Unconditional and Conditional

Part 2 of the Abrahamic Administration of the Covenant of Grace

John Scott Redd divides the whole narrative of the Abrahamic administration into four: “covenant introduction (Gen. 12), covenant ratification (Gen. 15), covenant amendment (Gen. 17), and covenant confirmation (Gen. 22).”1 This is a useful division, perhaps even the best way if one was to teach for four weeks on the subject. For our purposes, Genesis 15 and 17 are the next two main stops on the path from Abraham to Moses. This is especially pointed in considering our question today.

If what was revealed to Abraham and what was revealed to Moses seem to differ so much as to grace and law, is this not the best evidence that they are two different covenants? On the other hand, if they are two phases of one covenant, then how should we understand such differences?

Many have emphasized the difference between the Abrahamic and the Mosaic purely in terms of the unconditional nature of the former and conditional nature of the latter—or, to put it another way, the principle of grace in the former and the principle of works in the latter.

The school following Kline will even borrow from a distinction that became popularized by mid-twentieth century ANE scholarship—especially George Mendenhall’s Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East—that of the suzerain treaty and the royal grant. Like the great kings from that region, Moses depicted God as “The Great King” who alone commands the loyalty of the Israelites, but whose covenant took something of the same form as those that they were used to. Since these forms are detected in aspects of Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy as a whole, the covenant to Israel through Moses is seen as one of these sorts. By contrast, a royal grant was one in which the sovereign simply dispensed with his favor to highlight his own generosity. There were no stipulations for the performance of the beneficiaries. It was this relationship that was seen to typify the covenant made with Abraham. Needless to say, many have seen this as too simple.

The Unconditional Foundation of the Covenant of Grace

“Fear not, Abram” are the opening divine words of Genesis 15. In approaching this chapter, context is crucial. Redd explains that, “The problem of Genesis 15 is one of assurance: How can Abraham be sure that the Lord will provide him with an heir?”2 Of course all of the other promises were wrapped up in that one. The sum of the gospel itself could not be intelligible to him if he did not at least have a son. Hence his immediate reply:

But Abram said, “O Lord GOD, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” (v. 2)

The details differ between Abraham and ourselves, but that is only because of the unique position he stood in the history of redemption. However, the basic need is the same—the need to discover God’s covenant love for us. It is this context that will properly highlight the unconditional dimension of this covenant without inflating it.

It is on the nature of the ceremony itself that we must focus. Horton picks up on Mendenhall’s distinction between the suzerain treaty and the royal grant, saying, “the former is conditional, while the latter is an unconditional promise on the part of the suzerain.”3

Horton begins his theologizing about this in the text of Galatians 4, where

[Paul] explains that there are two very different types of covenantal arrangements in the Old Testament itself. Paul speaks forcefully in Galatians 4 of two covenants, two mountains, and two mothers … The principles of law (i.e., personal performance) and promise (i.e., inheritance of an estate by virtue of the performance of another) give rise to antithetical forms of religion.4

This is accurate as far as it goes. It is very important too.

Returning to the crucial text, we note the physical landscape. God told Abraham,

“Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half (Gen. 15:9-10).

According to Robertson, “These actions established an oath of self-malediction.”5 It is said that in the dominant treaty ceremony, the two parties would walk, arm-in-arm, together between the pieces. This symbolized that if either of the parties went back on their part of the bargain, the same would happen to them as occurred to these animals. We see the other side of this coin in a passage later on in the Prophets: “And the men who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make them like the calf that they cut in two and passed between its parts” (Jer. 34:18).

Two other elements must be observed. The first is that Abraham is asleep (v. 12), and the second is that God passes through the pieces by Himself. That is the meaning of this mysterious “smoking fire pot and a flaming torch [that] passed between these pieces” (v. 17). Now we must put these two elements together. This represents unilateral faithfulness, but also God’s willingness to take the curse upon Himself, just as the bow seems to have represented in the Noahic covenant. So here, God is directing attention to Himself. This is how the author of Hebrews looked back to this moment:

For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us (Heb. 6:13-18).

The Conditional Elements of the Covenant of Grace

In Genesis 17, we see more clearly the conditions. How can there be conditions for living under grace if all is of grace and if grace is unconditional?

“walk before me, and be blameless” (v. 1).

“you shall keep my covenant” (v. 9).

