If we are
ever going to understand our relationship with God, we need to understand the
word “covenant”.
A covenant
is not a contract. A contract is a fair
exchange of goods and services. Your
cellphone contract, for example, states that you will pay a certain amount for
a defined amount of access to the cell phone network. If you stop paying, the contract is broken
and you lose your access.
A covenant,
on the other hand, is focused on individual commitment. Wedding vows are an example of a covenant. When people
say, “I will love you for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in
sickness and in health until death do us part”, they are committing to holding
up their end of the bargain regardless of what happens to the other
person. Covenants do not take into account
what the other person is doing. They are
only focused on what you said you would do.
When Jesus
says that God “Causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and send his
rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45), he is speaking
covenant language. When we are told that
“God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son” (John 3:16), we are
talking “covenant” because the focus is what God has chosen to do. It has nothing to do with the worthiness of
the recipients. This point is brought
out even more clearly in Romans 5 which states that, “God demonstrates his own
love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. Note again that we did not do anything to
earn God’s graciousness. God acted because
he was keeping his part of the covenant.
That God is
a covenant keeper is good news because you never have to worry about how he
sees you. God will always love you and
treat you better than you deserve to be treated. He has agreed to operate based on grace, not
reward.
Now, does
that mean our actions do not matter? Not
at all! In fact, God’s grace makes our
response that much more important. His goal
is to draw us into relationship with him.
He wants us to sign up for our part in the covenant. At the end of time, when this agreement is
over, he will see who has responded to his love and who has not and that will
determine our eternal destiny.
For now,
though, he waits (2 Peter 3:9) and he keeps his covenant (Hebrews 8:8-13).
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