Justin Effler’s Reviews > Introducing Covenant Theology > Status Update

fact, Jesus does not cancel the law but rather upholds it: the basis for acceptance remains perfect righteousness (v. 20). The question is whether that righteousness is inherent in us or imputed to us—and one thing that Jesus’s subsequent interpretation of the law makes clear is that if it is the former, we are utterly without hope (vv. 21–48).

Covenant in both Old and New Testaments, so we have argued, is a broad term encompassing a variety of arrangements—most notably, conditional covenants of law and unconditional covenants of promise. Already in the Old Testament itself there are these two covenant types: suzerainty and royal grant, the latter fitting perfectly the New Testament concept of diathk or “last will and testament.”

The Israelites of Jesus’s and Paul’s day had misidentified themselves with Abraham, Sarah, and Zion when in fact they were simply under a covenant of law. They thought they were justified according to the terms of Sinai when in fact they were only condemned by it. The only hope, for Jew and Gentile, is to be incorporated into Abraham—the “heavenly Jerusalem”—by union with Christ through faith alone.

The unilateral and utterly promissory character of the Abrahamic covenant yields to the conditional arrangement at Sinai even while the former is never—can never be—revoked by the oathtaking God.

While there are certainly more than two explicit covenants in Scripture, they can all be grouped around two kinds of arrangements: conditional covenants that impose obligations and unconditional covenants that announce a divine promise. I will attempt to show the importance of distinguishing these two types for interpreting the biblical message.