

This decisive, strong bias against the teaching that God’s everlasting covenant of grace is unconditional is a curious matter. It is curious because the doctrine of the unconditional covenant is in perfect harmony with unconditional election as well as the simple truth of the absolute sovereignty of God in salvation. This bias is also curious because the truth of the unconditional covenant is in simple harmony with the gospel as the gospel. As the gospel is simply the good news of what God has done in Christ, namely accomplishing eternal salvation through the blood of Calvary’s cross, so should the doctrine of the covenant have the same character. The doctrine of the covenant should be that God alone revealed it, began it, realized it, and will completely fulfill it. And, as we hope to see over the course of our treatment of this doctrine, only the teaching that the covenant is unconditional can be the comfort that it ought to be to God’s people. That God has promised to be forever the God of his people without any condition is a promise to depend upon. A promise that stands in need of man to do anything to fulfill it cannot be depended upon.

There are two points of emphasis that we want to maintain in a consideration of this precious doctrine of the covenant. In these two points we want to see the glorious strength of the covenant and that strength to be the blessed hope of God’s people. The first point of emphasis is the proper place in the covenant occupied by our Lord Jesus Christ as both the head and the fullness of God’s everlasting covenant of grace. Because God’s covenant of grace is ultimately only with Christ, it must be unconditional. And because it is ultimately only with Christ, it must include only the elect in Christ. Because election is in the head of the church, Jesus Christ, so the covenant established with and realized in the same head must include only the elect.

The second point of emphasis is not only that the heart of the covenant is the relationship of fellowship and friendship between God and his people, but also that the distinct mode of that fellowship is verbal in character. We must speak of covenant language, the language of promise on God’s part, and on the part of God’s people the language of praise and worship and of joyful tokens of expressed dependence on God. The covenant is the life of God’s people in their fellowship with him. Their great delight in their God is to hear his word to them, declaring all his love and kindness to them, and to see his faithfulness reflected in his performance toward them of all that he has promised. Their delight then is also to lift up their voices in praise and worship of their God, joyfully expressing from their hearts the love that abounds toward him who has so richly blessed them. This same delight God has in his people according to the manner of this covenant of grace. That delight is beautifully shown in Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.” The covenant is not simply the Lord God in the midst of his people. It is also his rejoicing and joy over his people.

We also want to chart a particular course through the consideration of the doctrine of the covenant. We want to view the doctrine of the covenant as something that is set out in scripture in its own peculiar way. Perhaps more than any other doctrine, the doctrine of the covenant is tied to the progressive nature of scripture’s revelation. The beautiful power of this progress is that scripture delights slowly to unfold the riches of God’s gracious fellowship with his people. Scripture has a twofold development: the covenant people are emptied of themselves more and more, while God’s grace and mercy are more gloriously shown to enrich and exalt his people. Their death requires his gift of life, their inability his strength, their poverty his riches. In this development scripture leads to Jesus Christ and his perfect salvation to bless the covenant people of God with an everlasting, unbreakable salvation. So the covenant comes to its fulfillment in Emmanuel, God with us, where God and his people meet in the true temple of Jehovah.

In a similar way, we believe that the covenant is best considered according to the Bible’s expression of it as it speaks of the relationship between Jehovah and his people. In other words, a proper understanding of all that the covenant means cannot be attained without knowing how God walks with his people, and how they walk with their God in light of his everlasting covenant of grace. If we must know how the covenant truly is the living communion and fellowship between God and his people in Christ, it must never be taken as a mere abstraction or a set of rules. It ought to be evident that, should the covenant become merely an abstraction to the church of Jesus Christ, it will necessarily become legalistic and conditional.

The fact of covenant theology and a distinct doctrine of the covenant are demanded by the appearance of the word “covenant” in scripture itself. The word in the Old Testament in the Hebrew is berith, and in the New Testament in the Greek is diatheke. Notable with the word “covenant” in the Old Testament is the word “make,” which is translated from the Hebrew word that is most properly translated as “cut.” Referring to the sacrificial animals cut in pieces through which the covenanting parties passed, it expressed that the parties covenanting would be similarly punished for failure to keep what they had promised. In such a case we are to understand that, as God passed through such pieces by himself while Abraham only observed, the significance demands a covenant that is unconditional (Gen. 15:8–21). In this covenant rite was also foreshadowed the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The use of diatheke in the New Testament has also a notable feature of its own. The Holy Spirit was pleased to use this word in distinction from another Greek word that is also capable of being translated as “covenant.” That other word is suntheke. That word employs the preposition “with,” stressing the idea of one engaging or contracting with another, or between two or more. It carries far more the idea of an agreement or a contract based on mutuality between the two. In distinction, diatheke has more the character of a sovereign testament or disposition, the will of the one testifying or disposing being sovereign and the other being beneficiary. This view of diatheke is well explained in Hebrews 9:14–28.

