GOD’S SPECIAL ACT OF PROVIDENCE

 

GOD’S SPECIAL ACT OF PROVIDENCE 

Westminster Shorter Catechism 12

Quest. What special act of providence did God exercise toward man in the estate wherein he was created?

Ans. When God had created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience; forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon pain of death.

Introduction

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Is there anyone on the planet who does not think that the way of scoring points with God is through obeying Him? Or to put it another way, is there anyone who thinks God will not reward you for being good? But where does this idea come from? How come Mankind thinks God has promised to reward a good life? This view seems to be built into man, doesn’t it?

If some “good” person is killed or some little child is injured, the question is inevitably raised: What did they ever do to deserve this? Which is to say: Why has this bad thing happened to this good person? They’ve been good. Shouldn’t they therefore receive good instead of bad? We could pile up illustration after illustration to show that this is how people think. However, suffice to say that though Man doesn’t necessarily expect bad in return for bad, he expects good for good – even from God. In Christian circles we might call this “a salvation by works mentality,” which is to say that it is the view that a man can be right with God by his/her being good.

In the following we’re going to look at the source of this idea. We’re going to see that this was indeed the way things were in the beginning. If Man, i.e., Adam, did what God told Him to do, then he would be right with God, and God would have rewarded him with good for good. Of course, Mankind (as represented by Adam) actually blew the whole covenant arrangement. But we’ll look at that aspect of things when we get to it.

In the following we’re looking at the special arrangement God had with Man when He created him.

The Covenant

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We call the pre-Fall arrangement God had with Man in Adam a “covenant”. We believe that Hosea refers to this pre-Fall covenant when he says, “Like Adam they transgressed the covenant” (Hos. 6:7). However, since some theologians are not convinced that Hosea is referring to God’s covenant with Adam, we’ll need to consider a couple of things. We’ll need to first off consider what constitutes a covenant. And then whether the arrangement between God and Adam was covenantal.

Now, I’m sure most of you will know a covenant is a conditional promise. Charles Hodge puts it like this, “A covenant is a promise suspended upon a condition.”[1] Hang on to that word “suspended” as I’ll pick up on this again a little later. Reformed theologians speak of two Bible covenants where this idea of conditional promise applies. The two related covenants are the Covenant of Grace and the Covenant of Works.

Now, just before we get going, let me mention a couple of things. The Covenant of Life mentioned in the Catechism is simply another name for the Covenant of Works. And, though some theologians speak of the Covenant of Redemption, we’ll simply incorporate it into the Covenant of Grace for the purpose of simplicity. So, we’re speaking about only two covenants then, the Covenant of Redemption/Grace and the Covenant of Life/Works.

Now then, if you rent one of those covenant properties you see around the place, you’ll know that you only get to rent their property upon a certain condition. If you obey the terms of the covenant you get to live – there. If you disobey the conditions of the covenant, then they have grounds for removing you. It’s not hard to understand a covenant arrangement; Obey the covenant and all will be well with you. Disobey the covenant and you and your family will be ousted from your home! You can see very easily how this fits with Adam in the Garden before the Fall. God had entered into a covenant with him. This then, was God’s special act of providence toward Man.

God’s works of providence are His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all His creatures and all their actions. But God’s particular or special act of providence is His entering into a covenant with Man. If Adam had kept the covenant, then he (and Mankind in him) would have received the promised reward, i.e., everlasting life. But as both you and the prophet Hosea know, Adam broke that covenant.

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Now, if you were to carefully read through the Bible, you’d see that it is full of “ifs and thens” from cover to cover. “IF” you do this “THEN” God will do such and such. This is “covenant language” i.e., conditional promises. For instance we see the LORD use this language in the form of a conditional promise in Jeremiah, “Thus says the LORD: ‘IF you can break My covenant with the day and My covenant with the night, so that there will not be day and night in their season, THEN My covenant may also be broken with My servant David” (Jer. 33:20-21). In other words, the condition for breaking God’s covenant with David is our stopping day and night on the planet earth.

So, you can see that the LORD’s covenant with David is a rock-solid conditional promise. Who is ever going to be able to fulfil its conditions in order to break it? IF you can stop day and night, THEN you are able to break God’s covenant with David. We see this “IF – THEN” tension going on, e.g., in one of the favourite verses of Evangelicals. “IF you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, [THEN, albeit an implied THEN] you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9).

Do you see what I mean? Confess and believe and you will live. But what then happens if a person does not confess and believe? Do you think that it is okay to ask that question? It’s an obvious question to ask, isn’t it? If you don’t confess and believe then what? Well, you will not live, which is another way of saying that you will die, isn’t it? To not confess and believe is to do the opposite of what God is telling you to do. And if you do the opposite of what God tells you to do, then you will die. The condition then, of God’s promise of life is that you obey Him by confessing the Lord Jesus and believing that God has raised Him from the dead. Romans 10:9 again, “IF you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” The writer to the Hebrews speaking of the same thing says, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful” (Heb. 10:23).

