The New Covenant: Christ the Fulfillment
The story of Scripture is the story of God’s covenants. Each covenant progressively reveals God’s plans for humankind and the Savior who would redeem us. Christ is the fulfillment of all of those covenants. Let’s take one more look at each of them and how Christ is the answer.
The Covenant of Redemption
The idea behind the covenant of redemption is that before creation, God made a covenant within Himself, with the members of the Trinity. Essentially, the Son agreed to save those chosen by the Father. He would save us by becoming a man, living a perfect life, and dying for our sins. For His obedience, He would be given a bride, the Church, and exalted to the Father’s right hand. The covenant of redemption tells the story of salvation and opens the door to salvation for us. Jesus Christ fulfills this covenant because He did exactly what it required. According to Paul’s letter to the Philippians:
“[Jesus] emptied himself
by assuming the form of a servant,
taking on the likeness of humanity.
And when he had come as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient
to the point of death—
even to death on a cross.
For this reason God
highly exalted him
and gave him the name that is above every name…” (Phil. 2:7-9)
Jesus became a man, lived a perfect, sinless life, died on the cross (for our sins), rose again, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father. He will return, and when He does, He will complete His work of restoration and renewal that began at the cross.
The Covenant with Creation/The Covenant of Works
The Covenant with Creation, or the Covenant of Works, is the first covenant that God instituted with humanity. During creation, God created mankind in His image to reflect His glory and steward His creation. Obedience to God was at the foundation of this covenant. To disobey meant death. The command that God gave Adam and Eve was not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, but they did. In breaking God’s command, they invited the covenant curse of death upon themselves and the rest of humanity. Adam is considered the covenant head, so anything that applies to him applies to all who come under him; therefore, all of humanity is held to the same standards and suffers the same consequences. Death may seem extreme for eating from the wrong tree, but that’s not really the point. God is perfectly holy and righteous, so any sin, no matter how seemingly small, mars that image. We are God’s image-bearers, so we, too, must be perfectly holy and righteous to reflect, serve, and love Him properly. We are not capable of living perfectly holy and righteous lives, so we can never have a relationship with God in our own power. God then promises a Savior, and the covenant of grace begins.
The Covenant of Grace
Jesus was the promised Savior who could and would succeed where Adam failed. Jesus’s perfect obedience opened the door for God’s blessings while also satisfying the covenant’s curse. The writer of Hebrews tells us:
“[Jesus] entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow, sprinkling those who are defiled, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works so that we can serve the living God?” (9:12-14)
The cost of the covenant curse is death. Christ lived a perfect life, which enabled Him to offer the perfect sacrifice by His death on the cross. As the new covenant head, Christ’s sacrifice extends to all who put their trust in Him; thus, the blessings that accompany His obedience are ours too. Paul tells us in Romans, “But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by the one man’s trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift which comes through the grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflowed to the many” (5:15). The rest of the covenants all fall under the umbrella of the covenant of grace, with each one revealing new layers of the promised Savior and His work.
The Covenant with Noah
This covenant is one of preservation. Following the flood, God said, “‘I will never again curse the ground because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done’” (Gen. 8:21). If you follow the lineage of Christ as it is detailed in Matthew, the genealogy begins with Abraham. However, if you go to Luke 3, you will find the genealogy continues until Adam, and between Abraham and Adam, you will find Noah’s name. This covenant of preservation not only preserves the world and humanity due to God’s grace, but it also preserves the family line from which Jesus Christ will come. Eventually, the present heaven and earth will pass away, but as John reveals in the book of Revelation, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband” (21:1-2). When the time comes and Jesus returns, He will not preserve this world any longer but make it new.
The Covenant with Abraham
In the Abrahamic covenant, God makes several specific promises to Abraham, which are ultimately fulfilled in Christ. The Daily Grace’s Bible Themes Handbook states, “God promised Abraham offspring as numerous as the stars, a nation that would bless other nations, and a land where God’s people would live in peace” (21). Christ, who is also a descendant of Abraham, offers the blessing of salvation to all people, Jew and Gentile alike, through His sacrifice. Abraham’s offspring are all those who have faith (Gal. 3:7). Paul writes, “Now the Scripture saw in advance that God would justify the Gentiles by faith and proclaimed the gospel ahead of time to Abraham, saying, All the nations will be blessed through you. Consequently those who have faith are blessed with Abraham, who had faith” (3:8-9). The blessing of the land is one that different scholars have debated, but it seems to me that the ultimate fulfillment will be when Christ returns and ushers in a new creation. The prophet Isaiah writes of the new creation when he records the Lord’s words:
“‘Violence will never again be heard of in your land; devastation and destruction will be gone from your borders. You will call your walls Salvation and your city gates Praise…All your peoples will be righteous; they will possess the land forever; they are the branch I planted, the work of my hands, so that I may be glorified.’” (60:18, 21)
The final chapters in Isaiah talk more about the restoration of Zion and the new creation—a more beautiful world, I cannot imagine.
The Covenant with Israel
The covenant with Israel is also known as the Mosaic Covenant, and it provided Israel with the law. It showed Israel how to be holy because their God was holy. As God tells Israel in the book of Leviticus, “‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy’” (19:2b). As Adam and Eve were instructed to reflect God through their obedience and stewardship of creation, so too was Israel to reflect God to the nations as His priest-kings. After bringing Israel out of Egypt, God tells Moses to report to the Israelites these words: “‘Now if you will carefully listen to me and keep my covenant, you will be my own possession out of all the peoples, although the whole earth is mine, and you will be my kingdom of priests and my holy nation’” (Ex. 19: 5-6). However, like their forebearers, Israel could not perfectly obey God. Paul later writes to the Galatians and says, “But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin’s power, so that the promise might be given on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ to those who believe…The law, then, was our guardian until Christ, so that we could be justified by faith” (3:22, 24). Christ is the only one who fulfilled the law perfectly, and once He fulfilled the law, He enabled us to be reconciled with God.
The Covenant with David
God’s covenant with David promises a Davidic king who will reign forever over God’s kingdom of righteousness and peace. In Luke’s account of Jesus’s birth, he writes, “‘He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end’” (1:32-33). These words are reminiscent of Isaiah’s prophecy for a child to be born whose “dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever” (9:7). Jesus Christ was born that child, and His earthly life revealed Him to be a humble, suffering Servant—who He had to be to save us. When He returns, though, He will return as a conquering king:
“Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse. Its rider is called Faithful and True, and he judges and makes war with justice. His eyes were like a fiery flame, and many crowns were on his head…And he has a name written on his robe and on his thigh: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.” (Rev. 19:11-12a, 16)
Jesus is our King, and He will usher in the new heaven and the new earth.
The New Covenant
The new covenant is the final administration of the covenant of grace. It has a two-fold fulfillment. The first part of the covenant is when Christ offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice. Hebrews tells us, “But now he has appeared one time, at the end of the ages, for the removal of sin by the sacrifice of himself” (9:26b). Hebrews further tells us, “[W]e have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time” (10:10). The second part of the new covenant will be fulfilled when Christ returns and makes all things new.
Author’s Note:
Please realize that the resource list is a work in progress, and not all the sources listed are ones that I necessarily used or heavily considered in the development of this series. A variety of schools of thought may be represented. I am not intentionally promoting one theological system over another. I also recognize that there are multiple approaches to studying covenants. Still, my goal is to present a basic understanding of the various covenants and how they progressively reveal God's overarching plan of salvation for humanity.
