Covenant Of Works

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So today we're going to be talking about the Covenant of Works during the Sunday school hour. There's handouts there, there, and there at all the doors.
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So if you didn't get one, go ahead and grab one. And that'll just give us some sort of outline to go with.
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So the reason we're doing this, well, the main reason is Pastor Cooley gave me the topic.
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But it works really well because we've just been listening to sermons on creation and on man being made in the image of God.
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And the Covenant of Works is the covenant that God made between Adam and himself before the fall.
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So we're going to talk about that today. Really we've seen how man was created, man was created in the image of God, and now we're seeing what relationship man was with God before the fall.
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To begin, let's just start with prayer and then we'll read some of the relevant passages and go from there.
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Let's pray. Lord, thank you for your great love for us. Thank you for a day that we can worship you and get together just to learn more about you and especially for the grace that we find in Christ.
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Even though we're talking about the Covenant of Works today, help us to focus on really the covenant of grace and what you've done for us in Christ.
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In Christ's name we pray, amen. Perfect. So the Covenant of Works, we're going to read
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Genesis 2, verses 15 through 17. Can I actually get someone to read that for me?
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Perfect. Genesis 2, 15 through 17. Perfect. And then Mark, can you jump down to chapter 3 and go 1 through 7 in chapter 3 as well?
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Perfect. Thank you. So that's basically what we're going to talk about today. This is the two main passages when we're looking at the
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Covenant of Works. So a brief definition here, this is not actually, we're not at the definition yet, but the definition of a
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Covenant of Works, just briefly, it's the covenant God made between himself and Adam before the fall.
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That's what we're talking about. Why are we talking about it? That's probably a good question to ask.
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I mean, we're living at a time when that covenant, I mean, we've got
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Christ now, why talk about Adam and the covenant God made with him? Any ideas? Exactly.
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So it directly affected us. Any other ideas? So the
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Covenant of Works is foundational, or some people don't like to call it a Covenant of Works, but this whole relationship that God had with Adam is foundational.
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One scholar says the Covenant of Works lays a foundation for other key doctrines of Scripture, including the obedience of Christ, the relationship between Adam and Christ, and the concept of Christ as mediator.
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And then Guy Waters says the Covenant of Works lies at the very heart of the New Testament's exposition of the person and work of Jesus, because he's looking at 1
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Corinthians 15 and Romans 5, and how Paul draws on the relationship between Adam and Christ to explain the
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Gospel. So basically, if you want to better understand Christ and what Christ's active obedience did for you, and really what relationship you stand in with God apart from Christ, then you need to understand a little bit more about the
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Covenant of Works. So we gave a brief definition of the Covenant of Works, which is a pretty useless definition if you don't know what a covenant is.
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So any ideas? What is a covenant? There's a covenant of quiet something.
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I just found that out this week. Quiet rest or something. Right. It's literally an agreement.
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So if you look at Isaiah 25, 15, this is just a starting definition of a covenant.
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Isaiah 25, 15, and I'm just going to read a part of it. This is God talking to those who have sinned against him.
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He said, because you have said we have made a covenant with death and with Sheol, we have an agreement.
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That's Hebrew parallelism there. So you have death and Sheol being equated, covenant and agreement being equated.
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Basically, a covenant is an agreement. We can define it a little bit more distinctly when we're talking about a covenant between God and man, because there's specific aspects of covenants between God and man that, you know, they go through every covenant.
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So I'm using O. Palmer Robertson's definition here. He calls, he defines a covenant between God and man as a bond in blood, sovereignly administered.
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A bond in blood, sovereignly administered. Three aspects.
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I'm actually going to take them backwards from that definition. So it's sovereignly administered.
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It means it's instituted by God, not man. Man doesn't come up to God and say, here's how
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I want to relate to you. God goes to man and says, this is how we are going to relate to each other.
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Second, it's a bond. That's what we talked about. It's an agreement. O. Palmer Robertson says, nothing lies closer to the heart of the biblical concept of the covenant than the imagery of a bond that cannot be broken.
