What is Baptist Covenant Theology (1689 Federalism)? | Theocast

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There has been a rise of interest in covenant theology over the last few years, as there's been a rise just in Reformed theology in general and Calvinism, and if you want to know more about all of these subjects in depth, we've done more at Theocast and on Ask Theocast.

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There's links to be about Reformed theology and covenant theology, but this is a quick basic overview.

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If you're just wanting to wrap your brain around the framework and the basic idea of what, when you say covenant theology, historically speaking, what do you mean?

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That's what this video is going to be, is a basic overview from a 1689 Latter Baptist Confession perspective, the historic view of Reformed view of covenant theology.

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Now, sometimes when we say covenant theology, what we think we hear is the biblical covenants, right?

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Like the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, Mosaic. That's not what is meant, and so we're going to try our best to help explain.

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Really, covenant theology is a way of understanding Scripture. It's what we call a hermeneutic, a science of interpretation.

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How do we read the Word of God in all the different genres and the different languages and how do we interpret it?

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How do we come to the final conclusion of its meaning? That's what covenant theology is. It's not about the biblical covenants as much as saying, as we look at all of Scripture and we read it from cover to cover, we have to make conclusions about what is this about, and to help us make quick, concise, clear answers so that we can identify this and explain it to those who are new to the faith and those who are trying to engage in the

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Word of God, we use these type of language so that we can explain it. I'll give an example of this.

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We do this even in our English language. When I say the word math, you immediately know what I'm talking about. It's one word that identifies a really big section that has to do with numbers, but it covers not just numbers, but all areas of numbers, right?

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Or when I say the word English, those are words that we can talk about as far as grammar and sentence structure.

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We can use one word to kind of describe this massive area. Well, we're trying to do the same thing when we're dealing with the

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Bible. For instance, if I were to say the word Trinity, that's not actually a biblical word.

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It's not in the Bible, but it's a word that helps describe a large section about the nature of God and who God is as far as His nature.

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Other words that we have is like the Great Commission. You will never find the word great and commission together in the

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Bible, but the concept is there. Same thing with Christology or epistemology. These are one words that are words that we use to help clarify a large section of Scripture.

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If you want to know what covenant theology is, that's what we're trying to do, is use words and sentence structures to help us talk about big concepts in the

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Bible and make them simple so that we can learn more about God's word and His purposes.

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We're going to start with covenant theology. Kind of just a basic understanding is that we think the

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Bible is about God's one covenant of promising to save sinners.

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The way it's been historically identified is called the redemptive historic understanding of Bible, that the whole

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Bible, the whole understanding of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is God's story of redemption.

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He fulfills that story or He fulfills that redemption by means of a promise, not just a

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I will promise, but a significant promise called covenant, that which He is going to enact assuredly.

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It's going to happen. Throughout history, the way that the Reformation has tried to explain this most accurately is what we call tri -covenantalism.

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There are three covenants that the Bible is really structured around. There are these three covenants, and we watch them unfold.

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In those three covenants, we have the other biblical covenants. Let's walk through this. Like I said before, tri -covenantalism, you're not going to find that in the

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Bible, just like other words. We don't want to make what's called a word concept fallacy, where it has to be in the

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Bible to believe it. Then we would have to reject words like Trinity or Great Commission, Christology.

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Just know that throughout history, we've used words like this to help us explain what the

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Bible means. First of all, in tri -covenantalism, the first covenant that we see in understanding of Scripture is the covenant of redemption,

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God's promise. It's also known historically by Latin as the pactum salutis. It's that God is promising to redeem sinners.

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That's his promise. When we get this language from Ephesians 1, it says,

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundations of the world, so before creation, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

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In love he predestined us for adoptions to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.

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So this isn't a response. It's not reacting. He is determining to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

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So the way that we should understand this, you don't have to call this a covenant. I think the language is there, and it's fair.

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When you look at biblical covenants, you see that there's a commitment between the Father and the Son to save sinners.

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This is what we're trying to get at. The Bible is a story about God's commitment to save sinners, and where we first really see this concept of this covenant being made is in, obviously, the first book of the

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Bible. So we would argue that when you look at Scripture, it's safe to say that all of Scripture is about the redemption of sinners and God's completion of that by one man, and who is that one man?

