The Covenant in the Time of Noah
Covenant Theology 101 (#6)
Covenant Breakers and the Covenant Keeper.
After every storm, the lightning and thunder stop, the clouds lift, and light breaks through. Sometimes a rainbow arcs across the horizon. Creation seems to remember: judgment has passed; mercy remains in a promise reflecting across the sky.
“I love you” are powerful words. But love is action. Parents show it through protection, provision, and patience; God shows it in covenant faithfulness. Even after Adam sinned, God showed saving love—withholding judgment by clothing Adam and Eve with animal sacrifice. In the covenant God made with Noah, we see love displayed on a cosmic scale.
The covenant in Noah’s time is rooted in the covenant of grace but it’s not identical with it (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics). It’s a covenant made with all humanity that restrains the curse and serves grace by providing the space for redemption (van Genderen and Velema) and the foundation on which the church would be built (Klaas Schilder cited in van Genderen and Velema).
Continuing Covenant Theology 101, let’s explore the covenant in the time of Noah.
The Continuation of Redemptive Grace
God’s saving grace extends through every covenant from Adam to Christ in the old, and from Christ to consummation in the new.
In the spiritual war between the serpent’s seed and Eve’s seed (Gen. 3:15), it looks like the serpent is winning in Genesis 6:
The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually…the Lord regretted that he had made man…it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” (Gen. 6:5–7; cf. 6:11–13)
Humanity was thoroughly corrupt. Look around today—ethnic strife, lawlessness, violence, and corruption. The world was more unrecognizable in Noah’s day. Then hope broke through storm clouds: “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord” (6:8).
There was one “righteous man” who was “blameless” and “walked with God” (6:9). His father named him Noah (“rest” or “comfort”), hoping that “out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief” (Gen. 5:29). His prayer was for God to preserve humanity through him. Noah wasn’t sinless but was faithful—trusting the promise (Gen. 3:15) and being a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5).
God commanded him to “make…an ark” (6:14). Then came the divine assurance:
…I will bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh…Everything that is on the earth shall die. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark. (Gen. 6:17, 18)
This covenant isn’t merely a covenant of common grace for all creation. When the Lord “established” his covenant with Noah, this was his way of expressing the continuation of an existing covenant. The covenant the Lord “cut” with Adam and Eve in animal sacrifices continued with Noah. Our theological term for this is the covenant of grace. After the Flood, “God remembered Noah” (Gen. 8:1)—not that he forgot, but acted faithfully on his promise.
The Establishment of “Common” Grace
After the Flood, Noah built an altar and offered a sacrifice. “When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma,” he vowed: “I will never again curse the ground because of man...Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature…While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease” (8:21, 22).
This covenant was cosmic. God preserved Noah, his family, and creation. He promised stability to a fallen world—what we call common grace. This is God’s kindness to all people, sustaining life among the undeserving.
After blessing (9:1), God renewed the Edenic cultural mandate: “Be fruitful… multiply…fill the earth” (9:1). Noah and his family were the “the nucleus of a second humanity” (Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics). God instituted justice to restrain evil and ensure the propagation and flourishing of life: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” (9:6).
The covenant’s language is universal: “I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you…never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth” (9:10, 11).
In all covenants, there are signs: “I have set my bow in the cloud…it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (9:13). The rainbow is not so much for us, but God, who “remembers” his covenant(9:14–15). God’s warrior bow now hangs in the clouds as on his mantle. It points upward—not at us—because he’ll never again flood the earth in judgment. The storm of judgment passed; mercy arches across the sky.
Covenant Breakers and the Covenant Keeper
God shows special grace for his people and common grace for all. The rainbow preaches that God’s wrath is real for covenant breakers, but his mercy is greater.
Noah’s covenant set the stage for the comfort of redemption. It preserved the world long enough for the true Ark—Jesus, the Covenant Keeper. As Noah and family were saved through judgment waters, so all in Christ are saved from wrath. As the bow of divine wrath turned down on the cross, the flood of justice fell on Jesus—so that mercy might wash us of our sins.