No 28

(The Everlasting Covenant)

Most of the covenants God made were with Israel but there are some that were for all of humanity; the Everlasting Covenant is one of them.

The Bible opens with a brief account of creation, the making of man, and his fall. From later Scripture we have no difficulty in realising that the issue of the trial to which man was subjected in Eden had been divinely foreseen. “The Lamb slain [in the purpose of God] from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) makes it clear that in view of the fall, provision had been made by God for the recovery of His people. The wording of the covenant is as follows “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” Genesis 3:15. The Lord was basically setting the stage for the struggle between good (the woman’s seed) and evil (the serpent’s seed) for the rest of time on earth.

The Everlasting Covenant or the Covenant of Grace is, in reality between God and Christ in view of the fact that man is incapable of saving or justifying himself as we saw in study # 99 on Total depravity. God the Father is the initiator of the covenant, God the Son is the executor of the covenant and man is the beneficiary of the covenant. In order for Jesus to execute His covenant engagement it was necessary for Him to assume human nature and be made in all things like unto us so that He might enter our place and be made under the law. He must have a soul and body in which He was capable of suffering and being paid the just wages of His people's sins. We read in Hebrews 10:10 the summation of this voluntary act on the part of Christ “By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”