From Adam to Abraham

One of the immediate inferences from the covenant of redemption—that is, God giving a people to His Son to be their representative Head—is that no one who is saved by Christ is saved other than being included in Christ. This has further implications for the salvation of everyone from Adam to Abraham. First, we must clarify the question: Why say Adam to Abraham? Why not Adam to Noah, since God also made a covenant with Noah and his offspring? The answer is that we are talking specifically about salvation in Christ alone, and it is about the covenant made with Abraham that we get the first explicit statement in the Scriptures about its unity with the gospel. Most concisely stated, in Galatians 3:7-9,

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

We would not pass over the Noahic Covenant.1 On the contrary, it is so important and its material so complex that we must give it is own space so that we do not treat it too lightly. For now, I only move on in matters common to everyone prior to the patriarchs—four, to be exact:

(i.) The simple logic of gracious covenant membership.

(ii.) Adam and the commencement of the gracious covenant.

(iii.) Eve and the enmity between the two seeds.

(iv.) The first types of the promise and people.

The Simple Logic of Gracious Covenant Membership

We can begin with a syllogism:

All who are saved by Christ are covenant members in Him.

All who are saved from Adam to Abraham are saved by Christ.

∴ All who are saved from Adam to Abraham are covenant members in Him.

If we forget what it means to be a covenant member in Christ, then we must review. But this is a logical necessity of the covenant of redemption. No matter what someone wants to call it (or not call it), that Christ is the ultimate Offspring of Abraham to whom the promise is made is clearly taught in Scripture (cf. Gen. 3:15; Isa. 53:10; Gal. 3:16); so too is the representation of Christ for all who obtain righteousness and life (cf. Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:20-23, 45-49).

Here we forget, or fail to apply, the simplest truths:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6)

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

To say that there is no salvation outside of Christ means that there is none outside of His work in one’s place. Yet this work is a federal work, a representative work, a covenantal work. It would be indefensible to say that there were those from Adam to Abraham for whom there would be an exception to this rule.

This phrase IN THE HOUSE I am using, calls attention to one reason why an ongoing objective NATURE matters not only for ethics but for covenant theology itself. The “House” has a nature. Father and mother remain, and children remain. “Adam and Eve didn’t try to chuck Cain and Abel back into Eden once they had them, or say to them at birth—OK, you guys are born into dad’s sinful race. You’re on your own until you get saved!”

The other necessary bit of simple logic involves the change of states experienced by Adam. We call these prelapsarian and postlapsarian as to their temporal relation to the fall as an event. But the words “innocence” and “nature” have also been used with respect to their state, or, in other words, their relationship to God. The relevance of this to covenant theology moving forward will be apparent. If the gaining of sin and the loss of righteousness separates us from God, then this is expressed in terms of the covenant. This is another reason that the covenant of redemption is so important for the covenant of grace. How all one distinguishes between the eternal covenant “behind the scenes” of that everlasting, yet temporally progressing, covenant, is going to make or break how one understands the identity of the people of God. And that was an early clue: how Adam and Eve remained a social unit after the fall. And how they had these two famous children, Cain and Abel, who went their separate ways, and yet both were brought up in the same home, both have inherited their father, Adam’s, sin nature, both instructed to offer sacrifices to the LORD. Before we begin to make those more difficult divisions, let us circle back to the fundamentals with Adam and Eve.

Adam and the Commencement of the Gracious Covenant

O. Palmer Robertson goes as far as to call this starting point with Adam and Eve’s salvation a “covenant of commencement,” or “the Adamic administration of the covenant of redemption.”2 Whatever label one wants to use, the important point is to remember the conditions upon which Adam could be saved, and those elements of a covenant to see if there is something there. There are five indications in the Genesis account that Adam and Eve were saved.

First, Adam’s naming of his wife shows that he believed the promise of 3:15—“The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living” (3:20). In Hebrew, “Eve” (ḥaw-wāh) closely resembles “living” (chay). So, Calvin commented that “when he heard the declaration of God concerning the prolongation of life, he began again to breathe and to take courage.”3

Second, there was God’s action: “the LORD God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” (3:21). If we compare this to 3:7, the contrast is between their own facade of a covering and God’s true provision. It also suggests that there was a sacrifice, typifying Christ’s work to come (cf. Heb. 9:22).

