Dr. Couch, what is the everlasting covenant?
ANSWER: This adjectival description is applied to the Abraham covenant. So it can be applied several places to several covenants. God told Abraham "My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you" (Gen. 17:7). With Isaac "I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant ..." (v. 19). "The covenant which God made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac, … to Israel as an everlasting covenant" (Psa. 105:10). "The covenant which He made with Abraham, … to Israel as an everlasting covenant" (1 Chron. 16:16-17). You will be priests and ministers of the Lord … I will make an everlasting covenant with them" (Isa. 61:8).
The Mosaic Law "it is an everlasting covenant for the sons of Israel" (Lev. 24:8).
The New Covenant: "I will gather them out of all the lands to which I have driven them in My anger, … I will bring them back to this place and make them dwell in safety. And they shall be My people; and I will be their God, and I will give them one heart and one way, … And I will make an everlasting covenant with them that I will not turn away from them ..." (Jer. 32:37-40).
Future fulfillment of the New Covenant: "It will be the Lord their God they will seek. They will ask for the way to Zion, turning their faces in its direction; they will come that they may join themselves to the Lord in an everlasting covenant that will not be forgotten" (50:4-5). Unger writes on Jer. 50:5:
"They will join themselves in a perpetual covenant, the New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-34) based upon Christ's finished redemption work (Zech. 12:10-13:1), in contrast to the Old Covenant (the Law) which they broke."
The Abrahamic and New covenants are eternal, and so is the Law (Mosaic) Covenant. Christ fulfilled it eternally though we are no longer under it.
Thanks for asking.
—Dr. Mal Couch (4/11)
