Thoughts On Covenant Theology

Pastor Bill Farrow

Home | Church Info | Members | Doctrine | Studies | Missionaries | Youth | Articles

I had a good conversation with friend a while ago over breakfast together. Part of the conversation concerned Covenant Theology. I told him that one of the problems I have is one of the entire concept of codifying grace.

In my mind the concept of Covenantalism is something like this. God determined in eternity past to deal with man graciously, that is, on the basis of freely offered grace and not on the basis of legally earned merit. Its favor would be entirely gratuitous to the sinner, in fact, it would be essentially so, and any deviation from this invalidates the Gospel.

The contradiction comes in the manner in which He chose to confirm and communicate this grace  to man. Covenantalism would have us believe that God then framed and couched this system in the form of a legal agreement. This, to my understanding is a tremendous contradiction. 

At this point I am perfectly willing to admit that my conception of the  matter is faulty and that I may be looking at the thing from an erroneous perspective. There may be a fundamental issue that I misunderstand. Perhaps the bases of God's dealing with man is indeed legal and not gracious. Could it be that this legal requirement must needs be satisfied in order for grace to even be possible? I am not certain at all...

We'll continuew this discussion in a later article...