The Covenant with Adam
The first covenant is at the beginning of human history with the first human pair, Adam and Eve. Genesis 1:26 says that Adam and Eve is made in the image and likeness of God. What does it mean to be made in the image and likeness of God? The Scriptures themselves actually explain this phrase.
In Genesis, 5:3, we read about the birth of Seth to Adam, his father. It says that Seth was in the image and likeness of Adam, his father. That’s a little interpretive clue right there as to the meaning of the phrase “image and likeness.” It describes how a son is like a father. Taking that analogy back to Genesis 1:26, we come to understand that what the Scriptures are telling us is Adam and Eve were made as God’s children. That is a covenantal relationship.
We can tell that there’s a covenant in Genesis because at the end of the creation story, we conclude with the Sabbath in Genesis 2:3. The Sabbath is called a “perpetual covenant” and a “sign” of the covenant later in Exodus 31:16-17. Remember that the Sabbath is not given later in Scripture, it’s given at creation. That’s a clue, one of several, that a covenant existed between God and humanity from the beginning of its creation.
What would the privileges of the covenant be? Part of this privilege is the peace of the living environment that God created for His son and daughter. Adam and Eve lived in a garden-temple on Mt. Eden. In that garden temple, they had access to the tree of life, which we read about in Genesis 2:9, and to the river of life in Genesis 2:10. That was divine food and divine drink which enabled them to live forever. Likewise, we see that Adam received God’s breath or spirit in Genesis 2:7.
It was the reception of that Spirit which the Church Fathers understood as the Holy Spirit being given to Adam, that constituted Adam as a living being that brought him to life. The Spirit bestowed on Adam what we call “original holiness” or “original justice” and also what we term the “preternatural gifts.” These gifts concerned perfection, of knowledge, and of righteousness and of immortality that our first parents enjoyed in that original, perfect relationship with God.
That’s a picture of the original intention of our loving Father-God for us. He created us and placed us in a beautiful dwelling, a garden temple where we had all our needs met and were able to live in perfect peace with Him in what we might call the “vertical relationship” and in perfect peace with nature in what we might call the “horizontal relationship.” Again, that was God’s intention for us, to live in that perfect of peace in harmony with nature and harmony with Him for eternity.
Having explained these things, let’s talk now about the relationship of the Adamic Covenant to our task of evangelism.
The point of the Adamic Covenant is that God created the world good. The mess that we see around us was not God’s intention for us. God has high goals and expectations for each one of us. He wants us to be His son or His daughter. That relationship being a son or daughter comes with other statuses. It comes with a royal, priestly and prophetic status. If we had time to get into it, we would see how Adam’s kingly and priestly and prophetic role are all reflected in Genesis 2. That status of king, priest and prophet is intended for each human being. This really speaks to people’s search for meaning in life and for value in themselves and the hope for a good God.
When we look around ourselves and see what’s going on in society, we see all the mess that is the result of human sin and we see human beings being devalued. We sense in ourselves that that’s wrong. If people think that the environment that we observe around us is what God made originally and what God intended for us, that, of course, leads to depression, perhaps giving up in the belief in God completely and we end up in atheism and nihilism.
It’s very important for people to understand that the mess we see around ourselves is not God’s original intention. God is a loving God who created this world good, who intended for us peace, harmony and love both for himself and with each other and with the environment. He loves us very much and His goal for us was to be His children and to enjoy a royal and a priestly and a prophetic status in this perfect home which He had created for us originally.