The Corporate Nature of the Covenant
The LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
-Genesis 3:14-15, ESV
Last time, I alluded to some key Old Testament themes. Several of these are seen the the God’s successive covenants with man. In these, God progressively unraveled His plan of redemption culminating with Christ establishing the new covenant. While God made these covenants with those specific people, none were made only with them. There is a corporate aspect of covenants that is often overlooked but is vital to understanding the way God interacts with His people.
Corporate Covenants
We first see this in the covenant that undergirds all others: the pre-Creation agreement within the Trinity to accomplish redemption. In passages like Psalms 2 and 110 and Zechariah 6 we see this agreement between God the Father and God the Son: the Son would offer Himself as the sacrifice for sin and the Father would accept it. This can be seen as the covenant which every other covenant ultimately serves.[1] But there is another involved in this covenant between the Father and Son: the Holy Spirit, who plays a vital role in salvation and is therefore part of this covenant as well. Though the Spirit is perfectly one with the Father and Son and therefore in perfect agreement regarding the plan of redemption, His exclusion from these passages sets a pattern for all of the covenants: God’s covenants always involve more than the individuals He made the covenants with.
We see this starting with the Adamic covenant.[2] When God gave Adam the Cultural Mandate, Eve had not yet been created. Yet it would have been impossible for him to obey God without her, so she was just as much a part of this covenant. Similarly, while the flood narrative repeatedly refers to Noah’s wife and his sons’ wives, only Noah and his sons receive the covenant in Genesis 9. But since God restates the Cultural Mandate here, it is clear that those women like Eve were necessarily included in it. The same can be said of the Abrahamic covenant, where God spoke only to Abraham but clearly included his entire household. The Law was itself a covenant with the entire nation of Israel but was likewise given to Moses. Most of all, we see this in the Davidic covenant, which was much more about his descendants and included the entire nation: as we saw recently, as went the kings, so went the nation. Scripture is clear: when God makes a covenant with a person, He is making a covenant with everyone connected to that person. God’s covenants were always with the entirety of the present and future people of God.
Covenant Seed
This means whenever God entered into a covenant with His people, it was not only with the people of that generation but all subsequent generations too. Therefore every covenant was not only corporate but also multi-generational. We saw how this is implied in the Adamic covenant, but it is made explicit in every subsequent covenant:
Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
-Genesis 9:8-11, ESV
The term “offspring” is “seed” and is used both literally and figuratively throughout the Old Testament. It’s first use as “offspring” is in the first hint of the Gospel: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). This refers to Jesus’s ultimate defeat of Satan through the cross (Galatians 3:16), but in some sense it can also be applied more generally, dividing the world into the offspring of God and the offspring of Satan. Following the descent of Cain’s line into wickedness—showing themselves to be the offspring of Satan—we see Eve use “seed” of Seth (Genesis 4:25) followed by the account of his righteous line. This continues with the use of the term in the Noahic (Genesis 9:9) and Abrahamic (Genesis 15, 17) covenants and in the covenant blessings and curses of the Law (Deuteronomy 28-31). Jesus picks up the theme when He tells His opponents that they are children of the devil (John 8:44). John later elaborates on this:
Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
-1 John 3:7-10, ESV
The Greek term for “seed” here like the Hebrew term is both literal and figurative, so there is a very real war between the children of God and the children of Satan that can be seen throughout Scripture.[3] God’s covenant is with families, and that is how He builds His Kingdom. Adam, Noah, Abraham, the Israelites at Sinai, and David knew that they were not entering into covenant with God as individuals but as families—including every member of their present families and all of their future descendants. So the future generations were understood to be very much present and therefore participants in the covenants, as seen by the fact that the term “seed” can refer to the man’s contribution to procreation (Leviticus 15). Thus Levi was “in the loins” of Abraham and thereby participated in paying tithes to Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:9-10)—what Abraham did was considered done by his great grandson as well. Therefore it can be said that we all as Adam’s offspring were in Adam and therefore participated with him in the Fall. Here is how the Westminster Shorter Catechism states it in question 16: “The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity; all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression”. We are all inherently offspring of Satan born into a depraved nature of sin that deserves damnation. Our only hope is for the offspring of the woman prophesied in Genesis 3:15 to come and establish a new humanity as the Second Adam and then bring us into that humanity, thereby making us offspring of God through Himself rather than offspring of Satan through Adam. This is why we must be “born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23). Scripture is clear that it is only those who are born again that are part of the true “Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16) and therefore His offspring rather than Satan’s.
Physical or Spiritual Seed?
At this point, it would be tempting to interpret “offspring” in a merely spiritual sense to the neglect of physical offspring. Many American Christians have done just that, seeing salvation in a very individualistic way, often overemphasizing the individual testimony—the more dramatic the better. “Boring” testimonies from those who grew up in Christian homes are often seen—albeit unintentionally—as inferior. But dramatic testimonies are the exception rather than the rule. The normal way in which God builds His Kingdom is through parents raising their children in the knowledge and discipline of God, which God often uses to bring the child to salvation. In most cases in which parents are faithful to do this, God will bless their efforts by causing those children to be born again, so children who fall away should be considered the odd exception.[4] This means that the multi-generational nature of the covenants is one of most precious doctrines for the Christian parent.[5] And it is the expectation: “This corporate mindset, alien to the modern individualist, is simply taken for granted in Scripture”.[6] The promise embedded in the covenants is that when born-again parents are faithful in childrearing, most of those children will themselves be born again. The American church often underestimates and undervalues this ministry of parents to their children. We must repent of how we have despised the children of the covenant.
