Covenant Theology: The Covenant of Redemption (Part Two)

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In this session, we are going to be providing a short and succinct, but also helpful definition and some more clarity on what we referenced in our previous session on the covenant of redemption.

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Make sure that you are following along in your notes where you can see broader definitions, more precise language in written form.

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Perhaps that would be helpful for you. But before we get there, guys, I want to share a short analogy.

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I don't know if you guys are fans, but I'm a big fan of sci -fi, specifically the

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Marvel movies. One of the themes that you've seen in Marvel movies is whenever they introduce a new superhero or character, a lot of times they'll do this four to five minute montage in the beginning explaining the background, what's going on in that character, how that character came to be.

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Something that I frequently hear is when we explain the gospel to somebody or we explain the

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Bible to somebody, we often say, we need to go to the beginning. We need to go to the book of Genesis. I have nothing against that.

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However, as we discussed in our last session, we often have to have the proper lenses and framework to understand that.

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Frankly, as we talk about the covenant of redemption, have you ever watched a movie and you felt like,

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I need to watch that again so I understand it a little bit better? You can always judge a good movie by whether or not you can watch it twice.

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Frankly, when you read through the whole Bible, perhaps for the first time, you get that moment of,

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I need to read that again. I think reading the Bible through a lens of the covenant of redemption is helpful.

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If we want to be technical and precise, when we say, we're going to explain the gospel and I'm going to take you to the beginning,

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I think truly the beginning is the covenant of redemption. Scene one is

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Genesis 1. If you related it to a Marvel movie, the covenant of redemption would be that five -minute montage explaining the background and character.

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Scene one is whatever you so get. Before we get too much into the weeds with this, why don't you just explain and refresh what we mean by covenant in general?

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We're going to do this for each one just so you can understand. What we're trying to help you see is the difference between a conditional and unconditional covenant.

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We have referenced Noahic. You have two parties involved, but God's the only one taking on the commitment here.

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He is saying, I will not do this again. He will not flood the earth again, even though men and women continue to be rebellious against him.

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It's an unconditional covenant. We're going to get into the conditional covenants that we see with Abraham, David, and Mosaic.

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We have another conditional one here. What we mean by condition is that there are two parties who are making commitments on either side.

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If one fails those, traditionally, the idea of covenants is not new to the

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Bible. I'm going to use the Abrahamic covenant as an example.

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God requires Abraham to divide these animals, to cut them in half. What was being symbolized there quickly is that if God failed to fulfill this covenant with Abraham, this is what he is committing to.

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This is often what two people would do. Let's say Justin and I are going to make a business commitment.

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What they would do is we would take a lamb or some doves and we would divide them in part. Together, we would walk through those animals saying, if one of us failed, our commitment, this covenant, then this is what would happen to us.

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We would die. When a covenant is made, it's not like, I have your back,

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I got you covered, I promised to take care of that. In the Bible, when a covenant is being made, it is a universal, massive moment that you cannot take lightly.

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Justin Perdue Especially when God is one of the parties involved. Jon Moffitt Absolutely. What we're going to do now is start reading language.

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What we want you to pick up on is this language of commitments that are being made. There are parties involved.

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As we read these scriptures, we want you to see we're not pressing this down into the text, but we're trying to help you see and pull it out of the text.

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Justin, why don't you start us moving over there? Justin Perdue The covenant of redemption is what we're covering particularly in this episode.

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People might legitimately ask, where do you guys get this? Where in Scripture, what kind of language in Scripture would lead you to conclude that there is a covenant of redemption?

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Quite simply, the answer to that would be all of the language in the Bible that talks about things that occurred in particular amongst the

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Godhead, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, before the world began. We're going to look at some particular passages here in a minute, but as Jimmy alluded to earlier,

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Genesis 1 is not the beginning of all things. God is. He never got started.

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He existed in eternity past. He always has been. There never was a time when

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He was not. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit made a covenant amongst themselves to save a people.

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This was determined before creation ever happened, before there was time and space. It's that kind of language in the

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Bible that leads us to understand that there was this covenant of redemption made in eternity past that then will be fulfilled and accomplished in time and space in the theater of the world that God has created.

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A great text for this, for what you just explained Justin, is Ephesians chapter 1 verses 3 to 14.

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I'm not going to read the entire section, but I do want to highlight a few verses where we see clearly all persons of the

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Trinity active within what we call the covenant of redemption. Specifically verse 4, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, we see

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God the Father active there. It is God the Father who has this idea, but we also see

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God the Son in Him speaking of Christ. In verse 7, we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses.

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Jesus went to actually accomplish this work of redemption. In verse 13, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, you were sealed with the promised

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Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance. In that passage, we have all persons of the

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Godhead active in this work of redemption, specifically the covenant of redemption.

