Series > Understanding Salvation: Grace and Works in the Bible
God's Covenants and Our Salvation
January 2, 2026
•
Genesis 12:1-3
Genesis 15:1-18
Genesis 17:1-11
Matthew 26:26-29
Hebrews 8:6-13
• Posted in:
Basics of Christianity,
Salvation,
Reformed Theology
By revisiting God’s original covenants with Abraham in Genesis and the new covenant Jesus establishes in Matthew, we gain understanding of how God works, his gift of grace, and what he expects from us as his people.
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Scott Hoezee
In the gospels, we read that one day a rich, young man came to Jesus to ask a vital question: What good thing must I do to inherit eternal life? Now, in a way, it is the wrong question. The New Testament makes clear, after all, that we can only be saved by grace alone and not by anything we do. Then again, throughout the Bible, our good works are clearly very important, too. So, how are we saved? What is God’s grace? Where do our works fit in? Today on Groundwork, we will begin pondering these important questions. So, stay tuned.
Darrell Delaney
Welcome to Groundwork, where we dig into scripture to lay the foundation for our lives. I am Darrell Delaney.
Scott Hoezee
And I am Scott Hoezee; and Darrell, we are, with this program, starting a four-part series to look at all different parts of the Bible, Old Testament and New, to wonder about how we can relate our being saved by grace alone and not by works, to the idea that our works, nevertheless, are clearly seen as important throughout scripture.
Darrell Delaney
Yes, Scott, and sometimes we can get really confused on how these things work together. We know that we are saved by grace through faith alone, justified by the finished works of Jesus Christ…
Scott Hoezee
Right.
Darrell Delaney
Based on his death, burial, and resurrection; but we also know that God is taking into account our works; not for salvation but for our lives; and sometimes we can get those kind of confused…
Scott Hoezee
Yes.
Darrell Delaney
And it is this episode in this series, where we are going to try to make that clearer for everybody.
Scott Hoezee
And in this particular program…this first one in the series…we are going to look mostly at the Old Testament, although we will get into the New Testament at the end, too; but what we want to look at, Darrell, is the Bible-wide, vital concept of covenant; and that is kind of where it all begins in the Bible; but to set the stage, we need to see the big picture; and so, as many of us know, Genesis 1-11 presents both the creation of the cosmos, and the tragic fall of humanity into sin; and then, starting with Cain’s murder of his younger brother, Abel, those first eleven chapters kind of grimly, Darrell, display sin’s spread and it corruption of God’s good creation.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; by Chapter 6, it says that God is really sorry for all the things that have happened, and the thoughts of humankind are all evil all the time. He says: I am going to start over, and he sends a flood, but even after the flood, even after Noah and all of that, then it seems that things still continue to get worse because of the brokenness and the sin that God is having to deal with.
Scott Hoezee
Yes; eventually, we get to the Tower of Babel, and people trying to mount up to heaven on their own. So, God scatters them and he gives them all different languages to help make sure that they spread through the earth. But actually, you know, Darrell, but the time you get to the end of Genesis 11, you have to look at the world and conclude: Man, things are a mess for sure. I mean, how are we going to get out of this?
Darrell Delaney
Yes; they are a mess; and if you look at all of that, then you could easily skip over what God did as far as addressing this situation, because what we teach where I am from is that Genesis 1 and 2 is where God created everything very good. Chapter 3 is where everything is messed up; but Chapter 3 on is when God addresses how he redeems this whole situation. So, we see that God promises salvation in Genesis 3, even in the beginning.
