A clear distinction needs to be made when speaking of the terms covenants and law. There is so much confusion and improper teaching on these terms and the associated subjects. Especially rampant today is the dispensational heresy with all its variants that confuses the covenants.
The same is true for the word law, Israel, and Jew. When these come up in scripture we need to first make sure that the hearer or reader knows what aspect of the law we are referring to, or that scripture is speaking about, or the nation of Israel on earth or the House of Israel as the elect of all nation and all ages, the Jew as one outwardly or one inwardly, the visible church and covenant or the invisible. These all must be understood as we read the scripture and made distinct as we speak.
For example, in scripture we see there are two main covenants, works and grace. But to simply say old and new or law and promise in referring to them is confusing. Since the Noahic, Abrahamic, Mosaic and Davidic are all old covenants but they were all administrations of the Covenant of Grace. And that which is referred to as the new covenant is also the covenant of grace in its more clear and fulfilled administration after the true atonement which the old covenant of grace sacrifices typified.
The original covenant was the covenant of works, which was with Adam, as the representative head for all people, to be tested and procure eternal life or to curse all mankind by the fall and bring judgment of death and hell.
This covenant of Works was made with all people through Adam. He broke the conditions of it, the punishment is past on to all of us, and the covenant is ended. Every one else has ever since been under the curse and punishment of the covenant of works. But no one else could ever earn salvation or eternal life by perfectly keeping a law or doing any works. No one else has a neutral will and sinless nature that Adam had; all people since have a will that is bound to our sin nature, or limited by the sin nature.
Humans don’t have completely free will either. We cannot fly because our nature is not that of a bird or swim like a fish. Our will is limited by our nature. With the fallen sin-nature we cannot do true good, as God tells us in Rom. 3:10-12, man cannot even seek God, he is separated from God by his sin. So there is no possibility that anyone could fulfill a covenant of works and merit salvation. The only hope for man is if God first chooses to give a person a new nature that can have faith and a will that seeks and pleases God and can understand spiritual things.
So from Adam on the only covenant that offers salvation to mankind has been the covenant of grace. Yet we are under judgment from Adam’s fall until that is removed by Christ on our behalf and we are put into the invisible covenant of Grace.
The Jews were never offered The Covenant of Works as a means of salvation, though More
