# Matthew Henry on the two covenants



## Reformed Covenanter (Aug 4, 2021)

... a. A covenant of works – made with our first parents in innocency wherein _life_ was promised upon condition of _perfect_, _personal and perpetual_ obedience. Do this and live, i.e. continue happy.

Now

i. when Adam was taken into this covenant he needed no pardon – _for God made man upright_ (Eccles. 7:29). There was a perfect purity and rectitude in his nature, his understanding clear, his will complying, his affections regular, all in frame. He was created in God’s image. That in us which needs pardon is the devil’s image. He that is innocent needs not to be justified. That was a covenant of friendship, not a covenant of reconciliation which supposeth a quarrel. Therefore there needed no mediator. Adam in his innocent estate dealt with God immediately. There was no cloud to interpose or interrupt his communion – no fracas, no wrath, but all clear.

ii. in case of failure the covenant promised no pardon. That covenant left no room for repentance (Gen. 2:17, _thou shalt surely die_), and therefore when Adam had eaten forbidden fruit he fled from God, and hid himself (Gen. 3:8), in a sense of his guilt, having no encouragement to hope for pardon, like the malefactor while the hue and cry is in pursuit of him. And if God had not presently revealed a Saviour, the seed of the woman that should break the serpent’s head, Adam had sunk in despair. The law could not do it (Rom. 8:3). ...

For more, see Matthew Henry on the two covenants.

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