You Are in Covenant with God

Now as a Christian, I am a member of a covenant group, a covenant community, which we call the church. Every member of the Christian Church participates in the new covenant, just as every member in the household of Israel in the Old Testament participated in what we call the old covenant. So, Jew and Christian alike are covenant people. But what about the rest of the world? What about all of those millions of people on this planet, this day, who are not members of the Christian Church, who are not members of the Jewish community, are they in a covenant relationship with God? Well, the answer to that question, I think, is obvious from our study of scripture. The answer is yes. All men, everywhere are at all times participants in a covenant relationship with God. You say, "But wait a minute, R.C., they never joined the Christian Church. They never joined the Jewish Commonwealth. How can you, you say that?"

Well, I say it for this reason, that God didn't make his first covenant with Abraham or with Moses, nor is the first covenant in history the one that Jesus made with his disciples in the upper room. The first covenant that God made with mankind was made with Adam. And it is that covenant with Adam in which Adam represents the whole human race, in that covenant, the covenant of creation, God entered into a contractual relationship with man not as Christian or a man not as Jew, but as man qua man. And so that, every descendant of Adam belongs by nature to the covenant of creation. So that, the conclusion is irresistible. All human beings, to this day, exist in a covenant relationship with their creator

To be sure, that relationship may be one that is negative. We may simply live out the liabilities of that contract, but we cannot escape the covenant itself. We can deny it. We can violate it. We can repudiate it. We can be hostile towards it, but we cannot undo it. And so, those laws that God gives to man in creation are binding upon men, whether or not they are religious, whether or not they are members of the household of Israel or of the Christian family. There is a certain corpus, a certain body of moral legislation of law that God gives to all men. And it is that body of law that we're concerned about under the rubric of creation covenant.