We have seen that God’s covenants are divided into three major areas: the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, and the covenant of grace. While the covenant of redemption was within the Trinity and determined the redemption of an elect people, the covenants of works and of grace are made with humanity.

Concerning the covenant of works, Earl Blackburn comments that it “teaches the universal sinfulness and guilt of humanity and the urgent need for redemption” (Earl Blackburn, “Covenant Theology,” in Going Beyond the Five Points: Pursuing a More Comprehensive Reformation, 140). The Creator established a covenant with humanity whom he placed in the environment for them to live. Blackburn notes: “That covenant in the creation of the universe (and man) contained three distinct ordinances, which reveal the Creator’s original intent for all humanity: (1) Sabbath; (2) labor or work; and (3) marriage (Genesis 2:1-25). These ordinances were for mankind’s good and would be perpetually binding on all future humanity” (Growing Beyond the Five Points, 145).

God created man and woman and charged them with tending the garden in which he had placed them. Being made in the image of their Creator, they knew what it meant to do right and wrong, though they had not yet known wrong in an experiential manner. Adam was the created head of humanity, and he “was put into and under a probationary Covenant of Works, in which God promised that obedience would be rewarded with blessing and eternal life, and disobedience would be punished with curse and eternal death (Genesis 2:7-17)” (Going Beyond the Five Points, 145).

Adam was the representative and federal head of humanity (Romans 5:12-21). He was allowed by God to do as he pleased in the Garden with the singular prohibition of eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We find in Genesis 3 that Adam yielded to the lie of Satan, disobeying the perfectly holy God and plunging humanity into universal disobedience and fallenness. Indeed, as Blackburn puts it, “This is what is known biblically, historically, and theologically as the Fall of man. Adam’s righteous status and subsequent disobedience are what make the Fall all the more heinous. The results of this one act of disobedience were quite evident. His communion with God was lost, his mind and understanding were darkened, his emotions were twisted, his will was distorted and warped, and he, along with all his posterity, was cast into a state of spiritual deadness (Ephesians 2:1) that would eventuate in physical death. He was fallen, naked, ashamed, cursed, condemned, spiritually dead, and under divine judgment (Genesis 3:8-20); a constituted and actual sinner. Hopeless and helpless were Adam and Eve to remedy their situation” (Going Beyond the Five Points, 146).

That Adam’s fallenness has been imputed to every person born after him is undeniable. What child must be taught to sin before doing so? The apostle Paul notes, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned . . . . Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam” (Romans 5:12, 14a ESV).

Separated from God, it would appear that the lot of humanity is hopeless: “As it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one’” (Romans 3:10-12 ESV). There is One who came to Earth, who kept perfectly the covenant works that Adam failed to keep, and who bore the sins and divine curse for the breaking of God’s law on behalf of those who would repent of their sin and believe in him: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV). Blackburn comments: “As the breaking of the covenant of works caused Adam and Eve to be driven out of the Garden, so it should drive us to Christ, the one who was covenantally loyal to God for us in contrast to the one who covenantally betrayed us” (Going Beyond the Five Points, 148).