Makestraightpaths.com examines the teachings of the religious group variously known as “the Family,” “The Family International,” the “Children of God,” or the “Family of Love,” and evaluates these teachings from a Christian perspective.

This page discusses the biblical concept of the Covenant.

COVENANT

Note: this page is included on Make Straight Paths for informational purposes, not to address any particular Family doctrine.

Introduction

The Bible records a number of accounts of binding pacts between God and a man or a people. These pacts, or covenants, may be taken not so much as a series of disjointed and individualistic epiphanies, but as glimpses into a unified divine desire that all men should be saved (1 Tim 2:8). This covenantal continuity links God’s universal purpose for mankind with the changing circumstances of His chosen people, and inexorably leads toward the revelation of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Indeed, much of the Bible’s teaching on God’s love is centred around this “key biblical notion” of the covenant (Milne 1982, p.70). Thus, the Old Testament covenants display a unified two-fold purpose, namely, universal redemption and God’s sovereign election of His people, through whom that redemption would come.

This page examines the development of the covenant in the Old Testament from a Christian perspective. It does not examine the covenant from a Jewish perspective, as Janowski who writes that the message of Jesus should be interpreted in the light of the Torah, rather than the reverse (2000), or as Spillman, who espouses a “two-covenant” theology, partly with the goal of supporting the “enduring role of Judaism in God’s plan for revelation and salvation” (1988). Neither does it address the theological covenants of ‘works’ and ‘grace’ which although they “may well be ‘biblical’ in essence, are implicit, rather than explicit” (Deffinbaugh 2006a).

Definition and origin

The etymology of the word ‘covenant’ (OT:1285) is inconclusive, yet may be concisely defined as a “bond in blood sovereignly administered” (Robertson 1980, p.4,5). It is not inherently a religious term, and refers to political treaties, lifelong friendship agreements and even to marriage (Brown, Driver & Briggs 2003, OT:1285), which itself “faintly but genuinely portrays God’s eternal covenant with his people (Milne 1982, p.100). The word may refer to obligations voluntarily assumed, as in an integration or treaty between two clans, or to obligations imposed by a superior upon an inferior (Estes 2003). The former is exemplified by the “partnership relationship” between the families of Jacob and Laban (Busenitz 1999, p.175) and the latter by a victorious suzerain’s imposition of government on his defeated vassals (Van Groningen 1996). It may be noted that biblical covenants represent a “quantum jump ahead ethically” over such secular codes (Fee & Stuart 1993, p.160).

Testament or Covenant

There is some debate concerning whether the Greek word ‘covenant’ (NT:1242) should in fact be translated as ‘testament’. Fausset espouses ‘testament,’ which brings out the idea of “God’s gracious disposal or appointment of His blessings to His people”, rather than ‘covenant’, which implies “mutual engagement between Him and them as though equals” (2003). Further, Busenitz supports ‘testament’, noting that the death of the testator initiates the implementation of the agreement whereas the death of one of the parties to a ‘covenant’ renders it null and void (1999, p.177). On the other hand, Robertson points out that “Christ’s death was a substitutionary sacrifice for the covenant-breaker,” a concept that has “no place whatsoever in the making of a last will and testament” (1980, p.12).

Components of covenants

Many of the biblical covenants contained identifiable components comparable to ancient secular agreements. Bradshaw lists the following (1998):

1.      Title or preamble, which identified the parties and their relationship to each other.

2.      Historical prologue, which explained why the suzerain demanded allegiance from the vassal.

3.      Stipulations and law. All secular covenants were conditional, and were nullified through failure to observe the specified conditions (Busenitz 1999, p.180).

4.      Deposit in the temple (the heart of society) and periodic public reading.

5.      List of witnesses. God Himself was the principle witness in Biblical covenants (Estes 2003).

6.      Oaths, ceremonies, and symbols. Every covenant had its accompanying sign. The covenant with Noah had the rainbow, Abraham was given circumcision, and the Mosaic covenant was observed by the Sabbath day (Deffinbaugh 2006a).

