The Covenant of Grace is the overarching redemptive covenant in which God promises salvation to sinners through the mediatorial work of Jesus Christ. It is distinguished from the Covenant of Works (God's pre-fall arrangement with Adam: obey and live, disobey and die). After Adam's fall, God initiated the Covenant of Grace with the protoevangelium — "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Gen 3:15). This single covenant was progressively unfolded through Noah (Gen 9), Abraham (Gen 12, 15, 17), Moses/Sinai (Exod 19–24), David (2 Sam 7), and fulfilled in the New Covenant sealed by Christ's blood (Luke 22:20; Heb 8–10). Reformed covenant theology reads the entire Bible as one unified redemptive story: one covenant, one Mediator (1 Tim 2:5), one people of God.
COV'ENANT, n. [Fr. convenir, to agree.] A mutual consent or agreement of two or more persons, to do or to forbear some act or thing; a contract; a stipulation. God's covenant is an agreement in which God engages to do some act for man, or to bestow some blessing upon man, on certain conditions, which man is bound to perform. — Noah Webster, 1828
• Genesis 3:15 — "He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." [Protoevangelium — first gospel promise]
• Jeremiah 31:31–34 — "I will make a new covenant…I will put my law within them…I will forgive their iniquity."
• Luke 22:20 — "This cup…is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you."
• Hebrews 8:6 — "Christ is the mediator of a better covenant, which is enacted on better promises."
• Galatians 3:8 — "The Scripture…preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, 'In you shall all the nations be blessed.'"
H1285 — berit (בְּרִית): covenant, agreement ratified by cutting; from a root possibly meaning "to cut" — covenants were ratified by cutting animals (Gen 15). Used ~286 times in the OT.
G1242 — diatheke (διαθήκη): covenant, testament, will; in the NT, more than a bilateral agreement — a sovereign, gracious bestowal (like a will/testament) by God.
G3316 — mesites (μεσίτης): mediator; used of Moses (Gal 3:19) and Christ (1 Tim 2:5; Heb 8:6; 9:15; 12:24) — the one who stands between two parties to guarantee the covenant.
Dispensationalism, in its strict forms, fragments Scripture into radically discontinuous eras, treating OT Israel and the NT Church as so separate that the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants are essentially suspended or replaced, awaiting a future fulfillment entirely distinct from the Church age. While not heretical, this fragmentation can obscure the deep continuity of God's one redemptive purpose across both Testaments. It often produces an "Old Testament God vs. New Testament God" confusion that is foreign to the biblical text. Paul explicitly grounds the gospel in the Abrahamic covenant (Gal 3), and Hebrews presents the New Covenant not as something discontinuous but as the fulfillment and "better" form of what came before.