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And then it's a bond in blood. And this is sort of the confusing part. Like what does that mean? It just points to the fact that it's a bond that is sort of a life and death.
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Life and death is on the line. When the Hebrew word, so when
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God, you'll see if you read the ESV, there's like 86 times that you've got and God made a covenant with someone or somebody else is making a covenant.
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But the word translated there for make a covenant is not actually the word made. It's the word cut. So God is
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God, and even when men make covenants with each other in scripture, it's often them cutting covenants.
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And that's significant. So I just want to read a few of the verses where we see that. Genesis 15, 18, on the day the
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Lord, on that day, the Lord cut a covenant with Abraham. And then Deuteronomy 5, 3, not with our fathers did the
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Lord cut this covenant. But with us today, 1
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Samuel 23, Jonathan and David, the two of them cut a covenant before the
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Lord. And then Job says in Job 31, I have cut a covenant with my eyes. All these times, you know, it's translated made in the
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ESV, which sort of makes more sense because what is, what does it even mean to cut a covenant?
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But that verb to cut is so central to the idea of making a covenant that you can actually drop off the word covenant and it'll still make sense.
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Second Chronicles 7, 18, God says to David, this is about the Davidic covenant.
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He says, then I will, I will establish your royal throne as I, the word there is covenanted in the translation, but it's actually as I cut with David, your father saying, you shall not lack a man to rule
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Israel. It's kind of cool here because he's, there's wordplay here. I, um, the same word for you shall not lack is the word for, for covenanted.
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So you could translate it. I will establish your royal throne as I cut with David, your father saying, you shall not have cut a man to rule
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Israel. It's just a interesting wordplay. But the, the, the focus here is on that verb to cut when we're talking about covenants.
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And this is not just with the covenant of works, but it's with all the covenants that we're taught that we would see in scripture.
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So really, if we're talking about cutting a covenant, the best way to explain it is to look at Genesis 15 and what
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Abraham does in the covenant God makes with Abraham. So if you remember, he has several animals and he cuts them in two except for the birds and he lays them out and like the blood trickles down.
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Then he falls into a deep sleep and God walks through the covenant, or sorry, God walks through the path and that's the covenant.
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It's basically saying, may this be done to me if I don't fulfill the covenant.
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And it's significant in the Abrahamic covenant that Abraham himself doesn't end up walking through the, the, the dead animals because Abraham can't, can't fulfill the covenant.
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God puts him to sleep and God is taking it on himself to fulfill the covenant. But it's a life and death situation.
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You know, life is on the line. If you, if you break the covenant, you're guilty of, the penalty is death.
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So the question is, is there even a covenant of works? And this is where there's debate.
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If there's not, we can just go home, right? Or at least go out to Duncan before church starts.
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But so this is where I'm going to, it's just interesting. The London Baptist Confession decided to take out covenant of works from whenever it talks about covenant.
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So it, a lot of what you find in the London Baptist Confession is just straight up quoting from the
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Westminster Confession and then they tweaked it to better match their theology. So if I read the
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Westminster Confession, chapter 19, paragraph one, God gave to Adam a law as a covenant of works by which he bound him in all his posterity to personal entire exact and perpetual obedience, promised life upon the fulfilling and threatened death upon the breach of it and endowed him with power and ability to keep it.
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Then London Baptist, chapter nine, paragraph one, God gave to Adam a law.
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And then instead of covenant of works, it's a law of universal obedience written in his heart and a particular precept of not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by which he bound him in all his posterity and then it goes on.
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So even though the London Baptist isn't willing to say it's a covenant of works and I'm willing to call it a covenant of works, really we're talking about the same thing and everything in the covenant of works, even if you're not comfortable calling it a covenant of works, it's still applicable.
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Two reasons why you wouldn't call it a covenant of works. Any ideas why people say this is not a covenant with Adam before the fall?
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Yep. No record of anything being slain. If you read Genesis one through three, do you ever find the word covenant?
