Teresa Reibold

“1. God was not obligated to create humanity in the first place. 2. God was not bound to enter into covenant with humanity. 3. The covenant (of works) was necessary, a reality flowing from the nature of God.38 4. The reward is always of God’s goodness, and the language of merit, in the sense of earning/deserving the reward, is held to be inappropriate. 5. God gave sufficient grace to Adam for him to keep the covenant if Adam willed so.”
― Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God's Unfolding Purpose

“It gives us the tempo of belonging to the One by whom we exist and for whom our existence is directed.”
― Michael Scott Horton, A Better Way: Rediscovering the Drama of God-Centered Worship

“The confession “Jesus is Lord,” Luke Johnson rightly contends, is a “performative statement — that is, a statement that finds its sense not only as a declaration about reality but as a declaration concerning how the speaker really lives.”51 This, then, is a confession with consequences, consequences that faith understood merely as assent to a divine promise or declaration (of forgiveness, for instance) would not necessarily include.”
― Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross

“The intent may be that we are not to understand the relationship with Adam to be a běrît in the same sense that the word has in its other occurrences in the Book of Genesis. In the other instances where the word is used of a divine–human relationship, it connotes the assurance of a divine promise of blessing that the human participant did not previously possess.”
― Paul R. Williamson, Sealed with an Oath: Covenant in God's Unfolding Purpose