by Douglas Goodin
As we have seen, the covenant between God and Israel had a beginning and an end. Since its termination, it ceases to be. It no longer exists. It is an ex-covenant. Nevertheless, many Christians persist in the error of believing that the Old Covenant lives on.
Some believe that the covenant with Israel is essentially the same as God's covenant with Adam, that is, rather than a unique pact with Israel, the Old Covenant is an expansion of the relationship God began with Adam which they call “The Covenant of Grace.” These believers are called Covenant Theologians and are usually found in the Presbyterian and Reformed paedo-baptist groups, along with many Reformed Baptists. According to this view, what happened in Exodus was not a new thing, but a further development of an old thing. They believe that the relationship between God and Adam includes the same promises and stipulations as His relationship with the twelve tribes of Jacob, the differences lying only in the externals. Like an orange—if you took off the orange peel and replaced it with a lemon peel, the nature of the fruit would not change with the color of its skin. So it is with the covenants according to Covenant Theology.
For example, Covenant Theologians argue that the Ten Commandments are God’s universal and eternal standard for all men everywhere, thus they must have been obligatory for Adam (and, for that matter, Hammurabi and Alexander the Great and the Aztecs). So when God gave them to Moses, He was not introducing a new set of laws, nor was He establishing a new relationship based upon those laws; rather, He was simply revealing more of what He had begun with Adam. Same sermon only longer and with more details. The covenant with Israel did not begin in Exodus 19, it began in Genesis 1. It would be like saying that America was not a new and independent nation in the 18th century, but a newer and more expanded version of Great Britain. (It is worth stating that this “continuation theory” is not affirmed in the Scripture, but is simply assumed by those who adhere to Covenant Theology.)
Why does this matter? Because the Scripture explicitly reveals the uniqueness and purpose of God’s covenant with Israel, including the Ten Commandments. That biblically stated purpose is obscured by the adherents of Covenant Theology. For example, the apostle Paul taught that the Law was given so that sin among the Jews would increase (Rom. 5:20) and lead them to perceive their need for the Messiah (Rom. 3:20; Gal. 3:15f). It is never referred to, either in name or concept, as “God’s eternal moral standard.” To the contrary, Paul rebukes the Galatian church for seeking to be perfected by the flesh through keeping the Mosaic Law. However, Covenant Theology teaches that God intends Christians to be sanctified by keeping the Mosaic Law. They are forced into this conclusion by their presupposition that the Ten Commandments did not originate in God’s covenant with Israel, but are incumbent upon all men everywhere all the way back to Adam.
Their opinion becomes even more consequential when it is applied to the New Covenant. In their view, it is not a “new” covenant, but a “newer” version of what God began in Eden and continued at Sinai. Thus, the covenant with Israel did not begin with Moses, and the New Covenant did not begin with Christ; they both began with Adam. To use their terms, the covenants recorded in the Bible are different external administrations of the Covenant of Grace between God and man (a covenant, by the way, which is not found in the Bible). The manifold ramifications of holding this view will have to be discussed elsewhere, but we should be aware that it is the foundation for such doctrines and practices as: baptizing infants, imposing the Sabbath Day upon non-Jews, regarding the Ten Commandments as the eternally binding moral Law of God upon all men everywhere, and the exclusive singing of Psalms in worship. For our purposes, it will suffice to realize that according to the Bible, God’s covenant with Israel was unique to that nation, and it had a definite beginning in Exodus 19.