Third, there was what we might call a severe mercy. Note the words right before the exiling action: “Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever …” (3:22). This was not done out of any insecurity on God’s part! Adam was no threat to the heavenly courts. It was clearly a grace protecting Adam and Eve from a damning kind of immortality. 

Fourth, Eve’s reaction to the birth of Cain (4:1), which at least looked forward to that offspring (3:15), but then an even more God-glorifying reaction to Seth’s birth (4:25), changing the acting subject from “I have” to “God has.” The mother of all the living proved herself to be the mother of all the spiritually living as well. She went from presumption to utter dependence on God. 

Fifth, the account of the godly line circles back to Adam and directly links Seth to him (5:1-3), positioning Seth after Adam’s own image, and Adam, in turn, as God’s. This would be odd if all that was occurring was a reaffirmation of Adam’s old line. Why then not place this before the birth of Cain? One perfectly reasonable answer is that Adam is considered to be the first of the godly line. 

Consequently, even though Adam represents the cursed race as their head (Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:22), nevertheless these five clues are given in Genesis to the effect that he and his wife also found grace. But why call this a “covenant” in the same sense as the other administrations that follow (e.g., Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and the New Covenant)? Roberts argued that it is evident in four things: namely, the “(1) the author, (2) parties, (3) matter, and, (4) form of this promise, which are for substance the same with those of the Covenant of Faith, though very dimly and obscurely revealed in this first promise.”4

Eve and the Enmity Between the Two Seeds

Roberts inquires as to the identity of the serpent. He surveys three opinions, two being extreme opposites and the other rising above them with obviously superior sophistication. Let this be a lesson for biblical typology in general. He says,

[1] Some understand here only the sensible and corporal serpent … But this opinion cannot stand. Partly, because if that were the case, then the corporal serpent only (which was but the instrument in seducing Eve) would be punished and the spiritual serpent Satan — the principal agent — would go unpunished …

[2] Some contrariwise understand here only the spiritual, incorporeal serpent, that old serpent the devil and Satan [cf. Rev. 20:2] … But this opinion cannot be admitted … because then the whole text must understood only figuratively, and not at all literally, and so be turned into a mere allegory, which neither safe nor solid.

[3] Some, seeing the inconvenience of both these extremes, understand both the corporeal and incorporeal serpent … but the serpent immediately and less principally, the devil mediately and more principally.5

If the two seeds in Genesis 3:15 represent two ultimate people groups in human history, then the enmity between them needs to be an object of covenant theology. Between the members of Christ’s seed and Satan’s seed there is a hostility and a warfare. God Himself initiates it—“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.” That the antagonism is set in the original antithesis between the serpent and the woman raises several questions.

Robertson offers three suggests, all of which may be equally true:

1. The woman was the first to be seduced. Appropriately therefore God mentioned her first. By the divine initiative, she shall be set at enmity against Satan.

2. The pride of man might lead him to disparage his wife, particularly since she was the first to fall. But now it becomes quite obvious that redemption will not be accomplished apart from the woman.

3. The woman may be mentioned first because of an intention to focus on her role as bearer of the child that ultimately was to deliver man from the forces of Satan. Through the woman God shall provide One who will save his people from their sins.6

They err who make “the woman” only Mary and not the church, or only the church and not Mary. Biblical typology always manifests the ectypes of the archetype, from left to right: that is, prototype to antitype, very often with many types in between.7 Hence, in the case of the woman that brings forth the Seed (and the seeds), Eve is prototype (Gen. 4:1), Mary the antitype (Isa. 7:14; Mat. 1:22-23)—Sarah and Hannah being notable intermediate types—the Jerusalem above being the archetype (Gal. 4:26; Rev. 12:1-2, 6, 13-17). Each of these two fundamental people groups will be likened to opposing cities, opposing mountains, and in that same context, opposing covenants. So Paul says,

Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband” (Gal. 4:24-27).

Paul’s immediate contrast here is between the Abrahamic and the Mosaic; however, the distinction between the children of the promise and children of the flesh is wider, and must encompass the two human races as a whole—those remaining in Adam and those grafted into Christ.

We have already seen that the ultimate Seed of the woman is the same as the ultimate Seed of Abraham—namely, Jesus Christ—but we had also seen that all believers in Christ are also called “Abraham’s offspring” (Gal. 3:29). There must also be a collective meaning to the seed of the serpent.

