In Luke 22:28–30, Jesus says to His disciples, “But you are those who have continued with Me in My trials. And I bestow upon you a kingdom, just as My Father bestowed one upon Me, that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” In verse 28, Jesus sets His comments in the context of His own “trials,” a clear reference to His incarnate ministry and sufferings. From what has been seen in Isaiah 53, the Son’s experience of these trials was specifically His obedience to the will of His Father. In verse 29, Jesus proceeds to speak of the Father “bestow[ing]” a kingdom upon Him. In light of what Jesus has said in verse 28, the clear implication is that this bestowal has come through His obedience in His “trials.” Because the Son has obeyed the Father, the Father has “bestowed” upon Him a kingdom. Here is the same, familiar obedience-for-reward dynamic. However, the word that Jesus uses to say that His Father has “bestowed” a kingdom upon Him is incredibly significant. The word that Jesus uses (διατίθημι; diatithēmi) is the verbal form of diathēkē and speaks specifically and narrowly of a covenantal conferral. To diatithēmi something is to confer it in accordance with covenantal terms. In Luke 22:29, then, Jesus explicitly declares that because of His obedience, the Father has bestowed a kingdom upon Him by covenant.

In light of both scriptural analogies and direct statement, the character of the obedience-for-reward relationship among the persons of the Trinity comes into clearer focus. The rewarded obedience of the Son occurs within a covenantal framework.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 129-130.

In fact, it was these general commands of the creation ordinances that were the most formative in shaping the daily lives of Adam and Eve as they lived in communion with their Creator. It was obedience to these commands that shaped the patterns of their days and lives and that worked to make Adam and Eve increasingly like the God whose image they bore. Indeed, in observing the creation ordinances, Adam and Eve would reflect the character and activity of God. In subduing and keeping the Sabbath, they would mirror God’s own work in the creation week. In marriage’s plurality within unity, they would reflect the plurality within unity of God Himself.

Footnote: Again, to be explicit, this does not imply that roles within marriage are based on the relationships among the persons of the Trinity. They are not. Such an implication is nowhere in the biblical text.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 102.

Certainly, Christians have, and are to cultivate, private fellowship with God. But if that is all we have—if we do not worship with God’s people and become actively engaged and involved in the lives of God’s people, simultaneously allowing them to become engaged and involved in our lives—then we are obscuring the image of God that we bear. God’s purpose is not met by a large group of individual Christians. God’s purpose is met by the church—a community of people bearing God’s image, bearing it in fellowship with each other, and worshiping the One who made them. So often, Christians feel an impulse to separate themselves from the church, whether that impulse arises from self-absorption, or from an insistence upon personal preferences, or from the retention of old grudges. But true and full humanity is found not in seclusion, but in communion. True and full worship occurs not as an individual distances himself or herself from the church, but as that person seeks to fold himself or herself ever more into the church.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 112.

While God’s covenant with Adam is properly called the covenant of works, that covenant nonetheless was suffused with grace. But it was a very specific kind of grace. Theologically, it is important to distinguish between redemptive grace and condescending grace. Redemptive grace is that grace which overcomes demerit and redeems God’s people from their sin. There was no redemptive grace in the covenant of works. Indeed, there was no logical place for redemptive grace since sin and demerit themselves were absent. Condescending grace, on the other hand, operates without regard to demerit and stoops to bestow something that has not been deserved.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 108.

The book of Scripture, however, by the supernatural revelation of the Holy Spirit alone, conducts the Christian faith to that profound secret of piety about the one God who is threefold in persons — which cannot be comprehended by reasoning, nor be perceived by senses, nor be expressed in words, nor be taught by experience, nor be explained by example.

Disputation 7. 35 in Synopsis of a Purer Theology, 74.

And we think that one cannot state that the essence of God is imparted as something whole to the three divine persons, or that the persons exist in that essence like parts in a whole that they share. For since God’s essence is infinite, and utterly incapable of being parted, it cannot be predicated of the divine persons as a whole is of its parts.

Therefore, as it cannot be explained by human reason, the mode of this mystery should be adored in humble faith, rather than be defined by risky statements.

Disputation 7.13 & 14 in Synopsis of a Purer Theology, 71.

This Trinity of divine persons cannot, unlike the unity of the essence of God, be demonstrated from documented proofs in nature, but from what we can learn from Scripture alone.

Disputation 7.33 in Synopsis of a Purer Theology, 74.

Even before there was sin to be remedied, God was condescending via covenant in order that He might be the “blessedness and reward” of His covenant people.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 22.

The Old Testament is peppered with instances of berith, but God’s covenants with human beings are distinct. In them, God is sovereignly fostering “friendship” with humanity and declaring the parameters within which that “friendship” can flourish. Berith is God making His people.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 16.

As the Holy Spirit led the authors of the New Testament in their writing, He always chose diathēkē to speak of “covenant,” and He always chose diathēkē to express in Greek what He previously had expressed by berith in Hebrew. What berith meant in the Old Testament, diathēkē means in the New Testament.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 19.