Concerning the 17th Century understanding of the covenant of works as put forward in the Westminster Confession, Wright states:
Such a view of the relationship between God and humans is a travesty. It is unbiblical. It insists on taking us to a goal very different from the one held out in scripture. It ignores, in particular, the actual meaning of Israel’s scriptures, both in themselves and as they were read by the earliest Christians. And it insists on a diagnosis of the human that is, ironically, trivial compared with the real thing.114
To call such a position a “travesty” and “unbiblical” when it has been espoused by godly men who have spent a lifetime in the Scriptures can be construed as arrogance.115 Have they really taken it to a “goal very different from the one held out in scripture”? I don’t think so. The bible is unambiguous, informing us that humanity became separated from God and placed under a curse as a result of the first Adam’s disobedience. The ultimate goal of redemption is that sinners be reconciled to God, becoming a new humanity; one that is a perfect divine image bearer, living upon a new earth, within a new heaven, serving the Lord forever. To say that the old perspective’s diagnosis of the human condition is trivial is itself the result of trivializing what Reformed Protestants believed.
As he so often does, Wright tends to speak disparagingly of the old perspective on a number of points before going on to say something that the old perspective fully endorses. Wright tells us that “what the bible offers is not a ‘works contract’ but a covenant of vocation. The vocation in question is that of being a genuine human being, with genuinely human tasks to perform as part of the Creator’s purpose for this world.”116 He then goes on to state that, “the diagnosis of the human plight is not simply that humans have broken god’s moral law—though this is true as well. This law breaking is a symptom of a much more serious disease.”117 I know of no Reformed believer who would not wholeheartedly agree with this. Since the Fall humanity has turned away from that which God called it to, worshiping the things created rather than the Creator. Individual sins are the result of humanity’s fallen condition, one where the principle of sin reigns in the heart. As far as a “works contract” and “vocation” are concerned, the Scriptures speak of a vocation that is dependent on the fulfillment of a “works contract” in order to overcome the enmity that exists between God and man. It is not a question of either/or. Before sinners can embark on that vocation, or their God-given calling, where they can offer unto God their bodies in living and acceptable sacrifice, there must first be the fulfillment of certain conditions. Conditions that require perfect righteousness and a propitiatory substitutionary death.
Prior to sin, the law was unto life; it was for the justification of the righteous. Adam had been created in God’s image and after his likeness (Gen 1:27), with the law of God written upon his heart. In his original righteousness, this law served to vouchsafe that all was well. Had Adam succeeded in keeping the stipulation he would have obtained eternal life for both himself and his posterity. He would have partaken of the tree of life that is now available for all believers because Christ, the second Adam, has succeeded where the first Adam failed (Rev 2:7; 22:2). When Adam118 failed he had then to face punishment. God said to him, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen 2:17).
All of humanity is then exiled from God, unless, of course, they have been reconciled on account of Christ’s completed work. When we consider Christ’s work in reference to exile it is this exile one should bear in mind, not any exile that the nation of Israel experienced. As already said, when Wright alludes to Israel’s exile he fails to emphasize the fact that the nation’s exile was but a type of that exile that applies to all humanity because of Adam’s sin.
It is important to bear in mind that the covenant of works has not gone away. God still demands perfect obedience and the punishment of sin. Man is spiritually impotent and at enmity with the God who created him, and there is no way back to God for fallen man through his own efforts, for truly, as the Psalmist says, there is no one who is righteousness before God (Psa 143:2). John Bunyan aptly portrays the relationship that now exists between the sinner and the law:
The law was now only unto death; it was powerless to do otherwise. With the entrance of sin man lost his first estate and was banished from God’s presence, God “drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life” (Gen 3:24). Death here meant estrangement from God. Immediately there was spiritual death, and eventually, physical or bodily death. The law, as it is a covenant of works, doth not allow any repentance unto life, to those that live and die under it. For the law being once broken by thee, never speaks good unto thee, neither doth God at all regard these, if thou be under that covenant, not withstanding all thy repentings, and also thy promise to do so no more. ‘No,’ saith the law, ‘thou hast sinned, therefore I must curse thee, for it is even, and I can do nothing else but curse, every one that doth in any point transgress against me.’ Gal. iii. 10. “The break my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.” Heb. viii. ‘let them cry, I will not regard them; let them repent, I will not regard them: they have broken my covenant, and done that in which I delighted not; therefore by that covenant I do curse, and not bless; damn, and not save; frown, and not smile; I reject, and not embrace; charge sin, and not forgive it.119
Not only have we sinned in Adam, but we all sin daily. For there to be reconciliation it would be necessary not only to keep God’s commandments perfectly, but also pay the penalty for sin. For all those living before Christ’s death, it was only those who embraced the promise who were removed from their obligation to provide obedience to the covenant. About such as these, Owen states: “When this is actually embraced, that the first covenant ceaseth towards them, as unto its curse, in all its concerns as a covenant, and obligations unto sinless obedience as a condition of life because both of them are answered by the mediator of the new covenant.”120
With sin’s entrance and the imposition of God’s curse, God’s image in man has been largely erased, although a vestige of this remains. Prior to Sinai, although the Ten Commandments had not been explicitly revealed as they would be later on the two tablets of stone, the requirements of what the law demanded were nevertheless written upon man’s conscience, or, as Paul says, “they have the works of the law written upon their hearts” (Rom 2:15). This is essentially what has been called natural law. This amounted to an innate knowledge of what God demanded, along with the knowledge that this was something impossible for sinful humanity to provide. It would require the intervention of another, none less than the very Son of God himself. As Augustine commented: “just as Adam became a cause of death to those who are born of him, even though they have not eaten of the tree, the death brought on by the eating, so also Christ was made a provider of righteousness for those who belong to Him, even though they are entirely lacking in righteousness.”121
109. Wright, Climax of the Covenant, xi, 1.
110. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective, 13.
111. Wright, Revolution, 75.
112.