What is the Covenant of Works?

The Covenant of Works is a covenant God made with Adam before the fall that promised life to him if he was obedient to Him in it. Adam failed in his obligation since he disobeyed, and broke the covenant. He sinned therefore, and brought in condemnation and death to all mankind who he had represented.

The Covenant of Grace promises salvation and eternal life to those who place their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Other covenants, such as the promise of the redeemer immediately following the fall in Genesis 3, the one with Noah, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic (the law), the Davidic, and the new are included in the Covenant of Grace. This may look in some points similar to that held by dispensationalists. However, there are important differences, as may already be observed, when the system is developed. An aspect of covenant theology is that Christ obeyed the law for His people — ‘the elect' — and that the obedience of Christ has two parts. These are His ‘passive obedience' in which He suffered on the cross and His ‘active obedience' in which He kept the law in His life.

Covenant theology is based particularly on Romans 5:12–21 where Adam and Christ are compared (and contrasted) as heads of their respective races [4] . There is seen in it a unity between Adam and his race which is to be compared with that of Christ and those who are His. The Covenant of Works, it is said, was made with Adam as federal head and involves all his posterity as being in union with him. Hence, unregenerate men stand as one with Adam and therefore sinned in him, and his first sin, his disobedience, is imputed to them. This is often called ‘original sin'. By direct comparison with this, it is claimed that, through the Covenant of Grace, the righteousness of Christ, His obedience, is imputed to those (the elect) united to Him by faith. This is based on a wrong exegesis of Romans 5:18–19.

The idea of the Covenant of Works is drawn from Hosea 6:7. Romans 5:14 is taken as referring to this verse. The marginal reading states: ‘They like Adam have transgressed the covenant' . However, a wrong inference is drawn from it. Adam was given a prohibition or set a boundary that he was forbidden to cross. It need not imply a covenant as such. Even so, death as the penalty was made clear to him should he disobey. In overstepping the limitation, he transgressed. Adam, therefore, had a law . The question also needed to be asked as regards the reference to Hosea 6:7 is, Who are ‘they'? In the context, ‘they' are the nation of Israel. Israel as a nation had similarly transgressed. This was the law given by God through Moses. The covenant mentioned in Hosea 6, therefore, is not some inferred covenant that God made with Adam on behalf of his posterity, but, rather, His covenant with Israel.

But I will notice one point which I do not see how any intelligent Christian could accept: "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." Again, "God gave to Adam a law, a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience; promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it; and endued him with power and ability to keep it. This law after his fall continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness; and as such was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments and written on two tables." All this is a fable and a mischievous fable. And I notice it because it is the foundation of the whole religious system to which it belongs.

150 The principle of the system is, that "Do this and live" was said to Adam. This is equally false. "This do and live" was not said to Adam; nor, as is stated in the "Marrow of Modern Divinity," implied in the threat of death on his eating the forbidden fruit. Adam had nothing to do. He was not put to gain life by doing anything. He was not yet fallen under the power of death at all. As far as security of life was attached to any act at all, it was to the eating of the other tree; but that he was never told to eat and live. It is a striking fact, that responsibility, and a source or sustainment of life, were thus set as distinct things even in Paradise. That which has been the puzzle of heathens and Jews, and school men, and theologians, to reconcile — responsibility, and the free gift of life — stood out there, were represented in these two trees. The creature failed in his responsibility — did, and died. It is to this these teachers seek to bring us back, when the revelation of God is "the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." But Adam was never given a promise of life conditioned on his doing anything; was never put on this ground by God; but had a warning of death, he being alive, if he disobeyed. What is said on this subject is a mischievous, fatal, and anti-scriptural statement. Not only is it not found in scripture (for they can never produce scripture for any of their statements) but scripture puts Adam on wholly different ground. There was nothing he was set to do, there is no promise of life in doing it. He was alive and threatened with death. This false doctrine subverts the whole truth of the fall, and of our condition as fallen. Adam fell from what he was in — did not lose a promise, for none was made to him. All the revealed principles of God's dealings are falsified by this system.

We have seen man on the ground of responsibility, and failing; and the tree of life, otherwise free to him without any doing or condition, untouched. Man was now fallen and sinful; separated from God, and sinful in nature. I pass over the great and solemn judgment, executed on earth as the result of this state, because it was a judicial act.

151 The next thing God does is to give a promise, not of life, but of the Seed, of Christ (an unconditional promise that all nations should be blessed in Abraham), and this subsequently is confirmed to the Seed. No promise of life was given to Adam, fallen or unfallen. It was declared in the judgment on Satan, that the Seed of the woman should bruise his head. But the Seed of the woman — the first Adam was not; but the Second. This seed is now promised to Abraham without any condition as to its gift. Up to this, the one only law, and which in its nature (as a covenant on express terms) excludes all other as ground and measure of responsibility, was the prohibition of eating the forbidden fruit. Man's heart and nature had departed from God before even he outwardly broke through the prohibition; but this is another matter. The spiritual man may perceive this, but this has nothing to do with a law or the terms of a covenant.