“Every male among you shall be circumcised” (v. 10).

Simply put, these are all imperatives. Redd writes that this gives “helpful corrective to the previous emphasis on God’s unilateral participation in the covenant,”6 namely in Chapter 15. Roberts divides the implicit duties under three heads: “{1} to walk before God, {2} to be perfect, and {3} to be his people.”7 What do each of these mean?

The root for “walk” (הָלַךְ) became the source of the practical sayings of later Jewish tradition. Whatever one thinks of those, the biblical use of “walking” with either God or man is filled with the meaning of personal relationship and careful observance. As in the first words of the Psalms,

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked (Ps. 1:1).

Recall that God Himself is depicted as “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8), or that “Enoch walked with God” (Gen. 5:22, 24). It is put negatively in Paul’s admonition, “that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds” (Eph. 4:17).

Beyond that, this verb is couple with the phrase “before my face” (לפני), from the sense of the personal presence of “the face” (פָנִים), which is famously used in Genesis 1:3 of the Spirit of God hovering “over the face of the waters” (על־פני המים), and in the first commandment of Exodus 20:3, where He says, “You shall have no other gods before me” (על־פני)—that is, before His face. If we put all of this together, what is demanded of Abraham and all his offspring is that they walk in a manner worthy of their call, as Paul also says in Ephesians 4.

What does Horton say about the seeming conditionality of the circumcision command? He replies that, “this rite is not treated as a condition of inheritance but as a sign and seal of the inheritance for the heir who is already entitled to it.”8 Horton recognizes elements in the narrative in which Abraham is receiving something as a consequence of some prior action: for instance, the obedience of being willing to sacrifice Isaac. The words of Genesis 22:16-18 suggest reward as a consequence of Abraham’s action.

He even quotes Kline about the opening of Genesis 15 having a connection to Abraham’s refusal to take tribute from the king of Sodom in the previous chapter:

The term sakar, ‘reward,’ is used for the compensation due to those who have conducted a military campaign . In Ezekiel 29:19 it refers to the spoil of Egypt which the lord gives Nebuchadnezzar as wages for his army (cf. Isa. 40:10; 62:11). The imagery of Genesis 15:1 is that of the Great King honoring Abraham’s notable exhibition of compliance of covenant duty by the reward of a special grant that would more than make up for whatever enrichment he had forgone at the hands of the king of Sodom for the sake of faithfulness to Yahweh, his Lord.9

Vos said, “The covenant is unilateral in its origin, bilateral in its essence,”10 specifically “faith”—cf. Gen. 15:6, Rom. 4:3 for the unilateral or unconditional element; and then “walk with God.” cf. Gen. 17:1, Eph. 2:10, for the bilateral or conditional element. In Genesis 17 we see this not only in circumcision as a sign, but there is a general principle of: This is my covenant. You are my covenant people. The obligation is not contrary to grace, but makes sense in light of other important dimensions of salvation, such as the process of sanctification and the quest for assurance. It also makes sense of the fact that Abraham was father of Israel in two ways. The relevant way here is that Israel of old would be the typological, physical people, for whom disobedience led to eviction from the land as a type. Hence the most immediate narrative function of this condition would be to mark for the reader God’s reason for punishing those people later on.

One concise statement by Witsius not only strikes the right gospel balance, but suggests that not everyone has been as clear. He said,

Or if we will insist upon it, to call these things conditions: they are not so much conditions of the covenant, as of the assurance that we shall continue in God’s covenant, and that he shall be our God. And I make no doubt, that this was exactly the meaning of those very learned divines, though all of them have not so happily expressed themselves.11

But what does this conditionality mean for the real individuals that play the leading role in the story? We subordinate the outworking of election to the invisible Author and act of election. God’s essence and decree are more foundational than what is external to God and what is consequent to His decree. Any view that fails to square with this truth has abandoned monotheism. God chose Abraham, as He had chosen Noah. Abraham obeyed, but not perfectly. He went in faith, building an altar as Noah had. He also failed to separate from Lot at first and twice acted in fear toward his neighbors regarding Sarah, as surely as Noah had gotten drunk. Thus when Paul says of Abraham that “No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God” (Rom. 4:25), this is a relative statement in the particulars, but absolutely true as to the general trajectory.