Do Not Despise the Children
Yes, I said we have despised our children and that they are children of the covenant. Regardless of your views on covenant theology, it is important to recognize Scripture’s clear distinction between the children of believers and unbelievers (e.g. Malachi 2:15, 1 Corinthians 7:14). Even though no one can enjoy the eternal blessings of the new covenant apart from new birth in Christ, the children of believers receive the temporal blessings of the covenant by virtue of being born to believers. But to whom much is given, much is expected (Luke 12:48), so Scripture teaches that those who received those temporal blessings but did not ultimately bow the knee to Christ will suffer greater condemnation than those who have never heard His Name (e.g. Matthew 12:41-42, Luke 11:31-32, Hebrews 6:4-8, 10:26-31). So to neglect to bring up our children in the knowledge and discipline of God is to despise them. And while the whole church bears some responsibility in this, God specifically charges parents (especially fathers) with this responsibility. Many parents in our day have abdicated this, thinking Sunday school, children’s church, and youth programs sufficiently do the job. While these can be great blessings, they are insufficient and often counterproductive because they give the illusion of strong faith when in reality they instill a faith too weak to sustain children in the real world. Parents who fail to robustly train their children in the Scriptures despise them.
It should go without saying, but in our culture it must be said: we despise our children when we murder them or advocate for their murder. I have previouslyshown that all forms of abortion are murder, but it’s connection to the “seed” shows just how abhorrent it is. The term appears in the prohibition against child sacrifice (Leviticus 18:21, Deuteronomy 18:10) where parents would burn their infants alive. Considering their understanding of the importance of children, they were offering what was most valuable to them. In this way, abortion is actually much worse: child sacrifice at least views the child as valuable while abortion views the child as worthless. Therefore, to paraphrase Jesus, the Canaanites and Israelites who sacrificed their children will rise up at the judgement and condemn this generation. In the Law, the penalty for parents who sacrificed their children was death (Leviticus 20:1-2), but for any who turned a blind eye, God says: “I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech” (Leviticus 20:5). This would mean that under the Mosaic Law, abortion “doctors”, women who have abortions, and men who coerce them into it would all deserve death, while all who support abortion would deserve banishment. If the unintentional death of a child in the womb made the perpetrator worthy of death (Exodus 21:22-23), how much more is death deserved for those who intentionally kill those children? If those penalties seem too harsh, it shows that we are judging Scripture by culture and not vice versa. I am not advocating for the death of abortion perpetrators or the excommunication of abortion supporters, and I am certainly not advocating for vigilantism against the abortion industry. What I am saying is that we must abhor what God abhors—and God abhors those who murder children and those who tolerate it. The blood of over 63 million American babies cries out to God for justice, and God will answer in vengeance one day. The only hope for all who participate in or support abortion on that day is the only hope any of us have: to trust in Jesus Christ who already bore God’s wrath for all who trust in Him.
While abortion is the most obvious societal abomination against children, there are many other ways in which we despise our children. We despise our children when we do anything that jeopardizes future generations, including the abomination of genital and hormonal mutilation in “gender affirming care”. Scripture is also clear that those who are not diligent to discipline their children actually hate them (Proverbs 13:24), so our society’s disdain of discipline shows disdain for children. Parents also despise their children when they provoke them to anger or discouragement (Ephesians 6:4, Colossians 3:21), which is often caused by divorce, spousal conflict, and abuse—essentially husbands and wivesnot fulfilling their God-given roles. We also despise children when we prioritize things like career and pleasure ahead of them, but the purpose of a career in most cases should be to provide for a family. This does not mean that every adult who intentionally persists in childlessness is sinning—after all, I am presently called to singleness—but it does mean that they should examine their motives guided by Scripture. We despise our children if we fail to bring them into existence, so the church as a whole needs to emphasize raising up future generations of Christ-followers.
Our society detests children while Scripture values them highly, so it is high time that the church follows Scripture rather than society. Clearly, American Christians have much to repent of here, but we must never forget that there is forgiveness in Jesus Christ. I’ll conclude with the words of one who murdered God’s children but found grace and forgiveness in Christ. Then, having no children of his own, he raised spiritual children:
I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
-Apostle Paul, 1 Timothy 1:12-17, ESV
NOTES
[1] Guy M. Richard, “The Covenant of Redemption” in Guy Prentiss Waters, J. Nicholas Reid, & John R. Muether (ed.), Covenant Theology, Wheaton, IL: Crossway: 2020: 43-62.
[2] O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing: 1980: 65.
[3] O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing: 1980: 104.
[4] Douglas Wilson, Standing on the Promises: A Handbook of Biblical Childrearing, Moscow, ID: Canon Press: 1997: 20.
[5] Douglas Wilson, To a Thousand Generations: Infant Baptism–Covenant Mercy for the People of God, Moscow, ID: Canon Press: 1996: 18.
[6] Douglas Wilson, To a Thousand Generations: Infant Baptism–Covenant Mercy for the People of God, Moscow, ID: Canon Press: 1996: 19.