The New Testament paints the picture of these two seeds have always been at war. Not only does Paul, in the next breath there, draw application for the present Galatians to separate from the present Judaizers are an antitype to the prototype of Isaac being separated from Ishmael, but in other places, the Apostles treated those two seeds, from the beginning, not as mere symbols but as literal members of the very same warring people groups. So, John said, “We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one” (1 Jn. 3:12). Cain is conceived as “seed of the serpent,” in the ordinary sense of being generated from within the cursed line of Adam which had submitted itself to the tyrannical false prince called Satan. Jesus maintained that same literal and typological unity by saying to the Pharisees, “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (Jn. 8:44).

What about the obvious problem that all mankind was in the same boat in Adam? Paul even reinforces the point to a Christian audience in Ephesus by saying, “And you … were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:1, 3). Thus, it would appear that all human beings were this seed of the serpent with none left to be the seed of the woman except Christ. However, Peter speaks of becoming a Christian in terms of a new seed principle: “since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23). Therefore one becomes an offspring of this woman by regeneration by the Spirit and so participates in that same inheritance of Christ.

The First Types of the Promise and its People

Some of Roberts’ opening words on this section are useful to paint a picture:

Moses (the man of God, the peerless prophet of the Old Testament, the first and most ancient penman of holy writ), wrote first of Christ, and of God’s gracious promise and covenant in him towards sinners after Adam’s fall. Hereupon he, writing and first gospel, may deservedly be styled the first evangelist: and from his writings Christ and the apostles were frequently wont to conform their evangelical doctrine … Here God began to lay the first foundation-stone of the Covenants of Promise, and to open his rich cabinet of grace and mercy.8

Now that last sentence introduces us to another point of grammar that I want to make known, as I will continue quoting Roberts throughout. In addition to his particular labeling of the two main historical covenants as the covenant of works and the covenant of faith, he also divides the latter along the lines of the old and new covenant eras by the names “Covenants of Promise” and “Covenants of Performance.” It will be easy to remember because both use a word starting with p, though we must remember that “performance” in the latter will refer to Christ’s performance in order to fulfill the promise.

The text of Genesis continues to pose the difficulty to us that our covenant categories resolve. There is a new son, after Abel is murdered by Cain, and so the line of Seth is summarized in the words, “At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD” (Gen. 4:26). People are in the plural here and a genealogy is traced from him for the simple reason that this was a godly line and therefore part of the covenant family in which Christ was their head. That Abel had faith and so was a fitting member of the covenant is made plain by the author of Hebrews:

By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks (Heb. 11:4).

It is with Noah that we find the first use of the word “covenant” (בְּרִית) in the whole Bible. Again, God is the initiating speaker:

But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you (Gen 6:18).

We might remember that this was also the first place where the Hebrew word חֵן is used as well, as in, “Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD” (Gen. 6:8). Whether translated as “grace” or “favor,” we had already seen that the general sense of this concept of God’s unmerited good does not conflict with the particular sense of redemptive grace, which presupposes a fall into sin. One last thing should be said by way of reminder before getting into the nature of this covenant with Noah next time. Recall that this word, now also backed by the beginning of the Hebrew sentence, “And I will establish” (והקמתי) from the root for the imperative “rise up” or “stand firm” (קוּם). Many covenant theologians will point to this feature as indicating an already existing covenant which is now being confirmed or affirmed or made firm.

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1. Beeke and Jones note those “good number of theologians” who “divided the covenant of grace into three periods: (1) from Adam to Abraham; (2) Abraham to Moses; and (3) Moses to Christ. For example, John Ball passes right over the Noahic administration, which is surprising given his characteristic thoroughness. William Ames (1576-1633) and Johannes Wollebius (1586-1629) also held to the threefold structuring of the history of redemption.” A Puritan Theology, 263.

2. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 93.

3. Calvin, Commentaries, I:181.

4. Roberts, God’s Covenants, I:479.

5. Roberts, God’s Covenants, I:401.

6. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 97.

7. Roberts tends in the same balanced direction as he did in correcting the two extremes about the serpent. Here he does not go all the way and allow the mystical sense of the church (God’s Covenants, I:406-07); but this ignores several passages, not the least of which is the explanation given in Revelation 12.

8. Roberts, God’s Covenants, I:401.