Here is an excerpt from Pascal Denault’s chapter “By Farther Steps: A Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist Covenant Theology” in Recovering a Covenantal Heritage: Essays in Credobaptist Covenant Theology, forthcoming from RBAP.
Therefore, the Old Covenant was, for the people of Israel, a figurative covenant, earthly and conditional, designed to lead them to Christ and not to the covenant of works as such. The Old Covenant, while being different from the covenant of works, reaffirmed it, not so that Israel would look for life by this means, but so that Christ would accomplish it. The Old Covenant was, therefore, not only necessary to lead to Christ but it was necessary so that the latter could accomplish salvation for God’s Israel. Samuel Petto explains this important point:
Indeed, I think, one great end of God in bringing Israel under this Sinai covenant, was to make way for Christ, his being born or made under the law, in order to the fulfilling of it for us. I do not see how (by any visible dispensation) Jesus Christ could have been born actually under the law, if this Sinai covenant had not been made; for the covenant of works with the first Adam being violated, it was at an end as to the promising part; it promised nothing; after once it was broken, it remained in force only as to its threatening part, it menaced death to all the sinful seed of Adam, but admitted no other into it who were without sin, either to perform the righteousness of it, or to answer the penalty; it had nothing to do with an innocent person, after broken, for it was never renewed with man again, as before: therefore, an admitting an innocent person (as Jesus Christ was) into it, must be by some kind of repetition or renewing of it, though with other intendments than at first, viz. that the guilty persons should not fulfil it for themselves, but that another, a surety, should fulfil it for them.[1]
This explanation from Petto demonstrates how he himself and most of the Particular Baptists considered that the covenant of works was reaffirmed with a different goal than at its first promulgation. The covenant of works did not provide a substitution to satisfy its righteousness; no one could obey in Adam’s place nor suffer his punishment. God, therefore, reaffirmed the covenant of works in another covenant that allowed for a righteous person to substitute himself for sinners. Not only was the Old Covenant not against the promises of God (Gal. 3:21), but it was given specifically for the accomplishment of these promises (Gal. 3:22-24). Without being itself a covenant of grace, the Old Covenant was given because of the covenant of grace and with a view to its accomplishment. Is this what the apostle John wanted to underline by declaring: “Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:16-17)? The law given by Moses was a grace to lead to the grace accomplished by Jesus Christ.
