“Covenants in Scripture are solemn agreements, negotiated or unilaterally imposed, that bind the parties to each other in permanent defined relationships, with specific promises, claims, and obligations on both sides (e.g., the marriage covenant, Mal. 2:14).
When God makes a covenant with His creatures, He alone establishes its terms, as His covenant with Noah and every living creature shows (Gen. 9:9). When Adam and Eve failed to obey the terms of the covenant of works (see Gen. 3:6 and theological note “The Fall”), God did not destroy them, but revealed His covenant of grace by promising a Savior (Gen. 3:15). God’s covenant rests on His promise, as is clear from His covenant with Abraham. He called Abraham to go to the land that He would give him, and promised to bless him and all the families of the earth through him (Gen. 12:1–3). Abraham heeded God’s call because he believed God’s promise; it was his faith in the promise that was credited to him for righteousness (Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:18–22). God’s covenant with Israel at Sinai is in the form of the ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaties. These are covenants imposed unilaterally by a powerful king on a vassal king and a servant people.
Although the covenant at Sinai required obedience to God’s laws under the threat of His curse, it was a continuation of the covenant of grace (Ex. 3:15; Deut. 7:7, 8; 9:5, 6). God gave the commandments to a people He had already redeemed and claimed (Ex. 19:4; 20:2). The gracious promise of God’s covenant was further defined through the types and shadows of the law given to Moses. The failure of the Israelites to keep His covenant showed the need for a new covenant that would bestow the power to obey (Jer. 31:31–34; 32:38–40; cf. Gen. 17:7; Ex. 6:7; 29:45, 46; Lev. 11:44, 45; 26:12).
God’s covenant with Israel was preparation for the coming of God Himself, in the person of His Son, to fulfill all His promises, and to give substance to the shadows cast by the types (Is. 40:10; Mal. 3:1; John 1:14; Heb. 7–10). Jesus Christ, the Mediator of the new covenant, offered Himself as the true and final sacrifice for sin. He obeyed the law perfectly, and as the Second Adam (second representative head of the human race) He became the inheritor, with those united with Him by faith, of all the covenant blessings of peace and fellowship with God in His renewed creation. The temporary Old Testament arrangements for imparting those blessings became obsolete when what they anticipated was realized.
As Heb. 7–10 explains, through Christ God inaugurated a better version of His one eternal covenant with sinners (Heb. 13:20)—a better covenant with better promises (Heb. 8:6), based on a better sacrifice (Heb. 9:23) offered by a better high priest in a better sanctuary (Heb. 7:26–8:6, 11, 12, 13). This better covenant guarantees a better hope than had ever been made explicit by the former version of the covenant—glory with God in “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16; cf. v. 40)."
R. C. Sproul, ed., The Reformation Study Bible: English Standard Version (Orlando, FL; Lake Mary, FL: Ligonier Ministries, 2005), 30.