Scott Hoezee
Exactly; so, the serpent beguiled Eve, and then they both were beguiled…Adam and Eve both ate of the forbidden fruit, which God told them not to do. So, they fell into sin, but the dust of that first sin hadn’t settled when God pronounces what theologians call a big term here: protoevangelium, or the pre-gospel. God promises…this is like a preview of the gospel good news that will ultimately come to its climax in Jesus the Messiah, of course…but God says: I am going to send somebody to get rid of that tempter guy. He is going to crush the head of that serpent. So, already there in Genesis 3 God says: Things are messed up, but this isn’t the last word. I am going to have the last word, and it is going to be a saving word.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; and God promises salvation right there in Genesis 3. But the real decisive step in that direction does not come until Genesis 12. So, let’s listen to what God says in Genesis 12. It says: The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Scott Hoezee
So, there it is: the call of Abram, who later gets renamed Abraham; and Darrell, it represents God’s kind of founding of kind of a beachhead to save the world. God is going to start here. So, the ultimate aim is to build a nation; and eventually, through that nation, all the other nations of the earth would be blessed; and we can notice here, Darrell…we said that we would be talking about covenant in this program…the language of covenant is not in Genesis 12, but what God promises to Abraham is clearly a free gift of God. We could call it a gift of grace. There is no evidence in the text that there was anything particularly special about Abram. He just appears out of nowhere, and he gets handed this huge promise.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; he is a guy from Ur of the Chaldeans, in the Podunk, if you will; way out in the middle of nowhere; and God decides: I am going to start with this guy. Not because he was smarter, wiser, stronger or even more brilliant than anyone around him. God decides to actually begin a relationship with him—a covenant keeping, promise keeping relationship that he initiates; and that is what he wants to include Abram in.
Scott Hoezee
So, a ton of promises right off the bat, but then, just a few chapters on, in Genesis 15, now we do get the overt language of covenant. Let’s listen to Genesis 15: After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.” 5He took him [Abram] outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. 7He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” 8But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” 9So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” 10Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 12As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 17When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I [will] give this land.”
Darrell Delaney
So, we see the Father…God…making a covenant that has two parts: 1) Land. 2) Descendants. And so, he does all these things to make sure that Abraham knows that he will be receiving these promises; and I love the fact that it says that Abraham believed God and it was credited…credited…to him as righteousness. That is the powerful part that shows that God is the initiator and Abraham is the receiver.
Scott Hoezee
Yes; and in the ancient Near East, there were two primary types of covenant, and this is one of them. It is often called a royal land grant; which means that all of the responsibility for this kind of covenant comes from the side of one of the two covenant partners; in this case, God; and then, Darrell, in that strange scene that we just saw in Genesis 15, it is called cutting a covenant, right?
Darrell Delaney
Right.
Scott Hoezee
So, the idea was that the one who was making the covenant would pass between the animals that had been cut in two, and that was a way of saying: Hey, if I don’t keep my covenant promises to you, then I will become like these dead animals. So, that is a pretty dramatic thing to promise, Darrell, and a pretty graphic way to illustrate it as well.
Darrell Delaney
Yes, it is powerful; and this is exactly where our salvation ultimately sprang from. But in terms of covenant, that is not quite the whole story. In just a moment, we are going to talk about what it means and what comes next for Abraham. So, stay tuned.
Segment 2
Scott Hoezee
I am Scott Hoezee, with Darrell Delaney, and you are listening to Groundwork; and Darrell, we just saw how God initiated his plan of salvation by making some grand and sweeping promises to Abraham that were rooted in what we could call grace alone. Abram had not earned this. The covenant that God made did not spring from Abram’s initiative; it didn’t appear to be a reward for anything Abraham had done or would ever do. It is just pure grace.
Darrell Delaney
It is definitely pure grace, and yet, let’s go ahead two chapters next to this one, in Chapter 17, and look at what he says here. It says: When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. 2Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” 3Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: you will be the father of many nations. 5No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” 9Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.
Scott Hoezee
So, Darrell, parts of this passage introduced us to the second common type of covenant in the ancient world. The other one that we looked at was royal land grant; this one is often called: Suzerain/Vassal; kind of weird words for us today, but Suzerain/Vassal; and this kind of covenant kind of boils down to God saying: You do your part, I will do mine. We still hear in Chapter 17 echoes of that royal land grant covenant that God established in Genesis 15—mostly the promise of offspring and land come to Abram by grace alone; and yet, it turns out he has something to do in response to this. “You will walk before me and be blameless,” God commands. Then there is a sign that Abraham and his descendants would be faithful to all of that: God institutes what we could call kind of a sacrament through the sign of circumcision.
