The covenant of works

The command in the garden

God placed Adam in the garden and gave him every tree but one.

but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.

Genesis 2:17

Reformed theology reads not only a warning here but a promise. In the middle of the garden stood "the tree of life" (Genesis 2:9), and Matthew Henry writes of "everlasting life made sure to him upon his obedience" Matthew Henry. The Westminster Confession names the arrangement:

The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works, wherein life was promised to Adam, and in him to his posterity, upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.

Westminster Confession 7.2

The Shorter Catechism calls it ‘a covenant of life’. Reformed theology calls it a covenant because Adam was tried not for himself alone but as the head of humanity: "one trespass brought condemnation for all men" (Romans 5:18), and Adam "is a pattern of the One to come" (Romans 5:14). Many Reformed interpreters read Hosea's "But they, like Adam, have transgressed the covenant" (Hosea 6:7) as a reference to the first man; others note that the Hebrew adam (אָדָם) also means ‘man’ and is the name of a town by the Jordan, and read it differently.

The obedience of the second Adam

Once Adam fell, no one could gain life by this covenant. Its principle still stands, "The man who does these things will live by them" (Romans 10:5), but the one who fulfilled it is Christ, not we. God sent his Son, "born under the law" (Galatians 4:4); where Adam fell he obeyed perfectly, and he bore the curse we deserved (Galatians 3:13). Reformed theology teaches that this obedience is imputed to those who believe. So the covenant of works is the backdrop against which the covenant of grace shines.

The phrase itself is not found in Scripture. Many scholars trace it to Reformed theologians of the later sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century it entered the Westminster Confession (1646) and Larger Catechism, and theologians such as Herman Witsius treated it at length Witsius, The Economy of the Covenants. The Second London Baptist Confession of the English Particular Baptists follows the same teaching Second London Baptist Confession.

Where the traditions differ

Even among the Reformed the wording varies. Some, like John Murray in the twentieth century, preferred a term such as ‘the Adamic administration’, since Scripture usually uses ‘covenant’ for God's redeeming grace; but they confess the same substance, that Adam stood on probation as our representative. Reformed theologians also continue to discuss in what sense, if any, the covenant at Sinai restated the covenant of works.

Lutheran, Catholic and Orthodox theology do not use this framework; Wesley himself spoke of a covenant of works made with Adam in paradise, but the Wesleyan tradition has made less of it. The Catholic Church describes the original holiness and justice given to the first man as a gift of God's grace; the Orthodox speak of Adam as called to grow into likeness to God. Some worry that the term makes the bond between God and Adam sound like a contract of merit. Reformed theologians reply that this first covenant, too, flowed from God's voluntary condescension, which is grace. All agree that in Adam all fell and in Christ we find life (see original sin). See the lesson The covenant of works and the covenant of grace.