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Nope. So there's no word covenant there and then a lot of people want to talk about the covenants involving grace and they'll say, well, you can't have a gracious covenant pre -fall because you don't have sin, so at least grace in the concept of forgiving sin can exist, so let's not call it a covenant.
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Right. Right. Right. So that's interesting because a lot of theologians will say there is a promise, but it's an implicit promise and based on, okay, here's the punishment and so if you do it, then the implicit promise is you get the opposite of the punishment.
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But you're right. You're absolutely right. There is no explicit promise of reward either.
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The reason that I would argue that there is a covenant, well, here's three reasons.
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They're not my own, but I'm stealing them. Reason number one, there are some covenants that you see in the
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Bible, so the Davidic covenant for example, that the word covenant isn't used when the covenant is established.
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If you read 2 Samuel 7 or 1 Chronicles 17, you do not have the word covenant in there, but then other passages like Psalm 89 talks about the
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Davidic covenant as a covenant, so you don't need the word covenant. That really is the worst argument.
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The word covenant is not there because the word Trinity is not in the Bible, but we still believe in the
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Trinity. As long as the concept's there, it's fine. The only reason
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I bring that argument up, it's bad to bring it up because it's like a straw man.
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You're bringing up a bad argument, but it is commonly used. So Hosea 6 .7
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says, but like Adam, they transgressed the covenant, therefore they dealt faithlessly with me.
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So there's a covenant there, maybe, because Adam could be referring to Adam, Adam could be referring to Adam the place, which is just 16 miles north of Jericho, or Adam could be referring to Adam mankind, because the name
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Adam is the same as the word for man. So you either have a covenant with Adam that was transgressed,
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Adam the person, or a covenant with mankind that was transgressed. Either way you can see a covenant before Noah, or you have a covenant at Adam that was transgressed, but we don't have any record of Israel breaking
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God's covenant at Adam, so that one's probably out. And then third, the third reason
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I would give for a covenant in Genesis 1 -3 is that it has all the markers of a covenant.
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You've got parties, rewards, which we will talk about, penalty or punishment, and then you've got conditions, and maybe, this is like maybe, but maybe even a sacrament there.
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A .A. Hodge, writing in his commentary on the Westminster Confession, said basically if God's transactions with Noah and Abraham can be called a covenant, then we have to call
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God's transaction with Adam a covenant. But you're not being cast out into utter darkness if you disagree.
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John Murray won't call it a covenant, and he was like, you know, teaching at a school that held to the
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Westminster Confession of Faith, and he's like, it's not a covenant, let's call it the Adamic Administration. But let's break it down.
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So even if you don't want to call it a covenant, what did this entail? You have the parties, let's talk about that first.
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We'll talk about everything, the parties, the rewards, punishments, and conditions.
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So the parties are God and Adam. So Genesis 2, the Lord God took man, placed him in the garden, and he made a covenant with him.
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That is not a quote. Notice who was not around when God made the covenant, or when
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God gave Adam the punishment, the law not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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Who was not there? Eve, exactly. So I want to draw that out, because the covenant that God made is not sort of this universal covenant.
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I don't want you to think of, that's a lie, it is a universal covenant. But it's not made between Adams in a different relationship in that covenant than all other humans are.
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It's not like, when you read Genesis, don't think of yourself as Adam, in the sense that, okay, you know,
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Adam sinned, and just like Adam, I sinned, but I shouldn't sin, type thing. Adam's in a different position as us.
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He's a covenant head, or he's our federal head in that covenant.
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Richard Belker says, covenants operate on the basis of a, oh, I had a note not to read this quote, because I can't pronounce the words in it.
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I stumble over it every time. But it's important. Covenants operate on the basis of a representative principle, so that the actions of the covenant representative affect others who are part of the covenant relationship.
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So basically, if you're the head of the covenant, or you're the federal head, your actions affect all of those in the covenant.
