Systematic Theology – Covenant

Is There A Covenant Of Works

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Lesson: 02-22

Genre: Speech

Track: 1 of 22

Dictation Name: 02 Is There A Covenant Of Works

Location/Venue:

Year:

Our subject in this session is: Is There A Covenant of Works. I’d like to read the first five verses of Leviticus 18.

“And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,

2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, I am the Lord your God.

3 After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances.

4 Ye shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein: I am the Lord your God.

5 Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord.”

The Westminster Confession is one of the great documents of the Christian faith but at one point it has rightly been criticized over the years. It’s a strange fact however that point at which reformed theologians so criticize the Westminster Confession seems to be the point that sticks in the mind of so many peoples. We seem to have a propensity for error rather than truth. This problem in the Westminster Confession is it’s concept of a covenant of works. The key references to this covenant of works is chapter seven of the confession and I will read the relevant sections, sections two and three.

“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.

III. Man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace: wherein he freely offered unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto life, his Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe.”

Then in section one, of chapter nineteen ‘Of the Law of God’ the confession says:

“God gave to Adam a law, as 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.”

Then from the larger catechism, section thirty:

“Does God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?

God does not leave all men to perish in the estate of sin and misery, into which they fell by the breach of the first covenant, commonly called the covenant of works; but of his mere love and mercy delivers his elect out of it, and brings them into an estate of salvation by the second covenant, commonly called the covenant of grace.”

Now it’s this idea of a covenant of works that is the problem in the confession and of course this doctrine has led to dispensationalism and a great many other problems. It is a deadly error to believe that any covenant that God makes with man can be anything other than a covenant of grace. Precisely because He is God the only kind of covenant He can enter into with man involves free grace on His part. It is at the same time a covenant of law but every covenant is a law relationship. The question is: is it given by grace or is it a contractual relationship between two equals which would make it a covenant of works? Well the answer is obvious, it is not a mutual covenant, man did nothing to enter into it, man did not even exist until God created him. A mutually made covenant, a covenant of works can be dissolved under certain conditions. Marriage can be absolved by divorce but this is not true of God’s covenant. It is not a condition of works. The works do not make the covenant but works are required by the covenant, that’s the difference. God’s grace requires the response of faith, obedience, love, works and more. The covenant of two parties, the first type of covenant is not an act of grace.

In other words when a woman gets married it’s not an act of grace on her husband’s part nor is it an act of grace on her part to say you’re a poor worthless creature but out of grace I will enter into marriage with you [laughter]. Now, a covenant of grace is also one that involves predestination because there’s a sovereign act by a sovereign God. To make a covenant of works is to say that man enters into that covenant voluntarily, that what he does earns certain things for him, and that benefits accrue to him as a result of his efforts. A covenant of works leads to a works doctrine of salvation. Now the key text that the Westminster divines used, about the only one they could find that they felt might lead to this doctrine, was Galatians 3:12 and Galatians 3:12 reads:

“And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them.”

Paul is quoting Leviticus 18:15, the verse we read: [I think he meant Leviticus 18:5]

“Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the Lord.”

There’s a difference here. God here is talking to a people who already in a covenant. And He’s telling them if you are faithful to the covenant you shall live in terms of the blessings that the covenant gives to people. Thus there is a difference. Moreover in the covenant of God there are blessings and curses not works and pay. There is a difference between a blessing and a pay. The confession says that man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord gave him a second covenant, a covenant of grace.

But man as we have seen has a total incapacity in relationship to God, he is God’s creature. He can have no initiative, no power in relationship to God, anything he has has been given to him, including his life. Even before the fall man could contribute nothing to God. God is God, He is self-sufficient. The life of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden was thus grace. Their life itself was grace, one of the very much neglected texts of scripture is 1st Peter 3:7 which speaks of the grace of life. Life itself is a gift of God, of grace. So Paul is saying in Galatians 3:12 that when we walk in terms of covenant faithfulness we receive God’s blessing. Sandy, a Church of England scholar of the last century said with regard to Galatians 3:12 that what Leviticus stated was the man that doeth them, that is is faithful to the law, shall live in them, not by them. He went on to say his life shall spring out of them and be nourished by them just as a tree strikes its roots into the earth. We cannot detach God’s law and His justice from the person of God and naturalize God’s laws. Why did the Westminster divines make this mistake? They were influenced unfortunately at this point by a concept that was detaching law from God and making it a part of nature. In other words it was one of the precursors of the doctrine of natural law, it was the kind of thing that led to deism. For example, the laws of nature are impersonal to a degree as science sees it today. Now we believe behind everything there is a personal God, that nothing is impersonal, but let’s view the laws of nature as the world views them.

The law of gravity applies to everything without exception. It makes no difference whether you are a good man or a bad man if you fall out of a plane you’re going to fall just the same, there’s no difference in your fall. Moreover, because the laws of gravity are not personal in their relationship to us man can bend the laws of gravity as it were, they remain, but he’s able to overcome them. He can design an airplane which flies so that the law of gravity does not destroy him when he gets into a plane. The plane is able to utilize other aspects of God’s universe to prevent gravity from destroying it and compelling it to go down. Now, we could all fly equally if we have the fare, we all fall equally if we fall off a cliff, but where God’s law is concerned it is personal. The wages of sin are always death for everyone else but the specifics vary. God did not place a curse on Adam and Eve in the same way. There was a different curse laid upon both. Moreover when He blesses men in scripture, great and godly men, equally godly, the blessing is again specific and personal, it differs from man to man. So when He blesses me and He blesses you the blessings will vary, it’s personal. But the covenant of works, you see, supposes a kind of equality like gravity that affected everyone but God’s law is not like karma or gravity and while you can overcome gravity to a degree through flight nothing can circumvent God’s judgment, His curse or His blessing. Now it could very well be argued that the Westminster divines in making the statement they did never intended that the covenant of works be seen as a covenant of merit or that it should lead to opening the ground for any concept of salvation by works.