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Jesus Christ. This is why often covenant theology is also known as Christocentric, because we do believe the whole

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Bible is about Jesus and how Jesus is redeeming and restoring creation back to the glory of God.

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So that would be tricovenalism. So that's the one covenant that is the overarching purpose of the whole entire

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Bible. And there's a way in which that one covenant will be fulfilled. It's fulfilled with two other covenants.

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So I'm trying to take this slow, make it basic. The purpose of the Bible, the whole structure of the entire

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Bible is the redemption of sinners. We see that through this promise that is being made.

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We hear it in the language of Christ as well when he says, I must be about the work of my Father. I'm here to do the will of my

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Father. There's this language, all that the Father has given me will come to me. This is John 6.

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There's this language of Jesus owning sheep. So this concept is seen throughout the

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New Testament. It's not necessarily just in Ephesians chapter one. Well, the other two, since it's tricovenalism, the other two covenants that go along with covenant theology, this understanding of Scripture, how

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Scripture unfolds and how we should see it kind of running throughout history is there's two other covenants, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

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Now, again, some would say there's no actual verse that says there's a covenant of works or there's a covenant of grace. Again, we don't want to fall into that word concept fallacy.

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Just like we believe in the sovereignty of God and we have to look at that throughout Scripture and explain to ourselves, what does this mean?

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Is he somewhat sovereign like a king or is he all sovereign? And we use Scripture to identify these words for us.

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Well, the reason why we come up with the idea that there is this idea of a covenant, a promise being made along with work is when we get it from Genesis chapter one, you see in creation when

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God comes to Adam and says, you should not eat of the fruit of the tree. And if you do, you shall surely die.

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And so there you can say from that, well, there's no covenant promise being where the word covenant isn't being used there.

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Well, as you begin to progress through Scripture, it becomes clearer what

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God intended by this work. So as you continue to progress through the story and you understand that it, yes, it is forbidden for him to eat of the fruit and he should die.

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But there was a promise later on clarified to us that there was, if Adam would have obeyed, then what was the benefit for Adam?

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Well, we use the rest of Scripture to help us gain that clarity. And so if we turn to Romans later on in Romans, there is an interesting language that Paul uses in Romans 3, 23, a very famous verse we all know, right?

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For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Well, we normally hear that it means miss the mark.

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That's how we've had it interpreted, but that's not necessarily what Paul means. He says, sin caused you to fall short of the glory of God.

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This is a phrase that's used all throughout the New Testament. Jesus is the one who enters into the glory of God after his death, after he finishes the will of God or the work of God.

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Listen to what Hebrews 2 .10 says, for it was fitting that he for whom and by whom all things exist in bringing many sons to glory shall make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

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So you have Christ who's finishing the work of the law, or we would say the covenant of And as he does so, what ends up happening?

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He brings many sons to glory. In other words, his righteous obedience on our behalf is what allows us or grants us access to be within the glory of God.

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You have other Old Testament passages that make reference to this as being a covenant. You have Hosea 6, 7 that says, but like Adam, they transgressed the covenant.

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There they dealt faithlessly with me. So Hosea is seeing that there's a commitment that's going on between God and Adam.

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You even have Jesus who has identifying this in John 17, 4, I glorify you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

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What work is this? Well, Paul actually gives us a great example or great clarification of the work, this language of responsibility, something that he was supposed to do.

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Romans 5, 18, it says this, therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, this is

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Adam. So one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

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This is his death on the cross. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.

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So Paul is contrasting Jesus with Adam. He literally calls him the second

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Adam. He's known in Corinthians, he says where Adam failed, Christ succeeded.

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So we can see that what does he mean succeed in? It doesn't mean succeed in death. He means succeeding in life.

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So Christ's death is what covers our sins, but Christ's obedience right here is what makes us or gives us our righteousness.

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So we read the whole entire Bible as Adam fails, and he does not, for all of humanity, he does not earn for us the right passage into the glory of God.

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Well, you read in Genesis 3, 15, this is where the promise is made that there is one who will come and do that.

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He literally says, I will put enmity between, this is Genesis 3, 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring or seed and her offspring or seed, and he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

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He means you shall bruise fatally his head, the serpent winning victory over death, and you shall bruise not fatally because Christ, what does he do?

