How do we benefit from and access the work of the last Adam? The covenant of works rested on Adam’s perfect, personal, and perpetual obedience to secure eternal life. This is why theologians have called it the covenant of works—it rested on Adam’s obedience. Conversely, in the covenant of grace Christ takes up the failed work of the first Adam and offers His own perfect, personal, and perpetual obedience to secure salvation for His people. Recall that as a part of the covenant of redemption, the Father appointed His Son as the covenant surety (Heb. 7:22), the One who would be responsible for all the legal obligations of the covenant. In this case, Christ offered His obedience to the law to secure eternal life on behalf of those who are in covenant with Him. Christ fulfilled every jot and tittle of the law on behalf of those who trust in Him. Theologians call this aspect of Christ’s work His active obedience. God has imputed (or credited) to all human beings Adam’s sin (Rom. 5:12–21); we are also responsible for our own personal sins. Christ also came to pay the penalty for the broken law—the fractured covenant of works and all our personal sins against God’s law. Theologians call this Christ’s passive obedience. The term passive comes from the Latin word passio, which means “suffering.” Moreover, Christ offers His passive obedience throughout the entirety of His life—from womb to tomb, He suffered for His people.
Laying the groundwork and foundation of the covenant of grace in the completed work of Christ (active and passive obedience) is vital to understanding the nature of our salvation. The covenant of works requires obedience, whereas the covenant of grace requires faith in Christ to the exclusion of our good works for salvation. In other words, in our justification, law and gospel stand in antithesis. Paul makes this clear: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Rom. 3:28). When Paul explains the nature of the doctrine of justification, he quotes Genesis 15:6: “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’” (Rom. 4:3). Had Adam been obedient, God would have declared him righteous (in conformity to God’s commands and law) by his obedience. But now in the covenant of grace, God declares us righteous on the basis of Christ’s finished work:
Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” (Rom. 4:4–5)
We partake of the covenant of grace by the gift of faith, and this faith is the God-given empty hand that lays hold of the completed work of Christ. In the words of the famous hymn “Rock of Ages” by Augustus Toplady:
Not the labors of my hands
Can fulfil thy law’s demands;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone;
Thou must save, and thou alone.
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress;
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the Fountain fly;
Wash me, Savior, or I die.
Now, while we lay hold of Christ and the covenant of grace by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, this does not mean that good works are absent from the redeemed.
Going all the way back to the Abrahamic covenant, God noticeably revealed that He, and He alone, would fulfill the requirements and suffer the penalties of the covenant when He put Abraham to sleep and alone passed between the severed animals (Gen. 15:12–17). But God also called Abraham to holiness: “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless” (Gen. 17:1). Paul captures the two sides of the benefits of the covenant of grace:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (Eph. 2:8–10)
God clearly takes the initiative and saves sinners through the gift of faith, and their salvation does not in any way hinge on their good works. The obedience and suffering of Jesus are the sole foundation of salvation in the covenant of grace. At the same time, however, God also prepares good works in advance so that saved sinners should walk in them. In other words, in the covenant of works, Adam is supposed to secure eternal life by his own obedience. In the covenant of grace, Christ obtains eternal life for His people through His obedience and suffering. We do not produce good works to be saved. Rather, we produce good works because we are saved. Paul makes this clear when he writes: “But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Rom. 7:6, emphasis added). Our freedom from the law comes from our justification by faith in Christ, which enables us to live out our sanctification and perform the good works prepared for us.
As with the covenants of redemption and works, love ultimately lies at the heart of the covenant of grace. If we take a cue from Deuteronomy, love lies at the heart of Israel’s covenantal charter: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4–5). John never invokes the word covenant in his epistles, but he writes of the heart of the covenant of grace when he calls the church to love:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. (1 John 4:7–11)
God pours out His love in Christ through the Spirit in the covenant of grace, and His love enables us to love Him and one another. Only through the work of the last Adam can we once again enter the presence of our triune God—yet access comes not through our obedience but by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
Ligonier Ministries