So, we see then, that the condition for receiving what God has promised is our unwavering confession of our hope in the Lord Jesus and His resurrection. Simply put, we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Thus, God by His grace supplies what He demands, for He gives us the gift of faith to believe in Christ Jesus. These are the conditions of what is called the Covenant of Grace as it applies to fallen men.

The Covenant of Grace and the Gospel are synonymous terms. The Gospel is the Promise of life everlasting to everyone on condition that they believe in God’s only begotten Son. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). So, conversely, what happens to you if you don’t believe, i.e., if you don’t keep the condition of this promise of everlasting life? IF you don’t fulfil the condition, THEN you perish. “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already” (John 3:18a). And “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36).

So, we see then, that the condition of receiving everlasting life is belief or faith, same thing. This is the way God has arranged things after the Fall. And we are thankful that what God demands of His elect He supplies in accordance with His covenant arrangement.

Having established that the nature of God’s Gospel Covenant a.k.a. the Covenant of Grace is a Conditional Promise, we are ready to turn back to the Pre-Fall Adam.

The Condition

The Condition for receiving the everlasting life Promised by God after the Fall is faith in Christ and His works of Redemption, i.e., His life of obedience to God’s Law, cross and resurrection. However, the Condition for receiving everlasting life Promised by God before the Fall was works. Hence, we refer to the Pre-Fall arrangement between God and man as the Covenant of Life or the more well-known, Covenant of Works. Of course, it goes without saying, that this way of “earning” everlasting life (as per God’s most gracious agreement) ended for every human being (bar One), when Adam broke that covenant. For as Paul says to the Romans, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19).

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So, we see then that we all became sinners when Adam broke the condition of the covenant by his disobedience. But all true believers became righteous when Jesus, the Second Adam obediently kept this same covenant’s condition. The Promise of everlasting life then, is no longer in Adam or you and me doing good works. Rather, the Promise of everlasting life is in Jesus Christ who alone is the doer of good works. But either way, the Promise of God has a condition attached – it’s covenantal. And this just underlines once more the fact that a covenant is conditional promise.

So, let’s look a bit more closely at the condition attached to the Covenant with Adam. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says that the condition for everlasting life was perfect obedience. Obey and receive everlasting life. Disobey and receive everlasting death. Now then, as we today are not in the final state of everlasting life, neither were Adam and Eve in the Garden before the Fall.

Adam in the Garden did not have unlosable everlasting life in the same way that we true Christians have unlosable everlasting life today as promised in Jesus Christ. No, Adam was promised everlasting life upon condition of his own good works of obedience to God’s Law. Or, if you will, Adam had losable everlasting life. So long as he kept on perfectly obeying God, he had everlasting life. Obedience to God was the condition. So, in the beginning, in a special act of providence toward Man – the crown of God’s creation – God threatened or promised man death if he did not keep the covenant, i.e., the covenant of life/works. So, conversely God promised Adam life upon condition he keep the covenant arrangement.

To be sure, the covenant condition before the Fall was different to that after the Fall. Adam, before the Fall didn’t have to confess the Lord Jesus and believe in His resurrection to receive life, rather he had to “work” in order to receive the wages of life not death. This is why we ordinarily refer to this Pre-Fall covenant as the Covenant of Works. The condition for Adam to receive life was “good works,” which is to say that he was to be obedient to the covenant as it was arranged at that time.

But let’s not forget that this covenant was full of grace too. For God did not need to enter into a covenant with Man. Yet He did. That is grace! Scripture says God had created Man in His own image and likeness (Gen. 1:27), and that God had written His Moral Law (albeit in positive terms) upon Man’s heart (Rom. 2:15). Next, we note that God entered into a covenant arrangement with Man. And here’s how the LORD God covenanted with Man: “Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden to tend and keep it” (Gen. 2:15).

What do you have to do to tend and keep a garden? You have to work, don’t you? You have to work the garden. And think about it, Adam didn’t say to God, “No way!” He didn’t object to this arrangement and say, “I’m not going to work in Your garden, God!” No, Adam accepted the conditions of his employment with God, i.e., the conditions for living in the Garden of Eden. And neither did Adam disapprove when, “The LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘Of every tree in the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17).

So, we see then that Adam accepted, he agreed to, the covenant arrangement. He accepted the “commandment” of God, the commandment with promise, which is to say that he accepted the conditional promise. He agreed to the terms or stipulations or conditions or commandments of the covenant. Therefore, God covenanted with Adam in the Garden and Adam covenanted with God. So long as Adam was perfectly obedient to the covenant, he wouldn’t forfeit his life and the lives of his descendants.

Now, it’s not hard to see that this covenant arrangement could only continue indefinitely. In other words, how long would Adam need to be obedient to the covenant before he would receive what the covenant promised – i.e., unlosable everlasting life? Remember, Adam only had the promise – not the reality. If God promised or threatened Adam with death for his breach of the covenant, then conversely God was promising life on condition of Adam’s keeping of it.