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And he says, specifically, in every covenant, this principle includes the descendants. So in the
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Adamic covenant, that would include us. Examples, if you don't agree with it, including the descendants here, in the
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Abrahamic covenant, Genesis 17, seven, I will establish my covenant between you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be a
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God to your offspring after you. Deuteronomy 5, God talks, or Moses talks to the people and says, this is the covenant
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God made with you. He didn't make it with your fathers, even though the covenant technically was made with their fathers at Sinai.
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And then obviously, the Davidic covenant, right? Because it's the promise that a descendant of David will be on the throne forever.
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Guy Waters says, the fate of Adam's descendants, with the exception of Jesus, was suspended on Adam's action in covenant with God.
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So the idea of Adam as a federal head is very important. It actually helps explain why the genealogy in Genesis 5 is different from every other genealogy.
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You have, and he died, and he died, and he died, repeated over and over again in that genealogy, which you don't see in normal genealogies.
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And part of the reason for that is to show that Adam's sin brought death.
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And you've got the downward spiral of mankind and death coming. So we talked about the wrong view as viewing
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Adam as every man. Another wrong view is viewing Adam as passing on the sin biologically, which is kind of a funny view.
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But I was listening to a podcast earlier this week, and they were sort of talking about it and saying, like, you know, the word genome is never found in scripture, which is just a really weird thing to say.
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But they were talking about, like, this idea that Adam, you know, somehow the sin seared itself on the
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DNA. That's not at all what we're talking about. We're talking about Adam, you know, in a relationship with God.
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And because we are represented in Adam, we now have that sin imputed to us.
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Does that make sense? Any questions on that? You either had no question or it didn't make sense.
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One of the two. What's helpful, if you're trying to understand the idea of federal headship, a good analogy is let's say a soccer team or something.
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And if your team captain scores a goal, everybody on the team has a point, right?
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I don't play sports. Please tell me that's right. So, like, it's not just, he's not doing it one thing for himself, but it affects everybody.
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Or in the same way as, like, a country decides to go to war, the individuals in that country don't have to decide whether or not they're going to, you know, whether or not they're going to be at war.
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Now we're at war because we're Americans and America went to war. You're at war.
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So that's the idea here. Adam's our federal head. There's two conditions when we get to the covenant conditions here.
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Typically, we'll focus just on the command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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There's a general condition as well that was sort of there at creation.
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And it's the moral law. So obviously, Adam can't keep the covenant if he avoids eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and also murders his wife, you know.
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That doesn't work. The moral law is still in place. But it's interesting. This I found really fascinating.
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It would be something similar to the Ten Commandments, but he probably wouldn't have understood the Ten Commandments in the same way we do because he doesn't have this concept of sin.
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So it would be more positive. So instead of don't murder, it would be more of, like, look out or seek your neighbor's well -being or something like that.
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Burkhoff points that out, and I'd never thought of it like that before. It was interesting.
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He doesn't have a concept of sin, so he's not going down this list of things that he shouldn't be doing and avoiding.
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You also have instituted at creation the creation ordinances of work, rest, and slash worship, and something else, marriage, work, rest, and marriage.
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And those are, while not necessarily wrapped up into the Covenant, those are things that Adam would have had to keep.
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But the main law here, do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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Any idea why God would require that? Like, what's the point of saying, you can eat of every tree except this one?
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There's nothing, is there anything obviously wrong with eating from a certain tree?
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It's not like the tree was poisonous or anything. Exactly, exactly.
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There's really no moral reason why you shouldn't do it except that God said not to, which is the whole point.
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It's a positive law. So I looked up the definition of a positive law. It says, statutes which have been laid down by a legislator, court, or other human institution, that part doesn't apply, and can take whatever form the author wants.
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It's not based on, you know, do not murder is a law, a moral law.
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It's like, regardless of whether or not there are laws saying you can't murder, you just can't, you should not murder because it's morally wrong.
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But a positive law, there's not really any moral connection to it except the person told you not to.
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So, why give a positive law? Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. It's obviously anything that involved the moral law,
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Adam naturally would recoil against being created perfect, though I feel like he should have also naturally recoiled against this because God commanded him not to, and he was perfect.