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He raises from the grave. So there's a promise, and this is an unconditional promise from Christ, which we're going to get into,

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I'm sorry, from God to Adam and Eve to Eve, that from her seed, and by the way, in the Old Testament, it's always described as the seed of man, never the seed of woman.

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We have an introduction to the first mission of the gospel, the Proto -Evangelion, and the mission of the virgin birth here later on, how is

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Christ born? He's born of a virgin, right, of the seed of the spirit being implanted in her, or you could say of the seed of Eve because it's always of the man, and Jesus wasn't born of a man.

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So we can see this mention here, and the mention is where Adam failed, you have one who is coming to correct.

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This is what it is. He's going to correct the deception that has happened in the world, and that correction has to take place by another man, and that man is not only going to pay for the sins that have been committed, but he's going to earn the needed righteousness to enter into glory that Adam failed.

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So you can see that the beginning of the story and the end of the story, it all makes sense because what ends up happening in Revelation when we finally make it to the heavens and new earth, we are brought into the glory of God, and why do we have the right to be there?

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It's because of the righteousness of Christ being given to us by his obedience, right? So that's how we see the structure of the covenant of works.

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Well, how do we gain Christ's obedience? Like, why is that given to us?

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Well, there's a second theme in the Bible. So the first theme is obedience gains life.

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This is the law. The second theme is the covenant of grace because there's a promise.

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If we go back to Ephesians 4, there's a promise that he is going to save sinners. And what is that promise first mentioned?

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And it's mentioned all throughout the Old Testament. It's first mentioned in Genesis 3 .15, right? There is no requirement given to Adam and Eve.

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That's why it's a promise, an unconditional covenant, unconditional promise. You know, when we think about marriage ceremonies, normally in American tradition, we hand over to the lady, what?

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A wedding engagement ring saying, I'm making the promise to marry you, and you're making the promise to marry me.

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Well, what you have here is God making a promise, but the covenant hasn't actually been established yet.

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But he's promising it's going to. And that a promise, how do we know?

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When is it coming? Who's going to fulfill this promise? Well, that's what the rest of the Old Testament is about. Is this promise made to Eve?

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How do we know? Well, Eve thinks it's her next son. You know, glory to God, he's given me a man, and it's not going to be her righteousness.

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He ends up being a murderer. So then you have the flood and the promises of Noah. And God says there's none righteous, that they all have failed.

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There's none that want to do right. So he wipes out the entire world except for one family. He wipes out the whole world, the promises he made to Eve, knowing that God's a liar, but he preserves them.

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And what happens to the population? Explodes again. They try and build a tower to God. Men prove they cannot earn

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God's righteousness. They can't do it. So he comes to Abraham, or Abram at the time, who was a moon worshiper, older in age, barren.

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And he makes a promise to him. And what's the promise that he makes to him? Is that through you, all the nations will be blessed, and a great nation will come from you.

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Of course, Abraham has a hard time believing this. But you see there's a clarification coming from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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The promise is not only getting clear, but we're giving a family, a nation that we know, okay, from this nation, we can expect the promised one who becomes known as the anointed one or the

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Messiah. And then we go from Abraham, we go into the Mosaic. Now, the Mosaic covenant is a very important one because there's two things that happen here.

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First of all, we learn about the nature of the covenant of grace in that there is a sacrificial system.

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It's picturing. It's a shadow. You know, if you get anything that gets closer to the light, the shadow becomes more in tune.

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You can see it closer. Well, as we started with Eve, we have this blurry shadow of someone that's coming, but we don't know who it is.

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Now we know it's through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob coming through the nation of Israel. And then we also understand that there's going to be a sacrificial nature to it because what does

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John say about Jesus? Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And what is it we have from this

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Mosaic? We have the institution of the litical sacrifices, right?

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With the Passover. So there's two things that happen in the Mosaic covenant. First of all, we understand that Christ will be our final sacrifice.

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But two, we have a law by which Jesus can obey. We're not going to be seeing

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Jesus obey Adam's law. That was in the garden. That doesn't set up. So we have the most impossible scenario for any human being to ever obey.

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When the law, the litical law is set up, we learn that God is the one who examines, or we can examine and look at Jesus to fulfill the law.

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He's the only one who perfectly fulfilled the law. So this Mosaic law is very important to us because that's how we gain our righteousness.

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We'll look at that a little bit later. So we keep moving along from the Mosaic and we get to the Davidic covenant.