Reconciling the Unconditional and Conditional

It is one thing to know that two things are logically consistent. It is another to see their mutual design. I will introduce only four principles that show both the “how” and the “why” of this relationship.

1. The unconditional is meeting the conditions.

What God does do is what guarantees what man must do. Divine efficiency does not cancel human necessity any more than divine sovereignty cancels human freedom. That God is the First Mover in the setting of “pieces” in a mosaic does not make their placement meaningless. As the Westminster Confession puts it,

God from all eternity did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established (III.1)

The claim of this section of the Confession cannot be ignored in this part of covenant theology. Paul shows that this principle is foundation in salvation: “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Eph. 1:4). Personal holiness is a necessary condition to salvation. Election initiates all that guarantees that this condition will be met.

2. The conditional is made fitting to the unconditional.

In other words, grace not only enables the meeting of conditions, but makes the conditions meet. That which is virtuous and might otherwise cause boasting instead reflects the goodness of God. It is also fitting that each part fits in a way that speaks to a reality that is more than simply grace. That faith is given by grace does not make it less like faith, but more. And so on with the other fruit of the covenant. Think again of the whole relationship established by unconditional grace as a mosaic, and each piece forming a condition. Some pieces are more central than others, but all are conditions. So Noah makes a piece that is “blameless in his generation” (Gen. 6:9). Abraham response in coming out of Ur makes one piece (Gen. 12:1) and his readiness to sacrifice Isaac forms another (Gen. 22:12). When Moses “considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt” (Heb. 11:26), another piece is laid down, and so are the cries of the people in slavery (Ex. 3:7) that God seems to respond to. David is another—a man after God’s own heart (1 Sam. 13:14). Yet in all of these, God receives the glory through real goods discovered and real habits formed.

3. The conditional lights the path that is unconditionally laid before us.

Paul again gives language to this, in saying that, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). As it is in the New Testament, so it was in the Old. Grace is the efficient cause of salvation, but good works are a crucial end cause. So that “walk before me” to Abraham is a means by which the covenant is confirmed—not contributed to in terms of God’s decree—but confirmed to Abraham’s naturally doubting heart. Conditions met are not unnatural boxes to be checked, but answers to a deep longing a child of God already has. To be told that, “This is what it looks like” is good news to someone who is looking.

4. The conditional makes a clear typology of division.

In other words, the sword of God’s decree in eternity, being invisible, is expressed in time so that we can map out the sequence of what persevering to glory or stumbling into apostasy look like.

To the latter mapping out of apostasy, a classic passage is found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians,

For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did (1 Cor. 10:1-6).

But why does Genesis 17:8 speak of the immediate promise of land as “everlasting”? And how could it be everlasting in any event, given that those people were carted off into captivity and their line of kings broken? As a general interpretive rule, we understand “everlasting” to be fixed to the ultimate fulfillment of each promise. Here one can see Joshua 21:43-45 as a lens through which Romans 4:13 becomes the long-distant target. So, the immediate fulfillment in the Old Testament of the land promise is both real yet typological (see Hebrews 4 also on that), and then the ultimate fulfillment is also real and eschatological.

To put it one more way, Canaan of old is the “shadowlands” of Zion to come. Genesis 17 can speak of the two “points” as if a single object of promise. As to all of the other promises that can be called “everlasting,” that brings us broader rationale. In Abraham, there were two “Israels” in a sense. Romans 9:1-8 and other places speak to this. But the short summary is that those of faith in the Old and New Testament were elect by God unto salvation, such that God never forsakes true Israel, but the apostate children of the flesh in all generations fall away not from actual salvation, but from a false profession. To speak of a “never-forsaking” relationship is only another way to speak of an everlasting one. The real question regards who all the ultimate promise applies to, as opposed to the shadows.

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1. John Scott Redd, “The Abrahamic Covenant,” in Covenant Theology, 135-36.

2. Redd, “The Abrahamic Covenant,” 138.

3. Horton, God of Promise, 33.

4. Horton, God of Promise, 35.

5. Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 130.

6. Redd, “The Abrahamic Covenant,” 135.

7. Roberts, God’s Covenants, II:282.

8. Horton, God of Promise, 42.

9. Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue, quoted in Horton, God of Promise, 45.

10. Vos, Reformed Dogmatics, II:77.

11. Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, I:287.