346 Where is a trace of promise of life to Adam and his posterity if they exactly kept the law? It is a pure invention, falsifying Adam's real position and relationship with God in order to propitiate the law of the ten commandments. There is not a tittle of scripture for it. Adam, having life, was tested by a positive wellknown commandment of not eating the forbidden fruit; and the perfectness of this consisted in the point that there was no intrinsic moral question in it. It was a test of simple obedience to a sinless being with a threat of death (for life he had). A promise of life to Adam on keeping a moral law, which supposed the knowledge of good and evil, is a mischievous fable, and denies the whole position of Adam who was innocent. There would have been no harm in eating that fruit more than another, unless it had been forbidden. And, as I have said, this test of obedience was the only true one for an innocent being, not, as is alleged, a righteous and holy one (both which terms suppose the knowledge of good and evil, delighting in one and abhorring the other). Adam acquired the knowledge of good and evil by his disobedience: "The man is become as one of us, knowing good and evil." But this by the by. What I insist on is, there was no promise of life, which supposed he had it not; but a threat of death, which supposed him to be alive, but alive innocent with no knowledge of good and evil.

The first man was thus in a very real way the representative of his race; not indeed by any formal covenant for his posterity, of which Scripture has no trace; but by his being the divinely constituted head of it. As the father of men, he necessarily stood as charged with the interests of his posterity; from his fall, a corrupt nature became the heritage of the race, and thus death and judgment their appointed lot, the final issue no uncertain one. Thus in a real way he represented them before God; but, as I have said, not by any formal covenant on their behalf. His representative-character was grounded in what men call natural law, which is nothing but divine law, and which is both evident in nature and asserted in the plainest possible way in Scripture. "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one," expresses the law. "What is man, that he should be clean? and he that is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?" "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." The Lord's words in the gospel fully and emphatically confirm these sayings of saints of old: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." What men now call, The principle of "heredity," is thus affirmed, and it is the whole scriptural account of the matter. The theories of a covenant with Adam for his posterity, and the imputation of his sin to them, are simply additions to Scripture, and as such, not only needless, but an obscuring of the truth, as all mere human thoughts of necessity are.

The first man was also in a very real way the representative of his race; not, however, by any formal covenant for his posterity, of which Scripture has no trace; but by his being the divinely constituted head of it. His representative character was grounded in what men call “natural law,” and which is nothing but divine law. This is asserted in the plainest possible way in Scripture. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” expresses the law. “What is man that he should be clean? or he that is born of a woman that he should be righteous?” “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” And the Lord affirms the principle in the most emphatic way: “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” What men now call the principle of “heredity” is thus affirmed by Him, and it is the whole scriptural account of the matter.

In men's minds the fruits of Christ's work have been mixed up with what would have been the fruit of Adam's continuance, and serious mischief ensues. The original creation is taken as the perfection of what was in the mind of Him who created it. Thus (without a word of Scripture for it) Adam is considered to have been a creature made for heaven, to whom it was secured by covenant that he should gain it by well-doing; and the Ten Commandments are carried back two thousand five hundred years before they were given to be the measure of what he was required to fulfill. Thus, too, when he failed, Christ is supposed to have taken up the broken contract, and to have gained for us, by His fulfillment of it, what Adam lost.

But we have in this chapter, more particularly, the special relationship of man with God, with his wife (type of Christ and His church), with the creation; and the two great principles, from which everything flows as regards man, established in the garden where man was placed in blessing; namely, responsibility in obedience, and a sovereign source of life — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. In these two things, in conciliating these two, lies the lot of every man*. It is impossible out of Christ. It is the question raised in the law, and answered in grace in Christ. The law put life as the result of the perfect obedience of him who knew good and evil, that is, made it depend on the result of our responsibility. Christ, having undergone the consequence of man's having failed, becomes (in the power of a life which had gained the victory over death which was the consequence of that disobedience) a source of life eternal that evil could not reach, and that in a righteousness perfect according to a work which has taken away all guilt from him that has share in it, a righteousness moreover in which we stand before God according to His own mind and righteous will and nature, according to His own glory. His priesthood applies to the details of the development of this life in the midst of evil, and the place of divine perfectness in which we are set by His work, and reconciles our present infirmities with our divinely given place before God. In the garden the knowledge of good and evil did not yet exist: obedience only in refraining from an act, which was no sin if it had not been forbidden, constituted the test. It was not a prohibition of sin as at Sinai, and a claim of good when good and evil were known.

But thus far we have found — that the statement as to Adam, that he was put under the terms "Do this and live," is not found in scripture; but that, on the contrary, he was set in a quite different condition, and on other terms. It is a subversion of scripture instruction to place him under the law as subsequently given. He was under a covenant; but, as living, threatened with falling under the power of death. We have found that Abraham, the next remarkable dealing and revelation of God, was not placed under any law at all as the ground of righteousness — he was justified by faith; and that the promise was given to him without any condition whatever, and that that promise was not of life, but of the Seed, Christ. These cases shew that this general putting under law, from Adam onwards, is an effacing of the clear positive instruction of scripture as to the various positions in which men were set. The notion that the law was written in Adam's heart is equally unfounded. He had not yet acquired the knowledge of good and evil necessary to the application of the law, and it is yet more evident, for he had another formal law to test obedience; and, certainly, that was not written on his heart.