Noah and the Cross

How the Noahic Covenant makes way for atonement

At Overland Church on Wednesday nights, my friend Pierce and I are leading a study group on the covenants of Scripture, and last night I taught on the Noahic Covenant. We encounter the Noahic Covenant as children when we learn the meaning of the rainbow, but like a lot of stories in Genesis, it can often be chalked up to a children’s morality tale. However, without the Noahic Covenant, there can be no Good Friday.

The promises and obligations of the Noahic Covenant in Genesis 8:21–9:11 form a chiasm—the ancient organizational structure that forms the Greek letter chi or our “X” through elements that parallel each other (ABCCBA).

While some have maintained that the point of emphasis in a chiasm is the center, I believe there are actually two points of emphasis—the center and the edges. While putting an element at the center certainly does highlight that element, the edges also give a level of emphasis since the edge element is the first and last thing you hear.

Here is the organization of the Noahic Covenant:

• A 8:21–22, Promise: Never again curse the earth/strike down every living creature.

  • B 9:1, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

    • C 9:2–4, Animals for food, but no eating blood.

    • C' 9:5–6, No shedding human blood. Life for life.

  • B' 9:7, Be fruitful and multiply and increase on the earth.

• A' 9:8–11, Promise: Never again a flood to destroy the earth/all flesh.

While studying this during Holy Week, it struck me how each of these three elements are preparatory or prerequisites for penal substitutionary atonement. Without the Noahic Covenant, there can be no cross of redemption.

Photo by Worshae on Unsplash

The Promise: Never again.

Tom Schreiner calls the Noahic Covenant a “covenant of preservation.” This certainly is the promise highlighted by the edge “A” elements of the chiasm. Twice God repeats the promise to “never again” destroy the earth and all life like he did in the flood. This promise will endure “while the earth remains” (8:22) and is an “everlasting covenant” (9:16).

God’s promise to Noah as the covenant head of all humanity and creation gives the space necessary for God’s plan of redemption to be accomplished. Without this promise of mercy, God’s justice would repeatedly overwhelm creation just as it did during the flood. Instead, God promises to withhold his justice and to hang up his war bow in the sky.

Common grace is a necessary prerequisite for special grace. Common grace is the grace of God that is poured out upon all people and all of creation that enables both life on the earth and the temporary blessings of this life. When Paul speaks to the Areopagus, he is on firm Scriptural footing when he claims that God “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). This is common grace that flows forth from the Noahic Covenant.

But he is also referencing this covenant when he claims,

“The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30–31).

When we understand the Noahic background to Paul’s argument, we can easily avoid any universalist interpretation of God overlooking the times of ignorance. Far from claiming that the ignorant pagans received eternal life, Paul is simply claiming that they did not receive the universal Deluge-like destruction they deserved. God preserved the world rather than putting the flood on endless repeat. Why? So that he could send his Son to redeem humanity. So that he could command “all people everywhere to repent.” So that he could fix a day for the final judgment.

Obligation 1: Be fruitful and multiply.

While the promises of the Noahic Covenant preserve creation and humanity for the purpose of full redemption and judgment, the first obligation for humanity in the covenant (element “B” in the chiasm) repeats the initial commands to humanity at creation in Genesis 1:28.

Along with the specific terminology of “establishing a covenant” (hēqîm běrît; Gen 6:18; 9:9–17) rather than “making/cutting a covenant” (kārat běrît), the repetition of “be fruitful and multiply, etc.” clarify that the Noahic Covenant is a reaffirmation of the pre-existing Covenant with Creation rather than a new covenant. Noah is a new Adam. The world after the flood is a new creation, and God takes this moment to reaffirm his relationship with creation and humanity through the new covenant head, Noah.

We cannot understate the theological significance of this reaffirmation. On this side of the fall, we are still created in the image of God. We are still made as sons and priest-kings, and we still have the obligation to relate to God and to rule the world as his image-bearers.

Despite sin, human life is still valuable. Despite the curse, creation is still valuable. God, therefore, will not simply destroy the world. Because of the ontological value he has placed within his creation, he will set forth to redeem it, and while we will in this age fail ultimately to fill the earth and subdue it under the rule of God, one day, through the work of redemption, we will be enabled to fully function according to our ontological design as God’s image.

Obligation 2: Respect blood.

At the center of the chiasm are two commands that are unified through establishing a respect for blood. While animals are given to humanity for food, God commands that we not eat their blood. This foreshadows the further development of this command in the Sinai Covenant (e.g., Deut 12:16–25). Eventually, we will be brought to understand that we must not eat or drink blood because

“the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Lev 17:11).

Respect for blood, even animal blood, is necessary for reverently understanding the meaning of atoning sacrifices. When reading Acts, it is easy to find the conclusions of the Jerusalem Council confusing. Why do they say that the Gentiles must be taught to abstain “from what has been strangled, and from blood” (Acts 15:20)? Because the prohibition on eating blood originates in the Noahic Covenant rather than the Sinai Covenant, all of humanity is obligated to keep it for all time.

We might ask, “So what? Is it a really a big deal to eat blood?” According to both Genesis and Acts, the answer is “yes.” Abstaining from blood creates within us a reverence for and understanding of penal substitutionary atonement.

The other element of such respect for blood is the necessity of justice over the spilling of human blood. Whoever spills human blood—whether man or beast—must pay the penalty of having their own blood spilled. This is the first iteration of the principle of Lex Talionis, the necessity of the punishment fitting the crime.

Lex Talionis is most famously formulated in the Sinai Covenant:

“Your eye shall not pity. It shall be life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot” (Deut 19:21).

While Jesus will famously correct an individualized interpretation of this that justifies revenge in personal relationships (Matt 5:38–42), the principle of Lex Talionis itself is never abdicated or altered. In fact, it is the very basis of God’s establishment of human government and one of the ways that God preserves the world from judgment and restrains human sin (Rom 13:1–7).

The Noahic Covenant establishes God’s standard of justice that is ultimately satisfied at the cross. What is the penalty for our sin? Our life. “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 3:23). For our justification, a life must be substituted for our life. Justice must be satisfied.

While many would like to walk back from penal substitutionary atonement and claim that it is crude and primitive, to do so would require one to abandon the entirety of the biblical storyline, and in fact, that is what we see. When someone abandons penal substitutionary atonement, they abandon the Bible.

In the same way, missionaries have often been taught that penal substitutionary atonement is a Western concept based on our culture’s obsession with justice while other cultures might better resonate with atonement analogies based on honor/shame or power/fear. (See my friend Aubrey’s teaching against this misguided contextualization.) The Noahic Covenant, however, affirms that penal substitutionary atonement is a global message because it is founded upon a global and everlasting covenant.

On the cross, we see how God, having preserved the world for millennia on the basis of his covenant promise to Noah, finally satisfies the cry for justice—a life for a life, the spilling of blood for atonement—and redeems humanity and creation so that humanity will finally be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Without God’s covenant with Noah, there can be no new covenant in the blood of Christ.

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