With the eternal covenant between the Father and Son completed and a people claimed for himself, the promise of the covenant – originally through works, now through grace – comes to us: the promise of life. 

 

The Spirit is the very source of life for the individual Christian.  In 2 Corinthians 3:5-6, Paul articulates the covenantal basis of the work of the Spirit: “…our sufficiency is from God, who made us to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit.  For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”  So the “Spirit of life” (Rom 8:2,10-11) applies the blessings of redemption to each person.  Life was the goal of God’s original covenant in the very beginning, and life was lost in at the Fall in Genesis 3.  It has often been noted that Adam and Eve did not die immediately – although eventually they did.  Yet the life – the full life offered in God’s covenant – did pass away at the Fall.  Full life needs to have God’s presence in it.  In distinction, hell is called the “second death” but without becoming annihilationist (Rev 2:11; 20:6,14; 21:8) because hell is the place where God’s loving presence is completely removed.  Meanwhile, those who receive full life in the gospel not only receive resurrected bodies (as important as this often-forgotten detail may be), they receive the complete presence of God – the new heavens and new earth are also the full cosmic temple (Rev 21 – 22).[1]

 

Paul sees the benefits of salvation in individuals’ lives (cf. Rom 8:30) as the working out of the power of the Spirit (vv. 26-29).  Put differently, the ordo salutis (the order of salvation-events in an individual life) – which is from first to last a work of the Spirit – then ought to be understood as the realization of covenant blessings.  Effectual calling, regeneration, justification, adoption, sanctification, glorification are all the blessings of the covenant of grace – all take place in union with Christ, the true image of God.  The familial relationship (as we noted) has covenantal roots – making us adopted covenantal heirs.  The forensic (or legal) issues involved also come from the covenant vocabulary.

 

Therefore, the covenant framework not only binds the history of redemption together at the level of human history and within the life of the Godhead, it also illuminates the outworking of the Spirit in the lives of individual believers.