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That's the part I think, like if you read R .C. Sproul on this, he's like, that's the big question. How could a perfect, you know,
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Adam, how could he sin? But that was not in my notes.
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Really, so Berkhoff says the reason that he has this positive law with the tree, it's just a test of pure obedience in the absolute sense of the word.
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There's no moral reason why you don't do it, the only reason God said not to.
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He says, in order that the test of Adam might be the test of pure obedience, God deemed it necessary to add to the commandments of which
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Adam perceived the naturalness and reasonableness, a commandment which was in a certain sense arbitrary and indifferent.
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The great question that had to be settled was whether man would obey God implicitly or follow the guidance of his own judgment.
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O. Palmer Robinson says, the raw word of God in itself must become the basis of man's actions.
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So it's really, are you going to have this type of obedience just because God said don't do this?
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And that's where Adam fell, or failed. Right. Yeah. It's interesting.
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It's like God placed, so this is the, this is I think the Christopher Hitchens version.
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It's equivalent to God placing a child in a room with, or a parent placing a child in the room with a chainsaw and saying, don't play with the chainsaw.
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That's totally not what's happening here. Adam's an adult, morally responsible, our federal head, and he's told, here's this one command that you have to keep to prove that you can obey me.
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And he fails. What type of obedience? So we read it, chapter 19 in London Baptist.
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It's the, something Pastor Raymond Roth likes to say a lot. Four words, personal, perpetual, exact, and entire.
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So you don't necessarily find those words in scripture. It's just the implication, you know, you, you sin once and it's done.
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And a lot of times those concepts are going to sort of overlap if you Venn diagram them, which
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I don't ever do. So that's the, that's the specific law, the obedience, perfect, perpetual, exact, and entire.
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And it's important to recognize this because then you look back, you look forward to Christ and you see that's the obedience that he's required if, if he has to fulfill this covenant as well.
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What's the penalty? Here's the question. Is the penalty, the penalty is death.
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Is it physical, spiritual, or eternal death? Yes. The answer is yes.
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So, but if it's, if it's physical death, why didn't Adam die right away?
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Right. He did begin to die. Yeah. I would say they were post -fall. There's no indication that there's any pre -fall kids.
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Right. So, so let's say he ate, eats of the fruit and God goes, that, that okay, right?
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God has every right to immediately exact the punishment that is required for breaking the covenant.
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But he doesn't, he actually doesn't because instead of immediately exacting the punishment, he immediately provides a substitute.
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And Adam is immediately taken from the covenant of works into the beginnings of the covenant of grace. And we look forward to, to Christ who is going to suffer the full penalty there.
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Exactly. Yeah. So he makes that promise after, after Adam has sinned.
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So if he, you know, before making the promise, he could just kill Adam right then and there. I'm about to be corrected.
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Genesis 2 .0. Right. Yeah. It's an act of just mercy on God's part that he didn't immediately kill him.
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So because God didn't immediately kill him, does that prove that Genesis is not a literal six days?
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Like, you're like, what on earth? I know. You're just like, what is he talking about? I heard the only reason I'm saying this is
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I heard this argument once before. It's a little bit crazy. Go ahead.
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Well, he did die spiritually. Exactly. So he's immediately separated from God.
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He's going to die physically. And after that, unless he's, you know, has faith and is saved, he would have died, you know, eternally in hell as well.
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Right. Right. Yeah. My point is, with the crazy question
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I asked about literal creation or not, is some people say, well, he didn't literally die, therefore you don't need to take
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Genesis 1 through 3 as literal, therefore the days don't have to be literal as well. That's just, just not right.
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At least that argument. Right. I mean, doesn't God immediately provide him clothes of skin, which implies that Adam sees something die in order for him to be covered as well?
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Well, something interesting here with the penalty of death, the
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Hebrew is, sometimes when the Hebrew wants to emphasize something, they just put the two verbs together in different verbal forms.
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So death is mot. It's like mot tamut, which basically means dying, dying, or dying, you shall surely die, or something along those lines.
