One of the legacies of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Russell M. Nelson was his strong emphasis on covenants and the covenant path. President Nelson spoke frequently about covenants—especially about the Abrahamic Covenant.
When I was LDS, I was taught to see the Abrahamic Covenant as the equivalent of the “new and everlasting covenant” of Christ. In fact, as a ward Sunday School president, I organized firesides with well-known LDS speakers who emphasized that God’s covenants with Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and even Joseph Smith, were all just renewals of one eternal covenant—a single pattern of promises and obligations extending from the beginning of the world to today.
This is expressly taught in the Sunday School curriculum for next year:
“So when God spoke to Enoch, Noah, Moses, and others about covenants, He was inviting them to enter into a relationship of trust with Him. We call this covenant the new and everlasting covenant or the Abrahamic covenant—a reference to the covenant God made with Abraham and Sarah and then renewed with their descendants Isaac and Jacob (also called Israel).”
That sounds neat and tidy, but it actually flattens out one of the most important distinctions in the Bible. Scripture presents not one eternal covenant of works, but a series of progressive covenants that move toward the future fulfillment of the great promise with the coming of Christ. God’s covenants with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David all ultimately pointed to Jesus Christ, who would fulfill the covenant conditions and offer us a new covenant of grace in His blood.
In this post, I want to look specifically at the biblical covenant with Abraham to show how it points forward to the coming of Christ—and yet differs from that future covenant in crucial ways.
An Unconditional Covenant of Promise
In Genesis 15, God made His covenant with Abraham in a remarkable way. In the ancient world, those “cutting” a covenant would walk between the pieces of sacrificed animals as a sign of the seriousness of their commitment. They were essentially saying, “May I become like these animals if I break my word.”
But the covenant with Abraham was unique. Instead of requiring Abraham to walk through the pieces, God caused a deep sleep to fall upon him. Then God Himself passed through alone in the form of a smoking fire pot and flaming torch. The message was unmistakable: this covenant rested on God’s faithfulness, not Abraham’s performance. It was a covenant of promise.
A Covenant Focused on Future Fulfillment in Christ
The most significant promise given to Abraham was that of a righteous Seed who would bring blessing to the whole earth. Although Latter-day Saints focus on the number of Abraham’s posterity, that was not the central point of the seed promise. Rather, it pointed to the coming of a single Seed who would bless and save the world.
In Galatians 3, Paul makes this point explicitly:
“The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.” (Gal. 3:16)
Paul goes on to emphasize that this blessing was based not on works or on the law that later came through Moses, but on promise:
“The law, introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise. For if the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on the promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise.” (Gal. 3:17–18)
At the heart of Abraham’s covenant was therefore the promise of a Savior to all who would believe. It was not a covenant like the Law of Moses, conditional on perfect obedience, but one grounded in the promise of grace to “the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly.” (Rom. 4:5)
The Promise Precedes Circumcision and Ordinances
In Romans 4, Paul returns to the theme of the Abrahamic covenant with a slightly different focus. He highlights that Abraham was justified by faith before he was circumcised, showing that circumcision was a sign and seal of a righteousness already received by faith.
“We have been saying that Abraham’s faith was credited to him as righteousness. Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before? It was not after, but before! And he received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.” (Rom. 4:9–11)
Paul concludes:
“It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith.” (Rom. 4:13)
The Abrahamic covenant wasn’t about earning God’s favor through obedience; it was about trusting the God who saves by grace. The foundation of the Abrahamic promise is faith in Jesus Christ. All who share that faith are “blessed along with Abraham who had faith.” (Gal. 3:9) The key is not external ordinances, signs, or covenant tokens, but simple belief in the Savior.
The Glorious Fulfillment
Abraham received a glimpse and a promise of the ultimate fulfillment of that covenant in Christ. As Paul explained,
“Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’” (Gal. 3:8)
Other prophets likewise saw glimpses of a new covenant when God would write His law on human hearts (Jer. 31). Christ came to offer the fulfillment of what had been promised beforehand.
Like the promise to Abraham, this new covenant is not a conditional covenant of works but one of grace, offered freely through the blood of Jesus. At the Last Supper, Jesus held up the cup and said:
“This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:20)
This covenant isn’t sealed by our rituals or oaths but by Christ’s own blood. It’s not conditional on our obedience—it creates obedience by transforming our hearts. That is why the author of Hebrews can declare that Christ’s covenant “is better and is founded on better promises.” (Heb. 8:6)
Why This Matters
By treating all biblical covenants as one and the same, the LDS Church turns a covenant of promise into a covenant of performance. Instead of focusing on the finished work of Christ on the cross, the LDS framework defines Christ’s covenant as something we must enter through ordinances and remain in through commandment keeping. In doing so, it loses sight of the unconditional nature of the Abrahamic promise and its perfect fulfillment in Christ.
The Abrahamic covenant points forward to the New Covenant, but it is not identical to it. One promised the blessing to come; the other is that blessing realized.
For Christians, what matters is whether we share Abraham’s faith in the blessings that come through Jesus Christ. And the good news of the gospel is that through faith, we receive all the blessings of the free, undeserved, and everlasting grace of God in Christ Jesus:
“If you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.” (Gal. 3:29)