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Justin Perdue God the Father chose a people in the Son before the world began, and the Spirit would apply the work of the

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Son to those people. It's very clear language. Jon Moffitt Then you'll see this. You'll start picking up on this language even in the

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Old Testament, which will reference some of these passages. Another one I would take us to is Titus chapter 1 verses 2 and 3.

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It says this, In hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began, which is the language of promise.

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You could also say we want to replace that word coveted before the world began.

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At the proper time manifested in His word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of our

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Savior. You're hearing language. Paul is actually interpreting all of the

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Old Testament in one reference saying this is all unfolding and was foretold in a promise, in a covenant, before the world began.

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Justin Perdue Another text, 2 Timothy 1, 9, and 10. Paul is talking about God who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of His own purpose and grace, which

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He gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. There again is that language, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our

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Savior Jesus Christ to abolish death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. We'll unpack this more later, but there you actually have the covenant of grace as well showing up on the scene, not conditioned upon us, but conditioned upon what

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Christ has done. We see Jesus accomplishing something applied to us by faith, grounded in grace, in order that that covenant of redemption would be ultimately accomplished, namely the salvation of God's elect.

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Jon Moffitt Not to jump the gate here, but I think very practically what we have to realize here is that the covenant of redemption also gives us a framework to understand that our

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God is a proactive God, not a reactive God. Before the foundations of the earth were laid, before any cell of a human existed,

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God planned this. God knew that He was going to redeem His people. Often I think this is probably a good response to the open theist argument that God is merely a master chess player, that He really is not sure of the great outcomes.

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I just think that flies in the face of what we see here in Ephesians 1 and the other scriptures that you guys have referenced.

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God is a proactive God. God does not wait for humans to act and say, I wonder how

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I should respond to that. God is one who initiates, bestows, gives, and is the actor, the sustainer.

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That's so important for us to remember specifically as we think about this covenant. Justin Perdue Some other passages that are pretty key for us in this understanding occur in John's gospel.

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John 17, the high priestly prayer. There's a lot of language there from Jesus in praying to the Father about things that were going on before the world began and things that were understood between Him and His Father before the world began.

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In John 10, there's the charge that Jesus will reference. I have been given a charge by my Father that I would lay my life down and take it back up again for the sheep, for my people.

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In John 6, John 10, 28, and 29, there were a people that belonged to God the

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Father that He has given to the Son, and the Son is going to come to save them.

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All of that is the covenant of redemption, and it's all throughout Scripture. Justin Perdue Jesus doesn't use the word covenant there, but He's referencing it.

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He's using language by which I have received this from the Father. I've been given something to do.

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I have come to fulfill my Father's will. When we think about language and commitments,

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Jesus is saying, I have been commissioned to do this. This is

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Jesus. It's very obvious. I've come to seek and save that which is lost. I've come to lay down my life. When you don't understand covenant language, you'll miss a very important part of verse 18 that you said, this charge

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I have received from my Father. If you can connect that back to Ephesians, you're realizing the charge came to Jesus before the world began.

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It wasn't, oh great, the whole world has fallen into chaos. I'm going to commission

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Jesus to go do this and mop it up. That's not the language. Justin Perdue Like you just said, He's not reactive.

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He's proactive. This is not a mop -up operation. It's all plan A. Plan A being the covenant of redemption.

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This is a conditional covenant. That's Christ's condition to fulfill the will of the Father to redeem

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His people. What's the commitment from the Father to the Son? We see this in Scripture.

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This would be Philippians chapter 2. We were talking about this before recording.

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I would say that the fulfillment of the Father is the resurrection and the exaltation of the

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Son. That's His commitment. Justin Perdue Also to give the Son a people and for the

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Son to have not only His people, but a new creation to inherit. I'm thinking Psalm 2, verse 8.

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The Father is speaking to the Son, the Messiah, and He says, Ask of Me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.

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It all will belong to the Son because of what the Son has done. He has saved these people who are now

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His, His bride, if we're thinking about the language of Revelation. The entire new creation in that sense is

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His inheritance. That's His reward for keeping the conditions of this covenant.

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Jimmy Buehler You just said a very key word that within this covenant we see the motif of obedience and reward.

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Think of a very practical example. If you're listening to this and you're married, you're actually very familiar with covenant language.

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You stood at an altar before a pastor, and you vowed and you committed to one another in a covenant to love and to cherish regardless of what had happened.

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Now, what we see tragically obviously in our culture is people break that covenant. They are disobedient to the covenant, perhaps they're unfaithful, or they're mistreating of their spouse.

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What gets broken? The reward in a marriage covenant is love, peace, unity, joy, children, and so on and so forth.

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We're very familiar with this covenant language more than we like to realize, but this is what we see in the covenant of redemption.

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Jesus has a very specific task to redeem God's people.

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He has a very specific thing He has come to accomplish. There is obedience involved there, and there is reward there.

