The Biblical Covenants Part 2 -- By: Charles Fred Lincoln

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 100:399 (Jul 1943)
Article: The Biblical Covenants Part 2
Author: Charles Fred Lincoln


The Biblical Covenants
Part 2

Charles Fred Lincoln

(Continued from the Apri1-June Issue, 1943)

II. The Major Biblical Covenants

3. The Mosaic Covenant.

The testimony of the Scripture everywhere is clear and manifest that the Covenant of the Law, given on Mount Sinai through Moses, is a separate and distinct Covenant from that made by God with Abraham. The teachers of Covenantism arbitrarily deny this fact because to concede it would take the very foundation from their erroneous scheme of things. But numerous Scriptures establish this foundational truth beyond all possibility of question. Many illustrative passages might be given, but at this point reference will be made to only two or three. Galatians 4:19–31 sets forth the “two covenants” of Moses and Abraham in distinct contrast and shows that they are incompatible and cannot live together. The declaration that there are “two covenants” is conclusive evidence of the erroneousness of the scheme of the covenantists. The contrast is not between the ceremonies and animal sacrifices of the law and the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, as the theory lamely contends, but between two wholly contrary systems represented by Abraham and Moses; the whole burden of the argument clearly rests upon this fundamental difference. Galatians 3:15–18 is another instance where Scripture differentiates between the two covenants of Abraham and Moses. Bishop Lightfoot points out that the Greek word translated addeth in verse 15 means “adds fresh clauses”; the declaration, therefore, is that the Covenant of Law in no sense qualifies the Covenant with Abraham; it

neither adds to nor takes from it. Bishop Lightfoot further states that the Greek word for added in verse 19 refers to the ”adventitious character of the law”; that is, it is some, thing new and distinct from the Covenant of Abraham which at Sinai makes its “advent” into the dealings of God with man. Romans 4:13–16 also shows that there is an absolute distinction between the Covenant of Law and that of Abraham and that the two are unmixable principles. Hebrews 8:7ff likewise shows the distinction between the Covenant of the Law and the New Covenant of Grace to be made in the future with Israel. In every sense then the Covenant of Mount Sinai was of a distinct and specific character and must be so treated and not confused with any Covenant whose bas...

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