In this video, Dr. W. Robert Godfrey describes how covenant theology helps us understand Scripture and what holds it all together.
Covenant theology is a great tool to help us understand Scripture and the way Scripture holds together. The origins of modern Protestant covenant theology really go back to the Reformation and the beginning of discussions about whether infants ought to be baptized, because that raises questions of covenant: What’s the difference between the New Testament covenant and the Old Testament covenant? How our children related to the covenant community?
And that early focus then led people back to looking at the Scriptures and discovering what a really important principle the covenant was through the Scriptures. It became a very important way of understanding the work of Christ—that Christ fulfills the covenant of works that Adam failed to keep. So that’s a point at which the difference between the first Adam and the last Adam was developed in theology.
And then having looked at the work of Christ and seeing how the idea of covenant helped us understand His work, it led theologians even further to see that the whole structure of the Scriptures, the unveiling, the progressive revelation of God is very much in a covenant development. So, there’s a covenant with Adam, there’s a covenant with Abraham, there’s a covenant with Moses, there’s a covenant with David, there’s a covenant with Jesus and the church. How do those covenants relate to one another? How do they develop?
And that became a great help then in understanding the character of the Scriptures. How can it be that God said certain things to Moses that no longer apply to us as Christians? Well, it’s because the covenants are different. They have different purposes. They’re preparing us for the coming of Christ in different ways. So, covenant theology is just a hugely helpful way of understanding how the revelation of God progresses through the Bible and how the message of God and the relationship of God to His people can be understood much more clearly through the context of covenant theology.