Darrell Delaney
So, we have God establishing what God would do; and God establishing what Abraham should do; and then the sign that binds them together. So, that is the relationship—that is actually what is needed. Now, the good news is that God is initiating this whole idea…this whole concept of covenant, but he is also showing Abram the way that he needs to live. So, the grace is God not only doing what he needs to do, but he is also informing Abram how to live. So, there is grace on both sides of that, but then Abraham has a responsibility.
Scott Hoezee
Right; as we will be exploring in this Groundwork series, that right there in Genesis 17 sets the stage for the working out of salvation throughout the Bible, and most certainly right on through what we receive through the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus our Lord. We see this already here: You cannot receive the covenant promises of God by doing anything; but then again, you cannot receive the covenant promises without subsequently doing something…a whole lot of somethings, in fact; and the sign of your determination that you are going to do that gets carved into the very flesh of your body.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; so, the covenant sign of circumcision is actually what people will be using from this point on. So, eight days out, after every* male is born, they use this as: Okay, we need to get this child underneath the covenant that God has established with our father Abraham; and every generation after that they are being reminded of telling the story of how God’s faithfulness has intervened, and how the grace is actually what they received, because they actually obeyed the covenant.
Scott Hoezee
So, it was all pretty dramatic, but for Abraham and Sarah, it is also pretty unbelievable, or nearly so, anyway. I mean, we have to remember, Darrell, that when God first approached Abram in Genesis 12, Abram was already 75 years old. Sarai was a little younger, but not by much; and the thing of it was, that they never managed to have children even when they had been vastly younger and in their prime. And what’s worse, by the time we get to Genesis 17, it has been 24 years…nearly a quarter century…
Darrell Delaney
Yes, he is 99.
Scott Hoezee
Since that promise had been made; and what do you know: Still no children for Abraham and Sarah. That is why the very next chapter, when we have these three mysterious visitors come to Abraham and say: Hey, really; this time next year Sarah is going to have a baby; and Sarah hears it and laughs out loud.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; just imagine anybody coming up to someone who is 85-90 years old and saying: You are going to have a child; even when past all the lifecycle stuff that has happened. You would laugh; you would think it was ridiculous. I think God is saying to them: Okay, well, you are going to name the kid “laugh” then. You are going to laugh his whole life; if you want to laugh, we can all laugh; because his name is going to be Isaac, and that means laughter. So then, when he is born, you will be able to get the joke at least.
Scott Hoezee
That is right: Little baby giggles. But you know, why? Why didn’t God just tap a newly married couple full of vim, vigor, vitality? Why not use a young couple to get the salvation ball rolling? Well, you know, Darrell, maybe his doing it through this extremely unlikely path of a pair of childless senior citizens, maybe that, too, was a way of God saying this is by grace alone. Human beings cannot engineer this thing. Human beings most assuredly cannot earn so great a salvation; they are going to have to live up to their end of the covenant bargain; and mostly, unfortunately, that won’t happen in Israel. But you know, if God can manage to do this through these two old people, then you know: Yes, it is all God.
Darrell Delaney
It is definitely the way he gets all the glory in this situation. If they are young and they have the vim and vigor you mention, then they could say: Oh, well; we did this on our own; because are young enough; we are still within the season of having children. Of course, we could have done this on our own. But when they are way out from that possibility, you know it is God. Just like when Jesus waits four days to raise Lazarus from the dead. He is dead-dead. He is not resurrecting; he is not coming back; and Jesus intervenes, so you know it is God. So, God does that sometimes. It looks strange to us, but he wants to make sure he gets all the glory.