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It's a guarantee. You break this covenant, you are guaranteed the punishment of death.
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He can no longer approach the holy God. Yeah, I couldn't imagine being in a right relation. So we always, we have the reverse.
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We know what it's like being in a bad relationship or at enmity with God, and then being brought into communion with God.
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But imagine going from communion with God to enmity with God. That would be scary.
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I think we're on reward, right? I hope. So, we talked a little bit about this already, because there is no reward specified.
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Theologians argue that just the implication of the punishment being death implies that the reward is life.
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They actually go farther and argue it's not just continued existence, but some would argue that he would actually have passed out of the stage of probationary testing, and then be like what we would be in heaven.
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So, not able to sin anymore. Burkhoff says, the image of God in man was still limited, so this is pre -fall.
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It was still limited by the possibility of man sinning against God, changing from good to evil, and becoming subject to the power of death.
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The promise of life in the covenant of works was a promise of the removal of all the limitations of life to which
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Adam was still subject, and the raising of his life to the highest degree of perfection. So, when we get into some of those, the idea of having eternal life, it's symbolized by the tree of life as well.
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Just recognize that we believe, we interpret scripture both, oh,
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I blanked on the correct way to say this. What does the Westminster say about how you interpret scripture?
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It's the clear, I don't have my Bible that includes the confession, or I'd look it up.
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But anyway, there's necessary implications, so you can take the implications of what's in scripture as well, and hold to them.
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Though, when you're taking the implications of scripture, you need to be more careful because you could be implying faultily.
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I should just write everything I might ever possibly say on a note. So the idea of sacrament is one of those ideas.
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Scholars say there's four sacraments, there's two sacraments, there's one sacrament, or there's no sacrament.
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So basically, just take your pick. The idea of a sacrament, it's a sign and a seal of God's promise.
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So I'm comfortable saying that there was a sacrament being the tree of life, because Adam was barred from eating of the tree of life after his sin, in the same way as if someone's excommunicated today, we would bar them from the
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Lord's Supper. But the Lord's Supper isn't providing us life in Christ. I would argue probably that the tree of life wasn't like a magical tree that extended his life, but it was a symbol of the promise that God had made, or at least the promise that he would only die if he had eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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But I won't be burned at the stake for that one. I'll recant before that. So question, that was the covenant of works before Adam, or before the fall.
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Is the covenant of works still in effect today? Because, you know,
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Adam immediately after he was sent, he was basically put in the covenant of grace, and you have then the covenant of grace starting with Adam and extending all the way through Christ.
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Exactly. So we've got our own, I mean, we are born under Adam, in this group of Adam, and we sin on our own.
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So it's like, you know, we've got two strikes against us already, and you only need one strike to be out.
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So some will say the covenant of works is not in effect today, and they base that on Hebrews 8 .13.
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I disagree with this. Hebrews 8 .13, in speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete, and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
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So they'd say the old covenant is gone. They would also argue that the old covenant is gone because now that we are all sinners,
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God can't hold us to obedience anymore. Basically saying that, you know,
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God can't command what we can't do. What's the problem with that? Exactly.
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So Augustine would say, command what you will, and then, you know, give me the ability to do it or something along those lines.
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Right. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But some will argue that God would never tell you to do something that you can't do.
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If he gives a command, it has to be a command that you can keep. It's sort of this
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Pelagian idea a little bit. The problem with that is then, what's the best way to be, if that's true, what's the best way to, you know, have no accountability towards God?
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Ignore the word of God. There's another one that I think is just funny. You can sin a lot because the more you sin, the more you're in bondage to sin, which means the less you're free to not sin, which means the less authority
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God has to command you not to sin. So just keep on sinning and eventually you'll get out from under that requirement.
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No, it's just a bad, it's a bad argument, but it's one that's listed in Birkhoff, which is why
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I brought it up. Birkhoff doesn't argue for it. But what
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Birkhoff does argue is that the covenant of works is partially enforced, partially fulfilled. I mean, obviously, there's, you know, we don't have to be afraid that we might pick up an apple one day and it came from the wrong tree and we're in trouble.
