Did God make a gracious covenant with Abraham’s natural descendants? There are many who say that He did.

We know that God said He would establish His everlasting covenant with Abraham. Often we quote God’s covenant promise found in Genesis 17: “And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God” (Gen. 17:7, 8).

Yet some say that God made a covenant in which He promised blessings to Abraham’s natural descendants. Abraham and his spiritual seed were included in God’s everlasting covenant of grace. Yet many say there was also a gracious, yet temporary, covenant of God with Abraham and his physical descendants.

Baptists who speak this way do so in an effort to explain why all the male descendants of Abraham were to be circumcised. Their thinking goes something like this: If all the males were to be circumcised, it must have been that all the natural children of Abraham were included in some covenant. Since the unbelieving children were not included in God’s everlasting covenant of grace, it must have been a different covenant that included all the natural seed of Abraham.

The number of those who think this way is not small. Therefore, it is good for us to take a look at this in more detail.

A TWOFOLD SEED

Scripture clearly teaches that the children of Abraham are twofold. Only some of them believe in Christ. Those who truly belong to Jesus are referred to as Abraham’s spiritual seed. The others are merely his physical descendants. The latter are of the blood line of Abraham, yet they are not at all like Abraham from a spiritual point of view.

This distinction between children who believe in Jesus and those who do not believe in Him goes all the way back to God’s promise in the Garden of Eden. God said that Adam and Eve would have children who were in two antithetical groups. Some of their children would be of the seed of the woman. The seed of the woman refers to Christ and those who are in Christ. The other children would be the seed of the serpent. They would be children of the Devil (John 8:44).

Cain was one of the seed of the serpent. His father was the Devil. Abel was of the seed of the woman. He was a child of God. As it was for Adam and Eve, so it was for Abraham and Sarah, only some of their descendants were truly children of God.

So how does that apply to God’s covenant? Scripture teaches that only those whom God has chosen in Christ are in God’s covenant. As Galatians 3:16 makes clear, the covenant promises are all to Christ: “Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.”

The promises are to Christ, and thus are only to those who belong to Christ: “And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (v. 29).

A BAPTIST VIEW

Now let us turn to a Baptist argument against the practice of baptizing the children of believers. Pascal Denault is a Baptist who has written a book entitled The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology: A Comparison between Seventeenth Century Particular Baptist and Paedobaptist Federalism.

In this book, Denault finds fault with what is actually an erroneous argument for the baptism of infants. The following quote serves to illustrate this:

We have here a fundamental difference with the paedobaptist understanding of the Abrahamic covenant, which placed the natural and spiritual posterities of Abraham in the same covenant of grace—the first inheriting only the physical blessings of the covenant and the second benefiting also from the spiritual privileges.1

Denault here is writing against the position that both the elect and the reprobate children of Abraham were included in God’s covenant of grace and were promised blessings, with the reprobate receiving only physical blessings. Yet this position with which he is disagreeing is not the Reformed position. The biblical and Reformed position, as set forth in the verses of Galatians 3 quoted earlier, is that only the elect were included in God’s covenant of grace, and they alone received blessings.2

Leaving that point for now, let us move on to consider Denault’s explanation as to why the male Israelite infants were to be circumcised. Denault says it was because God made a covenant with the physical seed of Abraham and promised them an earthly inheritance. Although only the spiritual seed were promised a heavenly inheritance, Denault says the natural seed were promised an earthly inheritance. He writes,

…not only did Baptist theology make the distinction between the physical and spiritual posterities of Abraham, but it also strictly separated them into two separate categories. The Baptists saw two posterities in Abraham, two inheritances, and consequently two covenants.3

According to this Baptist view of two covenants, a person could be in both covenants. Take, for example, the prophet Samuel. He was one of Abraham’s spiritual seed, and he was also one of Abraham’s blood descendants. So he would have been in both covenants and would have received both inheritances. The unbelieving physical seed, however, would have been only in the covenant that had to do with earthly things.

A COMMON-GRACE COVENANT

So if only some of Abraham’s natural male descendants would be saved, why were they all to be circumcised?

Denault sets forth a common Baptist position that all the male Israelites were to be circumcised because they were all included in some covenant. The covenant they were in, however, was not God’s everlasting covenant of grace. According to Nehemiah Coxe, they were all in “the covenant of circumcision” (Acts 7:8).4 Coxe and many others distinguish the covenant of circumcision from God’s everlasting covenant of grace. The covenant of circumcision, Coxe would say, included all the natural seed.5 In contrast, God’s everlasting covenant of grace included only the spiritual seed.

There were two covenants, they say, with two inheritances. All the spiritual seed were in God’s everlasting covenant of grace and received a heavenly inheritance. All the natural seed were in the covenant of circumcision. The natural seed, they would say, received temporary, earthly blessings, such as the earthly land of Canaan.