Scott Hoezee
Right; and again, eventually, you know, God expects the descendants of Abraham who become the nation of Israel, to keep their end of the bargain, right? Walk before me and be blameless. Mostly, they don’t; and you know, I don’t want to spoil the end of the story for anybody, but you know, it just isn’t working very well. So, kind of in the end, God has to kind of say: Tell you what. Obviously, I have always kept up my end of the covenant bargain…obviously; but now, I’ll tell you what? I will keep the human end of the covenant bargain, too. So, the Son of God comes to earth as a human…as an heir of Abraham…and in his sinless life, Jesus fulfills Abraham’s end of the covenant; and on behalf of the rest of us, who could never quite get it right.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; so, I know this is an adage: If someone doesn’t do something right, you might as well do it yourself. Now, we do that wrong, but God is the one who does it right. So, he knew that we could not keep our covenant no matter how hard we tried. So, he decided to be incarnated and come in and do it on our side so that we could get both sides of the covenant fulfilled; and that shows the extent of how much he loves us.
Scott Hoezee
Exactly; and we hear Jesus say this in Matthew 26: 26While they were eating, Jesus took the bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “take and eat; this is my body.” 27Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. 28This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. 29I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.
So, Darrell, there we have it: A new covenant now exists in Jesus’ flesh and blood sacrificed for our atonement. So, in Jesus, we get combined both the royal land grant covenant and the Suzerain/Vassal covenant; and both are perfectly fulfilled in him.
Well, in just a moment, we will do a little bit more with the covenant in the New Testament. So, stay tuned.
Segment 3
Darrell Delaney
You are listening to Groundwork, where we dig into scripture to lay the foundation for our lives. I am Darrell Delaney.
Scott Hoezee
And I am Scott Hoezee; and Darrell, we have just seen Jesus institute a new covenant; and ultimately, in the setting of the New Testament, we know that the sign of this covenant will not be circumcision anymore, but baptism. But you know, Darrell, if you think about where do all these Old Testament…old covenant and new covenant connections get made the best in the New Testament, and it is in the book of Hebrews.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; Hebrews…even though we do not know who wrote the book of Hebrews, it could be a collection of sermons, it could be a lot of things that are going on in the literature. Nobody knows; but it is definitely showing the fulfillment of a lot of things going on in the Old Testament in the new, and also being fulfilled in Jesus himself. We notice that because he is a better prophet than Abraham; he is a better priest. He is a better king. His offices show up, and it is really powerful to see the connections from the Old Testament to the New in the book of Hebrews.
Scott Hoezee
So, let’s dig into Hebrews 8, Darrell, to see the outworking of a really important part of Christian theology. So, the author has been comparing Jesus to the former priests of Israel, as you just said, Darrell; and now he says this: 6But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises. 7For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. 8But God found fault with the people and said: “The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. 9It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.
Darrell Delaney
10This is the covenant I will establish with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. 11No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest. 12For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” 13By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.
Scott Hoezee
So, what we see in Jesus Christ, this author to Hebrews is saying, was long ago predicted. So, he quotes Jeremiah 31 there, right? That is Old Testament stuff, so the new covenant was prophesied by people like Jeremiah and Isaiah. Technically, there was nothing wrong with the old covenant, except that we could never keep it, because the law kind of always stayed outside of us, you know: Walk before me and be blameless. The law tells us how to do that, but it always kind of stayed outside of the people. So, now God says: I am going to do a new thing, and I am going to put that law right in your minds and I am going to write it on your very hearts. It is going to be inside you like a control center.
Darrell Delaney
It is beautiful because God noticed this where, in Deuteronomy 6, he tells them to write it on their foreheads and put it on their gates. It is always before them. They bring the Ten Commandments down from heaven, like they get to look at this external law; but the Lord is saying now that law needs to be internalized. It wasn’t happening by them reading and reciting it. It needs to be something that happens in their hearts; and this is what happens at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit comes, of course; but also, this is where the book of Hebrews is teaching us that that new covenant was definitely needed for us to understand the role.
