R.C. Sproul

That's a point that is often overlooked and obscured.

People say, well, I'm not Jewish or I'm not Christian, therefore I'm in no covenant relationship with God.

They can say, I don't even believe in God, so there's no way I can be in a covenant relationship with God.

But wait a minute.

What the Old Testament is saying here is that you are in a covenant relationship with God even if you deny it.

You can't escape this covenantal relationship that was forged between God and you in Adam.

Again, this representative concept of Adam is referred to by Paul in Romans where he talks about in Adam, we all sinned in Adam even though we weren't there.

And that raises the whole specter and the mystery that attends the question of original sin and our relationship to the Fall.

But that's not the scope of our discussion today.

Rather, we're just reminding us that all of us are inescapably

in a covenant relationship with God by virtue of our relationship with Adam.

And the question is this, whether you're a covenant keeper or a covenant breaker.

We are all one or the other, but none of us is outside of the covenant.

And again, it's also called the creation covenant.

because it was built in to the order of things before the fall and that the stipulations that God gave to Adam in this covenant were by extension given to the whole world.

And then the question is asked, are those stipulations or requirements that God imposes upon Adam in this first covenant ever abrogated or nullified?

Now what would be the significance of a question like that?

Well, one of the questions that we debate all the time are questions of the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, and some people say, well, whatever God gave through Moses in the Old Testament doesn't apply to us anymore, or whatever stipulations God gave through Jesus to His people in the New Testament may apply to Christians, but they don't apply to non-Christians.

But the re-answer to that is any law that God instills in the covenant of creation extends as far as the creation extends, so that if God sanctifies marriage in creation,

then the sanctity of marriage would apply to all generations.