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So we're just watching history unfold. And as we watch it unfold, we're watching God slowly move these covenants along for our redemption.

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We get to the Davidic covenant. And the promise is this, is that on your throne, David, there's going to be an eternal king.

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It's going to be one of your sons, and he will eternally reign. And not just here on this earth, but it's going to be brought into the new heavens and the new earth.

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I mean, Hebrews literally says that Israel was longing for a new land. Not this one, but a new land.

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And the promise was that through you, David, one of your sons will sit on the throne forever. And how will you identify that son?

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It'll be the one who perfectly obeys my law. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. Now, the nation of Israel, they don't have to obey the law in order to gain entrance into the kingdom in God's favor.

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How are they going to do it? The representative of one person, which is the king. So now they're looking, when is there going to be a king in the line of David who's going to sit on the throne and perfectly obey the law?

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Well, they don't see any for hundreds of years. Fast forward, what do you have? You have the prophets,

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Jeremiah and Ezekiel are prophesying, giving hope to a nation that's divided. They're under siege.

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It's horrible. And they prophesy of a new and better covenant. And this is where we see the covenant of grace get its full explanation.

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And it says, he's going to pull out their heart of stone. He's going to put in a heart of flesh. And this is Jeremiah 31, 31,

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Ezekiel 36. And you will no longer need the law to govern you because the law will be in your heart.

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And now they understand that there's a new covenant coming. And the one bringing that new covenant is the one sitting on the throne of David who perfectly obeys the law.

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Well, what's beautiful about when you finally get to the New Testament and you understand, okay, now you've watched this unfolding of the promise of the covenant of grace to Adam and Eve.

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You've watched it unfold through history, through all of the covenants, the development of the covenant of works, everything is set in place.

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And then you read Matthew one, and it says, the book of the genealogies of Jesus, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

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Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac was the father. And you're watching history roll all the way back to prove that Jesus truly is the

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Messiah who has the right to sit on the throne. And what is he going to be? He's going to be the lamb that takes away the sin of the world.

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He's going to be our priest, right? Our great high priest who goes between us and the father that our sins might be forgiven.

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He becomes for us the great prophet. We no longer need the prophets because why Christ is the final prophetic telling us the future of what our hope may be.

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And then ultimately he is our righteousness. He's our righteous king who will grant for us our access into the new heavens and the new earth.

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So that's how we understand covenant theology in that there's a flow through scripture.

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And the final culmination of the covenant of grace and the covenant of works is in Christ Jesus. And the final promise is the restoration of all things in the new heavens, the new earth, and us having new bodies glorified with the father in heaven.

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So we would say that those three covenants are flowing all throughout scripture.

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And that's how we would read them from beginning to end. And what really helps us to do that is that when you read passages from Jesus on the road to Emmaus and he's describing and these men aren't quite understanding how

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Jesus is the Messiah. And he says, listen, he goes back and says, the Old Testament was the revelation of who I am.

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It's the outflow of who I am. He gets mad at the Pharisees because they won't accept him.

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And he says, listen, if you would have read the prophets and understood them, you've read Moses and the law, you would have known they were writing about me.

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Not every single verse according to covenant theology is about Jesus, but the flow of the nature of the story and the purpose of the flow of the nature of the story is to be the pinnacle of Jesus Christ.

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And then what do we do with that? We take that story and he gives it to the church to whom he died for. And now our job is to take these covenants through AKA the gospel, right?

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The covenant of grace is the gospel. It's the good news of Jesus Christ that we can't earn salvation.

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It was earned for us. He earned our forgiveness and he earned our righteousness. That's what the word grace means, to receive that which you don't deserve.

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You don't deserve forgiveness. You don't deserve to have his obedience, but it's yours by faith alone.

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And the law, which is the covenant of works, the law is designed to show you your need of that. And so we understand all of the

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Bible to be divided up in that way, that the law and the gospel, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, and we are waiting for that final moment of redemption.

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So that's a quick 20 minute overview of covenant theology. Below, I'll have some passages and some scripture references and outline for you.

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And I'll also put links to our, we have a couple of studies, a series on YouTube about covenant theology.

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And we also have some stuff in there about how to interpret the Bible and the practical implications of why does covenant theology matter, which we did a three -part series on that.