Scott Hoezee
Exactly; exactly. So, God lived in the temple in Jerusalem…in Solomon’s temple. He lived in the Holy of Holies. They thought that God was enthroned on the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant, seated between the cherubim on the top of the Ark. It was like God’s earthly throne. But now, we are all tabernacles. We are all living temples of the Holy Spirit; and as you said, that was made very clear at Pentecost; and subsequent to Pentecost, the rest of the New Testament makes it clear that we are now living, walking, talking, breathing temples of God’s Spirit, and that is the nature of the new covenant, and that is what makes it different from the old covenant. The fulfillment of that old covenant moves it to a whole other level.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; it seems like when God was doing creation and walking alongside of humanity in history, he was always trying to get closer and closer. So, he began as the creator in Genesis, and he talks about walking through the Garden with Adam in the cool of the day. So, he is walking with him, right? But that is not close enough. So, then he creates this Tent of Meeting, and he says: I am going to put my presence there, in the Ark of the Covenant. It is not close enough. Then, you know, Jesus comes down here, and so, he is walking with them, but it is not close enough. Then, Pentecost happens and he puts his Spirit inside of us, so he is always trying to get closer and closer to us; and sometimes our sin and our efforts in what we try to do limit his ability to get closer; but his role and his heart have always wanted that.
Scott Hoezee
So, as we wrap up this program all about covenant, what can we do? How can we respond to what we have seen here? I want to suggest two things. The first one, Darrell, is wonder…awe…a sense of being bowled over by the work of salvation that only God could pull off; because, I think, Darrell, when you look at the grand sweep of things, as we have tried to do in this program, when we consider the trajectory of God’s promise in the Garden of Eden, all the way down to this very day, as we consider this as baptized believers…temples of the Spirit…it is pretty breathtaking.
Darrell Delaney
Yes, it is; and if you think of Hebrews, in Chapter 12 it says there is a great cloud of witnesses. If you think of the Olympic Colosseum in Rome, where there are all of these people watching; think of that in the cosmos version, where the angels are looking and they are actually looking in at our story and how we run the race; and they are wondering and marveling in awe about the salvation story. There is an old hymn that says: We have the song that the angels cannot sing; we have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. The fact that God has sent his grace to do that and to redeem our lives is the breathtaking gift that we get to enjoy.
Scott Hoezee
If we are ever tempted to feel blasé or ho-hum about our salvation, I think we need to step back and see this grand narrative, all the way back to the Garden of Eden, through Abram, on through David and Israel and Jesus ultimately. It is quite the story, you know; I mean, finally we know that all of scripture narrates finally just one story.
Darrell Delaney
Yes; that one story is that he saved us by grace through faith, and it is a beautiful thing. The second thing that we should be thinking about is gratitude in light of all that. We are grateful and we are thankful to all God has done.
Scott Hoezee
That is why, in the Reformed tradition, in the Heidelberg Catechism, there are three sections: Sin—here is the mess we got into; deliverance—here is how God got us out of that mess; and then, gratitude—here is how we live. Maybe we could do no better than to close out this program by quoting from the great Andraé Crouch song: My Tribute: How can I say thanks for all the things you have done for me? Things so undeserved, yet you gave to prove your love for me. The voices of a million angels could not express my gratitude. All that I am and ever hope to be, I owe it all to thee. To God be the glory, amen.
Darrell Delaney
[ 0:24:32.0] Well, thanks for listening and digging deeply into scripture with Groundwork. We are your hosts, Darrell Delaney with Scott Hoezee, and we hope you will join us again next time as we study Ephesians 2 and other writings of Paul to gain a deeper understanding of God’s grace.
Connect with us at groundworkonline.com to share what Groundwork means to you, or to tell us what you would like to hear discussed next on Groundwork.
Scott Hoezee
Groundwork is a listener-supported program produced by ReFrame Ministries. Visit reframeministries.org for more information.
*Correction: In the audio of this episode, host Darrell Delaney misspeaks and says "every firstborn male," when he meant to say "every male."