R.C. Sproul

What that means is that all human beings who descend from Adam participate in the Adamic covenant.

We are by nature, as the children of Adam, necessarily involved in a covenant relationship with God.

Today I want to focus our attention on the first covenant that God makes with mankind.

And actually, when we look at that very first covenant, it is known by different names and for different reasons.

Sometimes that first covenant is referred to simply as the Adamic covenant.

For obvious reasons, it was made with Adam.

And the second way in which the first covenant is described is that it's often called the creation covenant.

Now before I mention the third designation, I want to talk a little bit about these two designations.

Obviously, we call that first covenant Adamic because Adam is related to God in it, and the term Adam means man in the generic sense, mankind or humanity, and we know

particularly from our studies of the New Testament, but also can be gleaned from the Old Testament.

But when God made this covenant with Adam, it was not a covenant simply between God and a particular historical individual, but Adam was representing the whole of humanity.

Now that's very important for us, particularly later on in our understanding of the history of redemption, because in the role that Adam played initially, he failed as our representative.

And so when Christ comes into the world, one of the responsibilities the Father gives to Him is to be the new Adam.

And you see the contrast mentioned many times in the New Testament.

Through the first Adam's disobedience, death comes into the world.

and through the new Adam or the second Adam's obedience, life comes into the world.

So the New Testament makes much of the contrast between the original Adam and Christ as the second Adam because in both cases, both in the original Adam and in Christ, they functioned and worked not as private individuals but as representatives.

Secondly, because Adam represents the entire human race, in the covenant that God makes with him, again it's not with an isolated individual, but it's with the whole of mankind.

And what that means is that all human beings who descend from Adam participate in the Adamic covenant.

We are by nature as the children of Adam necessarily involved in a covenant relationship with God.