This serves to bring out a very important point: This Baptist position is inseparably connected to the error of common grace. When many Baptists try to explain why all the male Israelites were to be circumcised, they turn to the erroneous doctrine of common grace. They say there was a covenant promise to all the natural seed. There were earthly covenant blessings promised to them. That, they say, explains why all the male infants were to be circumcised.

Yet that amounts to the teaching of common grace. Common, non-saving grace is said to be received by those who are not in Christ. Clearly these Baptists are speaking of gracious blessings to those outside of Christ. Today a number of Baptists refer to themselves as Reformed. It is important that we show them that this Baptist two-covenant view involves the error of common grace.

THERE WERE NO COMMON-GRACE BLESSINGS

The earthly land of Canaan was a picture of the heavenly land. The land was not a blessing in itself. There were many Israelites who dwelled in the land of Canaan who were not blessed by God. They may have had a plot of ground in Canaan on which to live, but they did not profit from it.

That they did not profit from it needs to be stressed. Many look at earthly things that God gives to people as blessings. They fail to distinguish the earthly thing from God’s blessing. Our Heidelberg Catechism rightly distinguishes the two. We see that in the Catechism’s explanation of the petition: “Give us this day our daily bread.” “Give us this day our daily bread; that is, be pleased to provide us with all things necessary for the body, that we may thereby acknowledge Thee to be the only fountain of all good, and that neither our care nor industry, nor even Thy gifts, can profit us without Thy blessing” (A. 125).

The Catechism rightly says that God’s gifts do not profit us without God’s blessing. In other words, God’s gifts and His blessings are distinguished from one another. Some receive only the former, and do not profit. The only ones who profit are the ones who receive not only God’s gifts, but also His blessing.

That is the Reformed position. Yet many equate a gift of God with His blessing. When God gave Israel the gift of the land of Canaan, many Baptists say that was a blessing to the natural seed. The truth is that it was a blessing only to those who were in Christ.

THE COVENANT AND POSSESSION ARE EVERLASTING

Another key point to note here are the two places in Genesis 17:7-8 where we come across the word “everlasting.” First, the covenant that God made with Abraham is said to be everlasting. Secondly, the land that God gave to His people is said to be an everlasting possession. The fact that the land would be an everlasting possession is clear proof that the promised land referred to is the heavenly land that God’s people will receive after this life.

This also, then, serves to explain how Abraham himself could be said to receive the land forever. Abraham did not receive the promised land in this life. Yet he is one of God’s people who will “inherit the earth” (Ps. 37:9). This was explained in more detail in the previous article (SB, Nov. 2025, p. 75-77).

Any believer who reads Genesis 17, without already having false notions about this, will easily come away with the conclusion that the land God promised to Abraham was promised to him and to his seed forever. Abraham himself would receive it, and so would his seed. Those to whom God promised the land would dwell forever with God. Quite clearly, then, this refers to the promised new earth where God’s people in Christ will forever enjoy communion with their God.

THE GOD ONLY OF HIS ELECT PEOPLE

There is yet another important point that can be drawn from Genesis 17:7-8. The true God is the God of all those with whom He makes His covenant. When God makes His covenant with His people He says, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” That is what He said in Genesis 17. He promised Abraham, and He promises all His people, that He will “be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee” (Gen. 17:7).

When Baptists say there was a promise here also to the unbelieving natural descendants of Abraham, they run into difficulty. Did God promise that He would be the God of all the natural descendants of Abraham? To put it another way, did all the natural descendants of Abraham have the true God as their God?

Denault gave this as an explanation of how God could be said to be the God of natural (not spiritual) Israel:

By committing to being the God of Israel, the Lord was promising her superiority over other nations, protection, the possession of Canaan, the blessing of her land….6

According to this view, God said to the physical descendants of Abraham, “I promise to be your God and give you common-grace blessings.” Notice how unbelieving Israelites who are promised common-grace blessings are said to have the true God as their God.

There is quite a bit more to consider regarding this Baptist view of covenant theology. For now I would like to conclude by pointing out that if we can show Baptists the error of common grace, we may find that more of them come to see and confess that also today the children of believers are to receive the sign of God’s everlasting covenant that is with believers and their spiritual seed in Jesus Christ.

1 Pascal Denault, The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology: A Comparison Between Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist and Paedobaptist Federalism, Revised ed. (Birmingham, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2017), 121.
2 For more on this see David J. Engelsma, Covenant and Election in the Reformed Tradition (Jenison, MI: Reformed Free Publishing Assoc., 2011).
3 Denault, The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology, 120.
4 Ronald D. Miller, James M. Renihan, and Francisco Orozco, eds., Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ, Includes Coxe’s Work Entitled: “A Discourse of the Covenants That God Made With Men Before the Law” (Macclesfield, UK: Broken Wharfe, 2025), 105-154.
5 Miller, Renihan, and Orozco, eds., Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ, 115.
6 Denault, The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology, 111.