Numerous are the disagreements today regarding God’s covenant. There are different views on what God’s covenant is. Some speak of God making different covenants with different groups of people. Many say God has made both a common-grace covenant and a particular-grace covenant. In answer to the question whether God’s covenant is conditional or unconditional, some would say it depends on which covenant you are talking about. With all the distinctions people make when talking about God’s covenant, it can become confusing trying to explain all the different views.

So where does one begin to write about all this? I have given some thought to that, and have adopted the following approach. In each article I plan to write, I will focus on especially one passage of Scripture or one covenant promise. From time to time I will point out some of the different ways that passage or promise has been explained, with quotes from either contemporary authors or authors from the past who are being published and read today.

When studying this subject, as with others, it is of central importance that we look to Scripture to interpret Scripture, and believe Scripture’s interpretation when we find it. That, sadly, is what many fail to do. Either they do not look for Scripture’s explanation, or, when they find how Scripture explains it, instead of believing what the Bible says, they try to come up with some way to explain it away.

A common method used to explain away a Scripture passage is to invent a distinction. There are many passages of Scripture, for example, that show clearly that God’s grace is particular. Sometimes when we show people these verses, they respond by making a distinction. They say something like this, “Yes, that passage speaks of a particular grace. But there is a distinction between particular grace and common grace. Saving grace is particular. But there is also a non-saving grace that is common.” Now, having invented this distinction, they can take all the verses you show them about particular grace and respond by saying, “Yes, but that is talking about only one kind of grace.”

This invent-a-distinction approach is common in contemporary writings on God’s covenant. This will be highlighted, Lord willing, from time to time in these articles.

So now, let us get started. When God called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, He called him to leave his country and his kindred to go to a land that God would show him. What is the land that God promised Abraham? We begin by considering how Scripture answers that question.

ABRAHAM PROMISED THE LAND

God promised that He would show Abraham the land, and later He did. When Abraham saw the land, God spoke to him this promise: “For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever” (Gen. 13:15).

God promised that He would give the land to Abraham and to Abraham’s seed. Galatians 3:16 tells us that God’s promises are to the one seed of Abraham, and that one seed is Jesus Christ. That means the promised land is promised to Christ. It is promised to Abraham as one of those chosen to be in Christ.

So it is correct to say that God promised Abraham that he would receive the land. Yet in this life he did not receive it. So how is this to be explained?

An esteemed Baptist theologian from the past, Nehemiah Coxe, brings up this question. Coxe, whose work on God’s covenant has very recently been republished, was one of the chief authors of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), sometimes referred to as the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. This creed summarizes the theological beliefs held by many contemporary Reformed Baptists.

Commenting on Genesis 13:15, Coxe brings up the question concerning how to explain the fact that God promised Abraham the land:

First, the conveyance of this inheritance is directly made first to Abraham and then to his seed. “All the land which you see, to you I will give it, and to your seed” (Genesis 13:15). Now it is evident that Abraham had no possession in it all his days except that of a burial place which he purchased afterwards with money paid to its full value (Genesis 23). This was similar to the case of lsaac and Jacob who were the heirs of this promise together with Abraham (Hebrews 11:9). A question therefore arises as to how this promise was made good to Abraham.1

Coxe then goes on to suggest this as a solution:

That as to those words “to you, and to your seed”, the latter may be taken as an interpretation of the former. Then the sense is, “to you, that is, to your seed.”

Yet Scripture also says elsewhere that God promised the land to Abraham himself. Just two verses further in Genesis 13 we read that God said this to Abraham: “Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee” (Gen. 13:17).

That Abraham himself was promised the land is mentioned again in the book of Acts. Stephen referred to this when he was speaking to some unbelieving Jews, shortly before they threw stones at him. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Stephen said,

Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldaeans, and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell. And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child (Acts 7:2b-5).

