Complete Fulfillment, Part 1

“Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments” (Deut. 7:9).

God is a covenant keeping God. It is through covenant relationships that God has chosen to reveal his character (and ours), and it is through covenants that he accomplishes his “plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:10). This is why covenants form the backbone of the Bible’s story, and this is why a proper understanding of the Bible's covenants and how they relate to each other is so essential to a correct understanding of Scripture and proper application of God's word to our lives.

The graphic at right* began to take shape in my mind during the biblical theology class I audited in August. It is a very simple picture of how the Bible's covenants fit together, how they all point to Christ, and how they all find their fulfillment in him.

It begins with God's covenant at creation, commonly referred to as the Adamic Covenant. God formed Adam in His own image, placed him in a garden of His own planting, and entered into covenant relationship with him there. From the man's side, God created a woman to be his wife and gave them dominion to rule the earth as God's representatives. They were given perpetual access to the Tree of Life and enjoyed warm fellowship with their Creator. They had only one prohibition, but disobedience to it was accompanied by the promise of death.

As we know, Adam broke the covenant (cf. Hos 6:7). Sin entered the world. Death followed, just as God had promised. But this was not the end of God's planned self-revelation. With the first broken covenant also came the first promise of a Savior (Gen. 3:15).

The decline of sinful man was rapid. Just three chapters later:

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart” (Gen 6: 5-6).

Famously, God chose to destroy his creation in a great flood, sparing only Noah, the one man of faith left in the world, along with his family and a boat full of animals. With the earth temporarily purged, God re-established his covenant with creation in what is known as the Noahic Covenant. Through Noah, mankind would again be fruitful and multiply. And though they would yet again fill the earth with sin, God vowed to never again flood the earth in judgment.

By Genesis 11, mankind had already grown so wicked that God confused their languages to slow their ability to succeed in their sinful ventures. And it was in the wake of the ensuing chaos that God called a man named Abram out of idolatry (Gen. 12-17) and entered into a covenant relationship with him:

“Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God” (Gen. 17:4-8).

This is the Abrahamic Covenant. Through it God's plan comes into sharper focus as his promises begin to funnel down through this one man's offspring. In my next article(s), I plan to trace the rest of the covenants through to their fulfillment in Christ and the New Covenant.

*This graphic borrows several details from Fig. 16.3 in Kingdom Through Covenant, by Peter Gentry & Stephen Wellum. Wellum was the teacher of my above-mentioned biblical theology class. When I realized that his book contained a diagram similar to the one I had envisioned, I included several details of his diagram into my own.)