What Is the Covenant of Works?

In the covenant of works, sometimes called the covenant of creation or covenant of life, God forbade Adam and Eve from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen. 2:15–17). Perfect obedience to this covenant would have confirmed Adam and Eve in life; they would have been reckoned as righteous before the Lord and would have inherited eternal life.

We refer to the covenant with Adam as the covenant of works because human effort was the means by which the blessing was to be secured. The good deeds of obedience in being fruitful, taking dominion of the earth, and abstaining from the forbidden tree would have merited eternal life for Adam and his descendants (Gen. 1:28; 2:15–17).

As we know, Adam and Eve broke the covenant of works, plunging them and all their descendants—save one, Jesus—into sin. In Adam, we lost our ability to keep the covenant of works (Rom. 3:9–20), but that does not mean the covenant was set aside. We are still bound by its terms, but on account of our inability, our only hope is for someone else to keep it in our place (Gal. 3:10–14).

To regain paradise for His people, Jesus had to become the second Adam. That is, He had to come in our likeness so that He could obey God perfectly and succeed where Adam failed as our representative. Paul teaches this explicitly (1 Cor. 15:45), but it is also implicit in the stories of Jesus’ temptation found in the synoptic Gospels.

After His baptism, Jesus was driven into the wilderness where He faced the one who used the serpent to tempt Adam. The first Adam was tempted to rely on his own wisdom instead of on the Lord’s revealed will. The second Adam was likewise tempted to abandon God’s will—that He subdue the serpent through suffering—when Satan tried to get Jesus to provide for His needs at the wrong time or to enter into His reign immediately and without pain (Matt. 4:1–11). However, unlike the first Adam, Jesus overcame Satan’s temptation, setting the stage for his final defeat on the cross (Col. 2:13–15).