Covenant of Grace

After Adam broke the covenant of works and brought humanity under the curse of the law, God was not obligated to save anyone. Yet it pleased Him to establish the covenant of grace—a covenant in which He freely offers life and salvation through Jesus Christ.

Salvation is received by faith in Christ, not by personal perfect obedience. Even that faith is a gift of grace: God promises the Holy Spirit to all ordained to eternal life, to make them willing and able to believe (1689 7:2).

The covenant of grace rests on an eternal agreement between the Father and the Son: Christ, the second Adam, would obey and die for His people. This is sometimes called the covenant of redemption or pactum salutis.

God revealed this covenant progressively through the gospel—first to Adam in the promise of the seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15), then by further steps, until its full disclosure in the New Covenant of Christ (1689 7:3). Every person saved before or after Christ's coming obtained life only through the grace of this covenant, not on the terms Adam had in innocence.

1689 Federalism teaches that the covenant of grace is formally established in the New Covenant, not in the Old Testament covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses, or David. Those covenants were distinct and subserved God's redemptive plan, but they were not the covenant of grace itself.

Wherever the gospel was promised in Scripture, the covenant of grace was being revealed—but its substance is Christ's new covenant (Jeremiah 31; Hebrews 8). In short: every person is either under condemnation in Adam or under grace in Christ.