It is evident, then, that the word “covenant” runs through all of scripture. As the term appears over and over in the Old Testament and into the New Testament, it gathers up more weight and significance through the course of sacred history. So strong is this sense of gathering that “covenant history” is a proper term. Following its usage in the Bible, the word “covenant” first appears in a rather mysterious way, simply spoken by God and given its own content. It moves from its concern with the individual Abraham and his seed after him, comprising a family of strangers dwelling in tents in the land of Canaan. The same word follows this family into the land of Egypt and is applied to them as they become a nation delivered by the God who promised. It is a word that brings them into the land of Canaan, driving out their enemies before them. The same word establishes them in their life in that land and also regulates their life in that land as the people of their God. It is the word that threatens them with expulsion from the land should they fall away from him. It is the same word that governs them under their kings and governs their kings over them. It is the word that drives them out of the land for their constant revolt from their God and that promises to restore them after the land enjoys its rest from the sins of its inhabitants. It is the word that will bring something newer and better, to supply what was found lacking and defective in the old. Finally, it is that word that has its ultimate fulfillment beyond the entire history of the world, in a new heavens and earth in which righteousness shall dwell forever. It is by that word believed that Abraham so long before wandered on the earth as a pilgrim. By faith he received “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:10), and thus was content to dwell in the land of Canaan in a tabernacle.

Truly, here is a word that demands an entire theology. Here is a word that demands an entire theology to do justice to its wonder and glory of grace: to provide earthy, sinful men with a heavenly inheritance, Jehovah to be their God forever.

The real work of covenant theology is properly to convey not simply the truth of the covenant, but also its truth to build up the believer and the believing body of Christ in faith, hope, and love.

Given all the expressions of the word translated as “covenant” in scripture, it is related to a wide variety of its aspects. Genesis 17 is one place where the word “covenant” appears in three different, main connections. Verse 7 speaks of two of those connections. One connection is that the word applied to the words that God spoke to Abraham. That is, when God said to Abram, “I will be a God to thee,” those words in their sound and meaning were the covenant. Abram was brought into covenant because God spoke those words to him. This first possibility excludes any kind of change and work that God would do for Abraham. The covenant is only the communication spoken by God to man. The second possibility is the relationship signified by the words. The covenant is the relationship of fellowship initiated by God with Abram. That is, with those words God gave himself to Abraham as his God and took Abraham to himself as his friend and servant. Thus the action of God’s doing as he spoke is itself the covenant.

The third connection is in Genesis 17:10: “This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.” This third connection is somewhat strengthened by the severe threat spoken about those who would refuse to circumcise: “And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant” (v. 14).

A proper view of the covenant must take into its full consideration all these connections and coordinate them. Each must be given its proper role and function. Nevertheless, only one of them can be given the dominant, controlling position. The two remaining connections must be given a subordinate position, and must be adjusted accordingly. For example, if the covenant is tied first to the rite of circumcision and not to the relationship of fellowship with God that is salvation, the scope of the covenant will be far broader. If the covenant is tied to the relationship with God that is salvation, it will be far narrower. It will make a great deal of difference if Esau and Jacob by circumcision are equally in the covenant, as well as all Israel according to the flesh, or only the remnant according to the election of grace.

That difference also becomes evident in determining the strength of the covenant. If the covenant has its first tie to the rite of the covenant, whether circumcision or baptism, it will be weaker. If the covenant has its first tie to the innermost principle of life as fellowship with God, it will be stronger. Very similar is the question of whether the covenant is going to have an earthly or material focus or a spiritual. Tied to its administrative elements first, it will be of an earthly character. If tied to its core of fellowship between God and his people, it will be of a spiritual, inner character. Is the covenant salvation itself, or is the covenant only the means to salvation?