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But we still are required as God's creatures to obey the moral law. We're still under Adam.
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So we're still, the curse of the covenant of works is still on us. If Adam is still our federal head, if we're not in Christ.
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That's the main thing. The curse of the covenant of works is still, in fact, in effect for everyone who is not in Christ, which is a good transition to how is
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Christ related to the covenant of works? There's three ways. Any ideas? There's probably more than three ways.
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Yeah, that is true. I didn't, oh, go ahead, prophet, priest.
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That's not right here. That's always right. It's like one step up from like the
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Sunday school answer of God or Jesus. It's prophet, priest, and king. So basically, he fulfilled it is, you could just write in big letters and, you know, cover all three of those spots.
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Three specific ways that he fulfilled it. He succeeded where Adam fell.
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I don't know if we have time to read all of Luke 4, but if you look at Luke 4, that's the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.
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Go ahead and open there, though, open to Luke 4, and I'll just start reading and stop when
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I think we'll run out of time. So Luke 4, and Jesus, full of the
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Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil.
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And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread.
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And Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. And then you have two other temptations from the devil.
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What does that have to do with anything? Does your interpretation of the temptation of Jesus change if you read verse 38 of Luke 2, the last verse of Luke 2?
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What Luke is just, so Luke, oh, I'm sorry, sending you off on a wild goose chase.
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The last verse of chapter 3 of Luke, so right before chapter 4.
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So it's everybody's life verse. The son of Enoch, the son of Seth, son of Adam, son of God.
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It's just the end of the genealogy. But does that affect how you read the temptation narrative in Luke 4?
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It should, because Luke has just traced, gone from Jesus in Luke 3 and traced a line all the way up to Adam.
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And then he says, now let's talk about the temptation of Jesus. And so you should.
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Now, there's a lot of parallels here, especially in Matthew's gospel, you'll get parallels between the temptation of Jesus and how
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Israel failed in the wilderness as well. But you should, when you're reading this, also be thinking, okay, you're immediately thinking of Adam and then you start reading about Jesus being tempted.
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How is Jesus going to deal with these temptations? Is it going to be the same way as Adam?
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And there's a lot of interesting parallels. Adam's tempted in a garden, Christ is in the wilderness,
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Adam's, I'm presuming Adam isn't hungry, he's got all these trees to eat,
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Christ has just fasted for 40 days. But Christ succeeds where Adam fails.
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Luke is sort of setting you up to see, you know, here's our new covenant head, here's somebody who's succeeding where Adam failed.
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That's just one example of the active obedience of Christ, Christ obeying, fulfilling the requirements of the moral law, which
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Adam failed. Second, he not only succeeded where Adam failed, he also bore the covenant curse that Adam deserved.
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He bore the curse of death. Galatians 3 .13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
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For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. So you have the active obedience of Christ and then the passive obedience of Christ.
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Active meaning, you know, he fulfilled the law, passive meaning he bore the punishment that we deserved.
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Finally, you have Christ is our federal head, he's the second Adam. So this is where 1
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Corinthians 15 and Romans 5 come into play. 1 Corinthians 15 .21
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-23 says, for as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
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For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order,
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Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. So basically, if you're in Adam, you've got the promise of death, the curses.
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If you're in Christ, he's fulfilled that and you have not only the promise that he's taken on your sins, but you have the promise of eternal life.
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Him being the firstfruits means that you get to look at the resurrected Christ and say, this is what
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I'm going to be like in my resurrected body. You can be the firstfruits of Adam, meaning you can be like him and die, or you can be firstfruits with Christ and live.
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Not firstfruits with Christ, that's wrong, Christ is the firstfruits. But you get to be with Christ or with Adam.
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Guy Waters says, for Paul, Adam and Christ each stand at the head of a distinct eschatological order.
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That means just an order that comes to fruition in the end times. Death in all its forms, not life, is the just outcome for Adam and all those who are in Adam.
