Here is one of the most important claims in this entire book, and I want to state it as clearly as I can.
The covenant of grace IS the New Covenant. And it has been present in every age of human history, including the time of Adam. It is not a new arrangement that started at the cross, or at Pentecost, or with the apostle Paul. It is an eternal, overarching covenant that spans all of time and extends to every one of God’s elect in every era. Abraham was in it. David was in it. Isaiah was in it. The Teacher of Righteousness who wrote predestinarian theology in the caves near the Dead Sea two centuries before Christ was in it.
And the Old Covenant at Sinai was NOT a dispensation of it.
This is where I part company with standard Covenant Theology, and I want to explain why carefully, because the distinction matters enormously.
Covenant Theology teaches that the covenant of grace was administered differently in different eras. In the Old Testament, it was administered through the law, the sacrifices, the ceremonies, the priesthood. In the New Testament, it’s administered through the gospel, through faith, through the Spirit. Same covenant. Different administration. The Old Covenant IS the covenant of grace, just wearing different clothes.
I don’t believe that. And here’s why.
“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us.” (Galatians 3:13)
The law is a curse. Paul doesn’t call it a different administration of grace. He calls it a curse. And you can’t be under a curse and in a covenant of grace through the same covenant. They’re not the same thing. The grace was there. But the law was a separate overlay.
“Wherefore then serveth the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” (Galatians 3:19)
The law was added. Added to what? Added to the covenant of grace that was already running. The law didn’t replace the covenant of grace. It didn’t absorb it. It didn’t become it. It was added on top of it. A separate thing. A covenant of works. A curse meant to increase transgressions and shut the elect up in Christ.
“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” (Galatians 3:24)
The law was a schoolmaster. Not a covenant of grace. A tutor. A temporary institution with a specific purpose: to drive the elect to Christ by showing them they couldn’t keep it.
So in the Old Testament, two covenants ran simultaneously:
The covenant of grace - eternal, overarching, present in all ages. Every elect person partook of it. They had the Spirit. They were regenerated. They were justified. They had new firmware, to use the language we’ll develop later in this book. Abraham “believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Romans 4:3). David wrote, “Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity” (Psalm 32:2). These men were in the covenant of grace centuries before Sinai. And they remained in it during and after Sinai.
The covenant of works at Sinai - a separate overlay. A curse. Temporary. Added because of transgressions. Designed to reveal sin, increase guilt, and drive the elect to Christ. The ceremonies, the sacrifices, the priesthood, the dietary laws, the Sabbath regulations, all of it. Real. Valid. Served its purpose. But it was not the covenant of grace. It was the visible rendering constraint layered on top of the invisible substance.
And when Christ fulfilled the law, the overlay was removed. What was left was what was always there: the covenant of grace, now visible at higher resolution, no longer veiled behind the ceremonies of Sinai.
Let me show you how the individual covenants of the Old Testament relate to the overarching covenant of grace:
The Adamic covenant (Genesis 3:15) - the first visible rendering of the covenant of grace in time. God promises enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. The two seeds announced. Redemption promised. The covenant of grace begins its temporal expression.
The Noahic covenant (Genesis 9) - God’s promise to preserve the stage on which redemption unfolds. The rainbow is a sign of continuity, not of salvation. God won’t destroy the world by flood again because the story isn’t finished yet. The rendering needs to continue.
The Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 17) - the covenant of grace rendered in promise to a specific man. “And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee” (Genesis 17:7). Circumcision as the visible sign. But the real sign was always the circumcision of the heart. The visible sign pointed at the invisible reality.
The Mosaic covenant at Sinai - NOT a dispensation of the covenant of grace. A covenant of WORKS. The exception. The one covenant in the Old Testament that is not a rendering of the covenant of grace but a separate overlay for a specific purpose: to curse, to increase transgressions, to drive the elect to Christ. Every other covenant in the Bible is a rendering of grace. This one is law.
The Davidic covenant (2 Samuel 7) - the covenant of grace rendered in kingship. An eternal throne promised to David’s line. Fulfilled in Christ. The visible king pointed to the invisible reign. “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end” (Isaiah 9:7).
The New Covenant as revealed in the New Testament - the covenant of grace at its highest temporal resolution. The Sinai overlay removed. The veil lifted. Faith alone. Law finished. The Spirit poured out. Not a new covenant in substance, because the substance was always there. New in resolution. The same thought, rendered at higher fidelity.
The progressive rendering of this covenant across history, and the remarkable evidence from the Dead Sea Scrolls, are explored in the next chapter.
“Covenant Theology says the Old Covenant IS the covenant of grace, differently administered.”
CT is wrong on this point. The law at Sinai was a curse (Galatians 3:10, 13). A curse is not a dispensation of grace. The grace was always there. Sinai was the overlay, not the substance. The two ran simultaneously, but they are not the same covenant.
“If the covenant of grace was present in all ages, why didn’t OT saints know the full gospel?”
They had the substance. They didn’t have the full rendering resolution. Abraham saw Christ’s day and was glad (John 8:56), but he saw it dimly, through types and shadows. David had justification by faith (Romans 4:6-8) but couldn’t articulate it the way Paul did. The resolution increased over time. The covenant didn’t change. The visibility did.
“This is New Covenant Theology, not Covenant Theology.”
It’s neither. NCT says the New Covenant started at a point in time. MCT says the covenant of grace is eternal and overarching. NCT rejects the covenant of works, which is correct. MCT retains the covenant of works as specific to Sinai, which is better. NCT doesn’t go far enough. CT goes too far. MCT walks the line between them and holds what Scripture actually teaches.
“The Dead Sea Scrolls aren’t Scripture.”
Correct. But they demonstrate that sovereign grace theology existed in pre-Christian Judaism. This isn’t a later invention of Augustine or Calvin. It’s the original Hebrew theology. The Pharisees corrupted it with Greek philosophy. The scrolls preserve what the Pharisees tried to destroy.
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