Covenants: God’s Contracts with Humanity
Abstract
Covenants have been a major way God has shown His desire for a relationship with mankind from Adam and Eve to the end of times with the second coming of Jesus. After the fall, the covenants were put in place to allow mankind a pathway for redemption. But mankind showed an inability to live within any of the OT Covenants. The New Covenant ushered in with Jesus’ death and resurrection satisfied the Old Covenant and provided mankind with a completely different covenant based on relationship versus laws and would last until Jesus returns. The covenants start with God being with Adam and Eve in the garden and end with God being with his faithful in the New Jerusalem. They demonstrate God wanted a relationship with mankind yesterday, today, and forever.
Keywords: Covenants, Redemption, Relationship Covenant, Old Covenant, New Covenant
Introduction
The idea of a covenant goes back to Adam and Eve in the Garden in Genesis 2 where God defined the roles for Adam and Eve and the requirement not to eat from the tree of good and evil. One of the issues we have seen and heard time and time again is that so many hear the term covenant but do not really understand what it means and the type of commitment one makes when they enter a covenantal relationship. Simply put, a covenant is another word for a contract. Contracts can be as simple as a handshake agreement that carries little in terms of enforceable consequences for breaking the agreement to very elaborate, legally binding contracts that spell out the consequences for breaking it. Unfortunately, in today’s world the honoring of covenants, contracts, or laws seem to have taken a backseat to the desire for personal gratification. Marriages seem too often to be a matter of convenience, only to be jettisoned if they become too inconvenient. Churches are more willing to yield to political pressures and sacrifice biblical principles on the altar of political correctness. This seems to be in steady decline from generation to generation. There was a recent article that talked about why the Millennials and Gen Zs are leaving organized religion. One of the key factors cited was that they did not see practiced on Monday what was talked about on Sunday. This is basically the same as the people of the Old Testament (OT) agreeing to a covenant only to break it when it no longer suited their purpose. The purpose of this paper is to first define what a covenant is and then to look at the evolution of the God initiated covenants from the first one in the Garden of Eden before the fall to the everlasting one promised in the Book of Revelation. This evolution shows that He has always and will always want an intimate relationship with mankind.
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Conclusion
This paper started with a discussion about people either not realizing what a covenantal commitment is or there has been such moral degradation that they don’t care. This is a pattern throughout the OT in that people would come to God, only to start worshiping false gods to satisfy their selfish desires. Relative to the morality of mankind, there doesn’t seem to be an overwhelming shift over the past several thousand years. The same cycle of coming back to God only to move away seems to repeat over and over again. The time between coming closer and moving away changes, but the end results are the same. Right now, it appears that we are definitely in a period where mankind is diminishing or altogether dismissing the importance of the New Covenant and what it means. How can somebody on Sunday take communion (recommitting to the New Covenant) and on Monday talk about getting a divorce or fighting to legalize abortion, even late term abortions? As disciples of Jesus, we need to do a much better job of modeling the behavior that He taught the Twelve and educate those around us what a covenant means and the stories behind them. We need to stop making a virtual covenant with political correctness and start adhering to the New Covenant and what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus.
The question for all of us is simple, “Are we operating in alignment with the New Covenant or are we breaking that one and living under a false covenant of political correctness?”
-Gary Wilhelmi