What is the Benefit of Studying Covenant Theology?

1. Because biblically and theologically speaking, the covenant is the bridge between anthropology and soteriology.

• The great English Baptist pastor C. H. Spurgeon pointedly said, “The doctrine of the Covenant lies at the root of all true theology. It has been said that he who well understands the distinction between the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace is a master of divinity. I am persuaded that most of the mistakes which men make concerning the doctrines of Scriptures are based upon fundamental errors with regard to the covenants of law and the covenants of grace. May God grant us now the power to instruct and you the grace to receive instruction on this vital subject.”

• Ligon Duncan* said, “As my dear Southern Baptist friend, Dr. Mark Dever, the pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, a former J.B. Lightfoot scholar at Cambridge University, the author of a study on the Puritan, Richard Sibbes, and his doctrine on the Covenant says, ‘Lig, Covenant Theology is just the Gospel.’ Now I assure you that Mark has no interest, whatsoever, in getting your baby baptized, but he knows that Covenant Theology is right at the heart of the doctrine of the work of Christ, of the offices of Christ, of the doctrine of salvation, of the doctrine of the church, and we could go on adding to it. It is something very, very central. Covenant Theology has a fundamental place in the Christian message and it is too important to be relegated simply as a subset of our doctrine of the sacraments. And unfortunately, that is pretty much where it has been relegated in theology.”

• J. I. Packer sheds light on the benefit of studying CT when he says, “The straightforward, if provocative answer to that question is that it is what is nowadays called a hermeneutic — that is, a way of reading the whole Bible that is itself part of the overall interpretation of the Bible that it undergirds. A successful hermeneutic is a consistent interpretative procedure yielding a consistent understanding of Scripture in turn confirms the propriety of the procedure itself. Covenant theology is a case in point. It is a hermeneutic that forces itself upon every thoughtful Bible-reader who gets to the place, first, of reading, hearing, and digesting Holy Scripture as didactic instruction given through human agents by God himself, in person; second, of recognizing that what the God who speaks the Scriptures tells us about in their pages is his own sustained sovereign action in creation, providence, and grace; third, of discerning that in our salvation by grace God stands revealed as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, executing in tripersonal unity a single cooperative enterprise of raising sinners from the gutter of spiritual destitution to share Christ’s glory for ever; and, fourth, of seeing that God-centered thought and life, springing responsively from a God-wrought change of heart that expresses itself spontaneously in grateful praise, is the essence of true knowledge of God. Once Christians have got this far, the covenant theology of the Scriptures is something that they can hardly miss.”

2. Because the covenants structure the Scripture.

• The Covenants give order to creation and redemption.
• They delineate the Bible’s various historical periods.

• “Covenant Theology is a blend of biblical and systematic theology… the Bible structures itself covenantally. When Paul wants to structure creation and redemption, he parallels Adam as covenant head with Christ as covenantal head. And he speaks of Adam’s responsibility and failure in the world of the fall comparing that with Christ and so he gives us a two-point outline of redemptive history. Creation, separation by fall, and redemption. When the author of Hebrews wants to talk about the progress of God in redemptive history, what does he do? He compares the Old Covenant and New Covenant. Primarily, he has in focus, the contrast of the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant established in Christ. But what is the tool he uses when he wants to give a panoramic overview of Old Testament and New Testament relations? The covenant. When the author of Psalm 89 wants to recount the history of God’s dealings with Israel, what does he use to structure his story? The covenants. So Covenant Theology is not merely an inspired inference from the weight of Scripture. It is explicitly the way the Bible structures redemptive history.” (Ligon)

• The Baptist Confession (VII) reminds us that God has expressed His story of redemption through covenantal terms: “The distance between God and the creature is so great, that (although reasonable creatures owe obedience to him as their Creator) they could never have attained the reward of life except by an act of voluntary condescension on God’s part. This he has been pleased to express by way of a covenant.”

*J. Ligon Duncan III, Senior Minister of FPC Jackson MS, earned MDiv from Covenant Theological Seminary and studied Systematic Theology at the Free Church of Scotland College under Professor Donald Macleod. He earned the PhD from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1995. He is currently the is the president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.