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Justin Perdue We're going to get to this more later, but in order that the obedience piece and the commitments of the

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Son to obey and to do stuff, that is Him keeping the conditions of a covenant that is grounded in and dependent upon His works.

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Jon Moffitt To even use Jimmy's example, we use loan.

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If you buy a home, you are covenanting that you're going to pay for that. What is happening is you're going into debt, and then what's the reward once you pay the debt?

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The reward is that you gain the home. The fulfillment is the end of it. You see this language even within Philippians chapter 2.

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It says, Philippians 2 being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient.

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That's a really important question. Obedient to who? Who is Jesus obeying? He's fulfilling

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His committing side. Justin Perdue Not to jump on you here, Jon, but in the garden of Gethsemane, when

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Jesus is truly God and truly man, He is wrestling with what lies before Him, what

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He's about to do. What does He say? He's wrestling with the plan, but He's saying, not what

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I want, but your will, Father, be done. He is obeying His Father even to the point of death on a cross.

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Jon Moffitt It's true and real obedience on the part of Christ. Justin Perdue That's right.

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Then it says, therefore, this is the fulfillment side. Jesus paid the debt.

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He earned the righteous status that we needed in order to be in relationship with God, so He fulfilled

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His side of the covenant. This is what it says that God does. Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name.

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At the name of Jesus, this is the exaltation that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord. He raises Him from the dead and exalts Him to His rightful place. You're seeing the promises or the commitments on both parties' sides, and then you're seeing the fulfillment on both parties' sides.

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Then the covenant is over, which is what we love and what we talked about earlier.

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It's now applied. Jon Moffitt We talked about how this began in eternity past.

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Scene one, to use your language, Jimmy, is Genesis 1. What's the end of the movie? It's the book of Revelation.

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But what is the language of Revelation 5, for example? What are people singing? They sang a new song saying,

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Worthy are you. They're singing to Christ, to the Lamb. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our

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God, and they shall reign on the earth. This is that. It's the exaltation of Christ and this is

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His inheritance, His people, and they'll reign. We will reign with Him. Jimmy Buehler That's awesome. In Acts 2, the sermon, he says this in 32 and 33, this

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Jesus God raised up, fulfillment of the promise, and of that we all witnessed, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the

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Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out, this is the application, this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.

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The covenant has been fulfilled, and now the benefits of the covenant are being poured out upon us.

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Justin Perdue That language of benefit is huge. We were talking about this a little bit ago before we recorded this session.

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The parties of the covenant of redemption are

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God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and perhaps in a pointed way, the Father and the Son in terms of the commitments they're going to make.

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The amazing thing about the covenant of redemption is that we benefit from it. We are not one of the parties, but we benefit from the covenant of redemption, which is the application of it.

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It's mind -blowing. Jimmy Buehler I think that's if we're going to start our descent into the next airport.

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That is truly where we need to go. I guess the question

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I'm going to throw out to you, and perhaps as the listeners are hearing this and they're wondering, okay, this is great, but this seems kind of pie in the sky, in the clouds.

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We're literally talking about something that has happened before the foundations of the world.

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You have referenced this already in terms of, where do I fit into this?

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That is actually the wonderful, good gospel news of understanding the covenant of redemption.

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Actually, the covenant was made between the Godhead. Frankly, we can trust it, because Scripture continually testifies that God is faithful, and God is good, and God is just, and that God cannot lie.

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Within this covenant, we can trust that it's good and faithful, but we also see Ephesians 1 and the other places, specifically

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Revelation. We see that we are beneficiaries of this covenant.

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God has foreordained that we would be saved by Christ, that we would be sealed by the promised

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Holy Spirit. That's mind -boggling when you think about it. Before the foundation of the world,

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God looked at us and He said, before John or Jimmy or Justin ever sinned, this is what

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I'm going to accomplish on their behalf. What wonderful assurance does that bring to us?

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This is what will expand the Old Testament for you. If the God of the

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Old Testament is faithful to an unfaithful people, and He continues to preserve

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His covenant, which we'll explain a little bit later, the Old Testament comes alive because the

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God of the New Testament who covenanted Jesus to save you. What you're realizing is that your assurance is not based upon what

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I have done, because I'm not even a party in this. I am the recipient of it. God isn't making a covenant with me to save me.

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God made a covenant with Jesus to save me. Therefore, I can't break the covenant because I'm not a party member.

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I'm just a benefactor. Justin Perdue. For us, in our understanding of covenant theology, the covenant of redemption serves as the pattern for how we understand the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

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It guides us in our understanding of those two respective covenants. Who benefits from the covenant of redemption?

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We've just talked about that. It's the elect. It's those whom God has chosen. Who is it then that's under the covenant of grace?

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Can I project there? Someone may be brand new to this idea of elect. That's language we got from Ephesians.

