The Sinaitic Covenant and the Covenant of Works

Paul’s argument from the covenant with Abraham hinges on the relationship between that and the Sinai Covenant. The first, Paul insists, does not stipulate conditions: the second he identifies altogether with the conditions it contains, usually calling it simply “the Law.” The Law, he argues, cannot condition the covenant with Abraham since it was communicated, by his reckoning, 430 years later. That is to say that the covenant which constitutes the chosen people of God is not conditional upon their performance. The conditions of the Sinai Covenant were communicated, paradoxically, in order to bring the people to a recognition that their covenant with God was unconditional; for until they recognized their radical inability to fulfill God’s conditions of righteousness they might imagine that they were chosen for doing so. Thus the Sinai Covenant is subordinated to the covenant with Abraham…. The main outline of this argument cannot be overlooked by any Christian exegete, whatever he may make of the various problems it gives rise to, and Luther and Calvin can hardly be said to have neglected it. They do not notice, however, or else do not care to exploit, the possibility of elucidating Paul’s argument by a simple adjustment of terminology. Paul’s denial that salvation comes by “the works of the Law” can be restated as a denial that it comes by the “Covenant of Works” expressed in the conditions of the Sinai Covenant. In contradistinction, the covenant with Abraham can be clearly stated in terms of contrasting covenants. It is this mere rephrasing of the argument which constitutes the point of departure of a distinctive Covenant or Federal Theology.
- John S. Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in England, quoted in Mark W. Karlberg, Covenant Theology in Reformed Perspective (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock), 78-79.