A Critique of the Covenant of Works in Contemporary Controversy

Protestant Reformed Theological Journal
The divine glory and grace revealed in Jesus Christ is richer and
higher. It was with a view to the manifestation of this higher and
richer blessing that God not only foresaw, but ordained, the fall of
Adam from eternity. Even on the view of the most adamant traditional
Reformed defender of the covenant of works, God decreed that fall
of Adam with a view to Jesus Christ. The Reformed have insisted
on this as strongly as they have insisted on anything else in the locus
anthropology. The Reformed insist on that in the interest of Jesus
Christ. They absolutely refused to view the work of Jesus Christ as
a mere restoration or repair of what Adam lost.
What Reformed man could have a problem with this viewpoint
applied to the covenant with Adam? God did not promise to Adam
eternal, heavenly life, and God never intended that Adam would reach
heaven in the first covenant. He never intended anyone to reach
heaven in the first covenant. He determined that the covenant would
be breached by the sin of Adam and in him by the whole human race,
in order to lay that breach as the foundation of His stupendous work
of salvation in Jesus Christ in the covenant of grace with the new elect
human race. The PRC view the coming of the Lord from heaven to
reveal, establish, and fulfill the covenant of God as the revelation of
greater riches and blessing. What Christ did, Adam never could have
done, even if he had never sinned and had remained in the state of
perfection for eons. They insist on that in the interest of viewing all
of salvation from the viewpoint of the decrees of God and especially
this decree that Jesus Christ is first in order that in all things He might
have the preeminence. He is not an afterthought to mop up Adam’s
mess. Jesus Christ is alpha and omega, the first and last: first in the
counsel of God, the goal of all things as well, and in order that God
might be all in all. The doctrine of the covenant of works, with its
insistence that Adam could have earned heaven, overturns that whole
viewpoint and does grave injustice to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ,
the glory of His work, and the wisdom of God.
Not only is the covenant of works itself a wrong doctrine, but its
implications for the covenant of grace are also dangerous. In all of its
errors the covenant of works negatively affects the formulations of the
covenant of grace, which is inevitable. The covenant with Adam was
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Vol. 44, No. 2