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We were just using it. We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Paul will use the language of election in Romans and other places as well.

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There is a people that God the Father has chosen in the Son before the world began.

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Those are the people who benefit from the covenant of redemption. Then, as we see in time and space, the covenant of works happens.

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We're going to talk about that more. Jesus fulfills a covenant of works to accomplish, in one sense, the covenant of grace, where we are having the merits of Christ and all of these things applied to us by faith.

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Who are the people who are under that covenant of grace? It's those whom the Father elected. It's those who were chosen in Christ.

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They're under the covenant of grace, and that's where the Spirit is applying the work of Christ to them through regeneration and faith.

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I just want to go back to my original analogy here to help us bring this in a little bit.

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As we think about a movie or a storyline, you've watched a movie where the movie begins perhaps with one of the final scenes and then it flashes back.

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It's called in media res. It's an actual term. Realistically, if somebody came to me and said,

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I don't know anything about the Bible, where should I start? Ephesians 1 is actually where I'd bring them.

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This is why. If you have in the back of your mind that the covenant of redemption is the overarching, undergirding thing that is holding together all of the

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Bible, you're going to look at these obscure stories with Noah, David, Abraham, Daniel, whatever, and say, something greater is going to come.

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I think a really practical thing that this does for us to understand the covenant of redemption is that it prevents us.

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In fact, I don't think it will allow us to moralize the Old Testament. It will not allow us to principalize the

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Old Testament, but rather to see that our aim in the Old Testament when we preach it, when we share it, when we read it, when we understand it, is to see where does this stand in relation to redemptive historical understanding of how

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Christ has come to accomplish the work that God the Father has done. Where does this stand in relation to Christ, who is the point of this, because he fulfills the covenant of works in the covenant of grace to accomplish this great covenant of redemption.

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That's what this is about. The whole drama of redemptive history is all about the accomplishment of the covenant of redemption, namely that the

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Son would have his people and a new creation inheritance, and we are part of that. Jimmy Buehler The great outline of the entire narrative of Scripture is the

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Father plans, the Son accomplishes, the Spirit applies. That is the great outline.

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We will get back to that in a minute.

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I would say to Jimmy's analogy, what really the covenant of redemption does is it gives you the key, the spotlight, it gives you the trail.

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Now you have to ask the question, the scene opens that there is this promise being made, and here are the two parties, and there is the one who is going to apply it.

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How does it happen? Let's start at the beginning. In the beginning, God created, but if you start in the beginning, there is so much confusion.

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Now, if you are like, oh, there is this scene that happened outside of the story that is going to govern the story, so it starts in creation and there is a fall, then how are they going to fix the fall?

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We already know that Jesus is the one who is going to fix it, but how do we get Jesus? We will keep watching because how you get

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Jesus is the most unbelievable ride that is going to make you trust the God who covenanted to save you more than you could ever believe.

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Sometimes people will push back and say, is it appropriate to understand some passage in the

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Old Testament, whether that is Genesis or 1 Samuel or whatever? Is it appropriate for us to understand it in light of everything that is coming well after it?

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The answer to that is absolutely yes. As we have been given the privilege of having all of revelation given to us, we use it and we understand any one portion of the story in light of the whole.

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It would be irresponsible not to. If we know what the movie is about, why would we ever go to one scene and try to interpret that scene ignoring what the whole thing is about in the first place?

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We should not do that. It would be irresponsible to divorce things and read texts in isolation as though we don't know the end of the story, as though we don't know the main point.

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I think it is irresponsible exegesis to interpret a passage any other way. That is a good explanation.

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Another way I would say which is going to our other sessions is that as you are unfolding

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Scriptures, you are walking through it, you are going to start realizing. Here is just an example before we go into the covenant of works section.

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When God makes a promise to Adam and Eve that a seed will come, the question is, which child of Eve?

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How do we know without a shadow of a doubt that we have the right child? God is placing their restoration and forgiveness upon that child.

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The whole Old Testament is the explanation of this is the right child.

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Without a doubt, this is Him. Justin Perdue And how do we get to Christ as Messiah? I mean Jesus as Messiah, I should say.

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Jon Moffitt Which changes how you read the Bible. Mostly people read it thinking, where am

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I and how does this apply and how do I do better? The Old Testament is saying, oh no, this is how you get

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Messiah. It is very important you get the right one because Jesus says, you get to the Father through me.

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He better be the right one. Justin Perdue He is the representative. Jon Moffitt That is right. So guys, we started the movie.

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We have this crazy scene in the beginning. We are not really sure where it is going to go. We have a basic understanding covenant of redemption now.

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As we continue to watch this movie, you are going to want to ask, well, how does that take place? That is where we get covenant of works and covenant of grace.

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That is where we are going to head into our next session. Thanks for listening.