In the same way the catholic theologians at the Council of Trent could with equal justice say we do not believe in salvation by works, however, what you would have to say both about the fathers at Trent and the Westminster divines that while their intention may have been good the language they used opened up aspects of developments of doctrine that they certainly would not have approved. Thus I am very sure that the men who wrote the Westminster Confession would have been horrified by Scofield’s notes and yet there is a connection between what they said on the covenant of works and the Scofield’s notes. So we’d have to recognize that great and godly as these men were their phrasing here and their concept of a covenant works has led to a wild variety of thinking in a number of areas. This is why it is so important for us to be careful when we set forth the word of God. Errors can go a long ways and they tend to move faster than the truth does since man is a sinner. Adam’s sin was not against the covenant of works nor against nature but it was a breach of God’s grace. He was confronted by the person of God, a very personal God, he was given a very specific judgment and it continues that way to this day. Because the covenant is personal the curses and the blessings vary. Now it can very often be that you and I may not like the particular blessing we have, we would have chosen something else for ourselves but it is for God to determine and precisely because the covenant is of grace, entirely of grace, God is free to bless us in the way that we are blessed, the way He determines.

I recall on a trip not too long ago I met someone who said the Lord had blessed him with twelve children although he could have used a better job at times. He was being facetious but you get the point. Our blessings vary because it is not a covenant of works, it is entirely of grace. Are there any questions at this time?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Against the covenant of works. It was a sin against God’s grace.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, everything that Adam has is God’s grace, you see, everything we have is God’s grace. There is nothing that we- Paul has a great verse in which he says ‘what have we that we have not received? If we have received it then by grace then what can we boast of or what merit can we claim?’

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes…yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] The covenant between Christ and the church…?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes!

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Well, [people continue speaking] yes but our Lord compares it to marriage, He compares it to a family relationship, He compares it to a number of things, He is also compared to the king and the subject so there are…yes, the head and the body, there are a number of relationships. Now I believe it was the last Sunday we met we went into this matter of blessing and what it means because the covenant of grace brings blessings or of course curses. And the word to bless is the word, the root of which means to kneel. So when we bless God, bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is within me bless His holy name, we kneel before Him to acknowledge that He is the Lord, the king and that we are totally His subject, His creature. Now when God blesses us He kneels down to pick us up.

So it’s grace on His part when He blesses us, on our part it is submission. Just as if Rachel were running around here now and came up to me and I picked her up, you see, I would have to bend down. Well the imagery of God blessing man involves a tremendous bending down, the bending down of the sovereign God to man. Any other questions or comments?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, we will be going into, we’re going to be dealing probably the rest of this year with the doctrine of the covenant and we’ll come to some of those things subsequently. One of the things we’ll be considering next time is the covenant and the promise of land which marks all of them from Adam on. But the covenant comes to man in different estates, to Adam and the state of innocence and it comes to others in the state of the fall and it places us in the state of grace and ultimately in the state of glory.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Where are the works, I’ll understand the question better if you…

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Oh yes, many of…yes, is that the…yes, alright. [laughter] Now the bible uses the imagery of covenants that are familiar to man. But always making clear that where God is involved it is of grace. So the kind of covenant that everybody understands is the covenant marriage. Now in our day people don’t understand the covenant of marriage because we’ve become so Adamistic that we’ve forgotten that marriage is a covenant. And it doesn’t mean much to people anymore, the relationship has ceased to have much meaning. But everyone to whom Paul wrote and everyone throughout most of history understood immediately this is a relationship between two and there are mutuality’s in it. Now granted in the one it was of works and in the other of grace but when the covenant with God is mentioned the emphasis is always that He initiates it and it is of grace. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. And you see another imagery that is often used in the bible for the covenant, a human imagery, is a father and children. Out of Egypt have I called my son and we are adopted, we are made children, not natural children but children by the adoption of grace.

Then even in the imagery of marriage remember the key image of marriage as a covenant comes from Hosiah and in Hosiah how is the bride portrayed? She’s a prostitute. So God says it is of grace that you are taking her back and it is grace on my part that I have anything to do with the human race. So when we see the imagery of marriage in the bible we have to see it in the context that the bible gives it. And in Ezekiel he describes what they were like before they passed by and took them as His bride. So you see even when God uses the imagery of marriage He makes it clear that it was of grace on His part. Now it isn’t so in our relationship, in fact we’d be in trouble with our husband or wife if we said I married you out of grace, it would not sit well I’m sure [laughter].

[Question] So what you’re saying you cannot push the parallels.

[Rushdoony] That’s right, you cannot.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, it’s like the imagery of Christ as the lion of the tribe of Judah. Well Satan is also called a roaring lion, you see, we can’t push imagery too far and make it too exclusive.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Any other questions or comments?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. That was Sandy’s comment which is a very, very good one, he was an able commentator on that text.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. His imagery was we live in them not by them because just as a tree draws its nourishment out of the earth so we draw our nourishment out of the law. It’s not of works, it’s a living relationship. The works relationship is a pay relationship, now the bible speaks of such a one, our Lord does, as a hireling. What does the hireling, the hired person want? Well, in most cases a hired person wants the pay he gets for the job and he has no more interest in the person who’s paying him nor in what he’s doing than a stranger. And most workmen don’t care much about the job they’re on, it’s the superior one.

[Tape ends]