God gave Abraham none inheritance in the land, no, not so much as to set his foot on. Yet God promised that He would give it to him for a possession. God used Stephen to point out to us that we should take note of this.

So if God promised Abraham the land, and if in this life God never gave it to him, what does that tell us?

THE LAND RECEIVED AFTER THIS LIFE

God, obviously, always fulfills His promise. If Abraham did not receive the land in this life, then it must be that God was promising to give Abraham the land after this life.

The Bible tells us that Abraham himself realized that. Believing what God said, Abraham knew that God was talking to him about something he would receive after he died.

Our father Abraham knew that the land of Canaan was but a picture. What was promised was actually the heavenly promised land. One day Abraham was going to die. After this life Abraham would dwell with God forever in the heavenly promised land.

That Abraham really did see this is brought out in Hebrews 11:13-16. Verse 13 brings out again that Abraham died without having received what God had promised him. The context speaks about Abraham and Sarah among others. Then God says: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb. 11:13).

They all died in faith having not yet received the promises. That makes clear that the promise was not about an earthly piece of land in this life. That earthly portion of land was the picture, not the promised reality.

Going on now in Hebrews 11, God points out to us that we should take note of the fact that Abraham viewed himself to be stranger and pilgrim on this earth. God says that this indicates that he was seeking his fatherland. “And confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country” (Heb. 11:13b, 14).

The word translated “country” could be translated “fatherland” or “homeland.” By calling themselves strangers and pilgrims, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were confessing that in their heart they were seeking their fatherland.

This passage in Hebrews then goes on to point out that the fatherland they were seeking was not the earthly land of Ur out of which they had come: “And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned” (Heb. 11:15).

God here is saying that if that earthly land in Mesopotamia was the land Abraham was seeking, he might have had an opportunity to have returned there. Yet that was not the fatherland Abraham was seeking, as the Spirit of God goes on to say: “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:16).

The fatherland Abraham was seeking was a better, heavenly fatherland. This was the land God had promised him. The promise, again, was not about an earthly land in this life. That land was but a picture. The promise was of a better, heavenly land. Abraham saw that, and believed what God said.

Abraham understood what many today deny. Many refer to the promised land as a portion of earthly land received while this earth is still in the bondage of corruption. Abraham was not like them. He rightly distinguished the picture from the reality, and had his mind on the heavenly promised land that he would receive forever.

BELIEVING GOD WHEN HE SAYS “FOREVER”

We look again at that promise to Abraham, also taking note of the context before it: “And the Lord said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever” (Gen. 13:14, 15).

God said He would give Abraham all the land, not just part of it, but all of it. He also said that Abraham would receive the land forever.

Coxe says that “forever” means merely “for a long time:”

…here God promises to give this land to Abraham and to his seed “for ever” and in Genesis 17:8 “for an everlasting possession.” …No more is intended than the continuance of these for a long time, that is, throughout the Old Testament economy until the days of the Messiah.2

Coxe here is not correct. When God spoke of Abraham having the land “as an everlasting possession,” He meant precisely that. Abraham and all those in Christ would receive the heavenly promised land and dwell with God there forever.

Christ died that all His sheep, including Abraham, might receive an incorruptible inheritance. The inheritance promised to Abraham and us is reserved in heaven: “To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Pet. 1:4).

The heavenly inheritance, that is what God has promised. That is what He promised to Abraham, and that is what He has promised also to us in Jesus Christ. In God’s Son we also will receive this heavenly inheritance in which we will dwell with God and praise Him forever!

To be continued…

1 Nehemiah Coxe, “A Discourse of the Covenants That God Made with Men Before the Law” in Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ, Ronald D. Miller, James M. Renihan, and Francisco Orozco, eds. (Macclesfield, UK: Broken Wharfe, 2025), 108.

You can access the Spanish version of this article, translated by Jorge Carbajal, by clicking the following link. LA TIERRA QUE DIOS PROMETIÓ A ABRAHAM