The covenant of redemption

An agreement before the world began

Our salvation was accomplished in history, but its roots are in eternity. God "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world" (Ephesians 1:4), and saved us "by the grace He granted us in Christ Jesus before time began" (2 Timothy 1:9). Jesus said again and again that he came to do the work the Father had given him.

For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that I shall lose none of those He has given Me, but raise them up at the last day.

John 6:38-39

Here the Father gives a people to the Son, and the Son takes up a task on their behalf. Jesus prays, "I have glorified You on earth by accomplishing the work You gave Me to do" (John 17:4), and of his disciples, "They were Yours; You gave them to Me" (John 17:6). In Psalm 2 the Father promises the Son, "Ask Me, and I will make the nations Your inheritance" (Psalm 2:8), and Isaiah says that the suffering servant "will see His offspring" (Isaiah 53:10). Many Reformed interpreters note that in "just as My Father has bestowed one on Me" (Luke 22:29) the verb is diatithēmi (διατίθημι), which can mean to make a covenant.

On John 17 Matthew Henry writes that "Eternal life could not be given to believers, unless Christ, their Surety, both glorified the Father, and was glorified of him." Matthew Henry The Westminster Confession does not use the name, but it confesses the substance:

It pleased God, in his eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, his only-begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and man … unto whom he did, from all eternity, give a people to be his seed, and to be by him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified.

Westminster Confession 8.1

How the church came to say it

Known in Latin as the pactum salutis, the ‘pact of salvation’, the teaching took shape in Reformed theology in the seventeenth century. Scholars usually name David Dickson in Scotland and Johannes Cocceius in the Netherlands among its early exponents, and Herman Witsius treated it at length alongside the covenants of works and grace Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants. Some, like Witsius, distinguished it from the covenant of grace; others, following the Larger Catechism's teaching that the covenant of grace was made with Christ as the second Adam, saw the two as two sides of one covenant (see covenant theology).

Where the traditions differ

Some regard the teaching with caution. The will of the triune God is one (see the Trinity), so speaking of a ‘pact’ between the Father and the Son can suggest two wills or a bargain. Karl Barth criticized the doctrine sharply Barth, Church Dogmatics. Reformed theologians who hold it reply that it describes the one will of God expressed in the distinct roles of the persons. Lutheran, Catholic, Orthodox and Wesleyan theology do not use covenant language here, but all confess that Christ "was known before the foundation of the world" (1 Peter 1:20) and that salvation flows from the eternal purpose of the triune God (see the decrees of God and election). See the lesson The covenant of works and the covenant of grace.