This is where some people start to come undone. They come undone because they fail to grasp the temporary aspects of this Pre-Fall covenant with Adam. So, let me state it like this: Heaven, among other things, is everlasting communion with God. Would you agree that Heaven is a place where Christians have uninterrupted fellowship, i.e., everlasting blissful communion with God? Now let me ask you: Did Adam before the Fall have everlasting blissful fellowship with God? You’d have to say that he didn’t. Why would you have to say that? Because Adam fell – he broke that communion with God. He broke the terms of that fellowship. He broke God’s Covenant. Therefore, Adam’s fellowship with God was temporary. It was not an everlasting communion. Therefore, though Adam was in the Garden of Eden, he was not in Heaven. He only had a foretaste or a preview of Heaven. You’d have to say that he only had the promise of everlasting blissful communion. Therefore, in the Garden, Adam only had the promise of heaven. This promise was suspended upon condition of his obedience. 

What does the word “suspended” mean? What happens when something is suspended? It means that it is delayed or postponed until a certain point in time. When it comes to the Covenant of Life/Works, as with the Covenant of Grace, we call this suspension or delay or deferment a promise.

So, Adam, as Man’s representative in the Covenant of Works, was promised everlasting, i.e., uninterrupted blissful communion with God in Heaven. The condition to be fulfilled was his perfect works of obedience. Heaven hung on Adam’s perfect keeping of God’s Moral Law which was written on his heart. Heaven for Adam was suspended until all his covenant obligations were perfectly met. The LORD had threatened death to Adam upon pain of breaking the covenant. Conversely, the LORD also was promising Adam everlasting life upon keeping of it. Life is everlasting spiritual fellowship with the LORD in Heaven. And death is everlasting spiritual separation from the LORD in Hell.

Adam, then, in the Covenant of Works was to choose which of the two he wanted; everlasting life or everlasting death – Heaven or Hell. Therefore, the promise of life and the threat of death were suspended upon the condition of Adam’s obedience to the LORD. The prohibition from eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was simply the outward test of Adam’s obedience. And, of course, Adam flunked this exam, didn’t he? And the rest is history. Man fell into the estate of sin and misery.

Now, as we try to bring it all together, think about this: Heaven was suspended upon a condition. That condition was the perfect keeping of all God’s Commandments. IF any man can fulfil that condition, THEN Heaven is no longer suspended, is it? It is no longer postponed. Is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t believe this? Is there anyone who does not think that you get to Heaven by being good? Scripture does say, “Yet the law is not of faith, but ‘The man who does them shall live by them’” (Gal. 3:12). That line, “The man who does them shall live by them” is taken from Leviticus 18:4-5 where the LORD says, “You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them: I am the LORD your God.” Paul also quotes it in Romans 10:5, “For Moses writes about the righteousness which is of the law, ‘The man who does them shall live by them.’”

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From these and similar verses we see that the way into life is still open to any man who can keep God’s Law perfectly. However, we need to add with haste that this way of getting into Heaven has been closed to Adam and all his children bar one – Jesus Christ.  When Adam broke the Covenant of Life/Works, all men, like Adam, broke the covenant. Therefore, we need to tell all men that since the Fall no one gets into Heaven by being good, i.e., by his own good works. And we’ve already considered the fact that this is the way that people think. Therefore, people need to be told that there is only one way into everlasting life. And that way is through Jesus Christ. “IF you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, [THEN and only THEN!] you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). This is the condition of the new covenant God has made, even the Covenant of Grace.

As you know, this Covenant of Grace began to be revealed immediately after the Fall (in Genesis 3:15 in particular to start with). It didn’t begin with Jesus. It began immediately after the Fall and was brought to fullness in Jesus.

Conclusion

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The Covenant of Works was left open for Jesus Christ. He was like us in every way apart from our sin. We get into Heaven on account of His perfect keeping of the Covenant – His good works. This He did by living the perfect life (full and total obedience to God’s Law in thought, word, and deed!) that none of us could live because of our sin. And His death on the cross was to pay the penalty every fallen human being owes to God for breaking His covenant.

IF Christians would view the Covenant of Life/Works as being made with “the last Adam”, i.e., Christ, as well as the “first man Adam”, THEN they would easily understand what Jesus was doing in His life and His death. He was fulfilling the conditions for the everlasting life that was promised in the pre-Fall covenant, and was paying its penalty for disobedience, yes, we Christian’s disobedience to it (Hos. 6:7; Rom. 3:23, 6:23). As Levi was in the loins of Abraham (Heb. 7:5-10), so Jesus was in the first man Adam’s loins (Luke 3:23-38). Thus, the Gospel is about Jesus doing what Adam failed to do and His paying the price for that failure.  

Jesus Christ, the second Man, the Last Adam died that we might have life – everlasting life in everlasting communion with the LORD. And He died that we might escape death – everlasting death in everlasting separation from the LORD. John 3:16 once more, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

There is much, much more that we could have looked at. But I hope what we’ve considered will be helpful to you. We all now know a little bit more of what our Shorter Catechism means when it asks: What special act of providence did God exercise toward man in the estate wherein he was created? To which it answers: When God had created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience; forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon pain of death.

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[1] Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan, (1871-73), Reprinted 1981, Vol. 3, 549.