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But when God graciously transfers a person from being in Adam to being in Christ, God brings that person from the realm of sin, curse, and death into the realm of righteousness, blessing, and life.
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And that sort of helps understand. So I don't know if you're like me, whenever I read this verse,
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I get hung up on two words here. It's actually not in the verses
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I read. But when it talks about in Adam all died, in Christ all will be made alive,
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I get hung up on that a lot because I want to say in Adam every single human being died.
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In Christ, not every single human being will be made alive. But how do you say that if right next to each other it says all die, all will be made alive.
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And what's helpful is to realize there, he's talking about all in reference to all of those in federal headship or in union with Adam or Christ.
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So in Adam, all who are in Adam die. In Christ, all who are in Adam will be made alive.
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I don't know if that helps you, but that definitely helped me because obviously you want to affirm everyone dies in Adam without affirming everyone in the world will be saved by Christ because we're not the first Baptist and Unitarian Church.
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And then Romans 5 .17,
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this is probably the verse we'll close on. For if because of one man's trespass, death reign through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man,
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Jesus Christ. So really if you're thinking of humanity, Paul divides humanity in two groups.
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And he doesn't divide it, you know, today black and white or he doesn't divide it, you know, good or bad.
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He doesn't do male or female. He doesn't even do Jew versus Gentile, which you would think maybe that would be a group that Paul would cling to.
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He actually divides all of humanity into in Adam or in Christ. And those are your two options.
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You have two federal heads and if you're in Adam, you have all the curses that Adam has earned for you.
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And if you're in Christ, you have all the blessings that Christ has accomplished for you.
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I like to think of it sort of, I don't want to get into theological trouble here, but I like to think that you go, like, let's say you you're standing before the judgment seat of God on the last day and you basically have an option.
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You can call one of two people to be your mediator. You want to call Adam or do you want
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Christ? You get to pick. You already know Adam has failed miserably and you know
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Christ has succeeded where Adam failed and bore the punishment that Adam has deserved.
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Guy Waters again, what we have in Christ is entirely the gift of God to us by no way based on our actions or character in the past, presence, or future.
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And then we see that from the covenant of works, really, because what we have in Adam is
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Adam earned for all of us a sin nature. Christ earns for all who are in Christ salvation.
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And then we have this chart here. This chart is just maybe a helpful way of thinking of the covenant.
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Not helpful that it's titled differently than the covenants I'm talking about, but the covenant of creation is the same as the covenant of works.
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This is from a Palmer Robertson. And the covenant of redemption is the same as the covenant of grace.
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And you see Adam is in the covenant of works and then right away transferred after his sin into the covenant of grace and you have the different administrations of the covenant culminating in the new covenant that Christ creates.
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Any questions? We're all good?
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All right. Yeah, go ahead. There's one right in here that I heard mentioned by a name.
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Yeah. Yeah, so Adam's... Right, so Adam being in a state of innocence basically means he...
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So we have a bias to sin.
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We hate God in our natural, you know, before being saved.
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We hate God. We love sin. If we're given the choice, we don't decide, you know, there's no place in our mind where we've got this sort of unbiased logical reasoning that we can say, okay, let's weigh the options.
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Is choosing Christ better than choosing Adam? We just hate God. You know,
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Romans 1, we suppress the truth of God in unrighteousness. But Adam's not like that. He's in a state of innocence in the sense that he's not biased to hate
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God. He's actually biased toward God because he has no sin nature.
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And then that makes him... That makes the fall almost even worse because it makes sense that I sin because I have a sin nature.
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It does not make sense that Adam sins as much as it would for me to sin.
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Anything else? Questions? Comments? Vehement disagreements?
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All right. Let's just close in prayer then and let's pray.
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Lord, thank you for your love for us, for creating Adam and agreeing or really condescending to be in a covenant relationship with him.
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And then even though he failed, for giving us a way out, for sending
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Christ to die for our sins and for drawing us to Christ. We praise you for that.
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Help us to more and more recognize just what a privilege it is to be in Christ as opposed to being in Adam.