The
following Diagram of the Covenants is a simplified pictorial representation of
the historical Baptist Covenant view.
(…Diagram
takes a minute to load into the placeholder at the foot of the page)
It is
simplified in the following respects:
It is not
an exhaustive representation of all God’s Covenants (eg the Davidic and Solomonic
and subsequent covenant statements are omitted as largely echoing and
developing the ground of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants) but shows the
sweep of the Old and New Covenants , and hopefully clarifies the notions of the
Covenant of Grace and the Covenant of Works. Here are links to a 3MB Acrobat.pdf
download for A4 printing and a 110 kB Serif Drawplus 3 Download. (Please let me
know if these aresuccessful).
A4 pdf downloadable file
(3.5MB) A4 Serif Drawplus File (110KB) downloadable file
Scripture
references have been omitted. This is purely a limitation of the clarity of the
diagram, but the references are fully available in eg
The Divine Covenants by AW Pink (see on site
link).
It is possible
in such a simplification to inadvertently introduce errors or implications that
are unintended and I would be very grateful to have these pointed out. The
amillenial, non-restorationist view is deliberate (and I don’t see a
Jewish national restoration in Romans 11).
Unusually,
John Gill, in most respects the greatest Baptist theologian, adopts the “two
administrations” of “one covenant” view for the Old and New Covenants. John
Owen, on the other hand, makes the case for the two separate covenants view. I
have sympathy for John Gill’s view as he expresses it, but I have been
persuaded that Owen has the better case. I see the resolution briefly as
follows:
There has
only ever been one covenant leading to salvation – this has been and is, saving
faith in the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ. All the Old Testament
saints were saved by this faith, in their time it was in the promise of a Great
Redeemer. The promise of Grace legally became a Covenant when its covenant
terms were fulfilled by Christ’s death, and it is in this respect that it is
called the New Covenant.
The Old
Covenant was the Sinaitic (aka the Mosaic) Covenant in which faultless
obedience to the Law was the condition of salvation. Sacrificial atonements
were available for some transgressions, but not all. The Law was a schoolmaster
teaching the need of more righteousness than Man has, and hence the need for a
Saviour Redeemer, a Righteousness provided by God. No one was saved by the
terms of the Old Covenant! Any who were saved during the period of the Old
Covenant were actually saved by the Promise of the Grace, which was active
throughout the Old Covenant, and before it –right back to Genesis 3:15.
So,
Salvation has always been by the Faith in the Redeemer, and in this sense
Salvation in the OT can be rightly said to be by “an administration” of
(actually by spiritual understanding of the Promise of) the Covenant of Grace.
What John Owen says, is that there was a separate Old Covenant (as Hebrews
8.6), but that no-one was saved by that covenant. He is therefore correct to
speak of two covenants with two different ends.
The
potentially confusing issue is that salvation in the time of the Old Covenant
was not by the terms of the Old Covenant, since the role of the Old Covenant
was to drive men to the promises of Grace that were effective even at that
time, and that would be fully revealed in the New Covenant.