7.      Sanctions. If the treaty were to be broken the suzerain could declare that act as the agent of the deities and attack the vassal kingdom. Biblical covenants contained blessings and curses which functioned as incentives.

Covenants between God and man

When God entered into a relationship with man, He held absolute unilateral sovereignty. He initiated, defined and confirmed each covenant, not on the basis of human merit but solely according to His own grace and mercy. People were “recipients, not contributors” (Van Groningen 1996). There was no “bargaining, bartering, or contracting” with God (Robertson 1980) and yet in all, man retained his power to choose to keep or reject, to obey or transgress. In short, God was wholly responsible for covenantal security. Man’s part was merely to accept and obey (Busenitz 1999, p.179).

The Creation Covenant

The opening chapters of the Bible present God’s initial self-revelation and immediately set the framework for all His future relations with man. The Bible speaks of covenants with creation (Jer 33:20) and with Adam, as a representative of the human race (Hos 6:7). In fact, most of the basic covenantal elements are “imbedded in the Genesis account” (Van Groningen 1996): God Himself as Creator and Lord, the historical record of creation proving God’s authority, stipulations for Adam and Eve, confirmation by God Himself, and blessings and cursings. Adam and Eve had set before them provisions for the propagation of life, for their food and comfort, and were given the power of choice (Just 2005). When Adam breached this contract, the consequences were dire for creation and for mankind under his representation (Milne 1982, p.105), yet mankind nonetheless retained the “right to enter into covenantal relationships as humans created in the image of God, the primordial covenant partner” (Everett 1999).

This ‘creation’ covenant defined the respective roles of God and man, and the overarching principles upon which all future covenants were based (Enns 1989, p.42): God is omnipotent and sovereign, demanding obedience for fellowship with Himself, yet in all He remains a God of grace. Man, the other party to the covenant, is the apex of God’s creation, created to worship God and to rule over His creation. Man is answerable to God and thus constituted a sinner through the sin of Adam.

The Covenant with Noah

After the flood waters had receded, Noah and his family emerged from the ark, and in gratitude sacrificed burnt offerings to the Lord. The Lord “smelled the soothing aroma” (Gen. 8:21, NASB) and established a covenant with Noah, in which He promised never again to destroy the earth by a flood (Gen 9:11). This covenant was no new design but rather a confirmation of God’s previously established purpose (Deffinbaugh 2006a); it was the continuation and expansion of a relationship that was already in existence (Bradshaw 1998). It was God’s refusal to allow His relationship to be derailed by sinful man and His invocation of a far-reaching covenant which established order among His human subjects (Busenitz 1999, p.176). This covenant included every living creature: it authorised man to continue his rule over the earth, it applied new dietary guidelines, instituted the death penalty for murder, and laid down the foundation for a “constituted governmental authority” (Enns 1989, p.46). Furthermore, Man was now authorised by God to eat meat, God thus distinguishing between human and animal life.

While the story of the Flood reveals God’s inability to overlook sin, this sovereign grant of order within a covenantal framework reveals God’s immanence and His delight in the affairs of his people (Enns 1989, p.46). Thus, the Noahic covenant is firmly built on the ‘Creation’ covenant.

The Covenant with Abraham

The story of Abraham is found in Gen 11-25, which details his call, his journeys, his prosperity, his faith and his problems. During his life, God spoke to him on many occasions, which together comprise the Abrahamic covenant. Although his own family was from an idolatrous background (Josh 24:2), Abraham himself became the founder of Israelite monotheism, and the covenant God formed with him became the foundation for the nation’s view of their own election (Dumbrell 1984, p.56,78).

A close examination of the Abrahamic covenant reveals not an isolated contact with God but rather close links to the previous covenants: First, this covenant reveals God’s unfolding redemptive purpose, ultimately reaching beyond Abraham to embrace all nations (Milne 1982, p.209). In fact, notwithstanding the specific nature of the promises to Abraham’s descendants, the ultimate fulfilment of this covenant “can be finally understood only from the standpoint of a Christian perspective” with the whole world in its final redeemed form as its aim. (Dumbrell 1984, p.53,57,65,66). Second, God’s sovereign election of Abraham’s descendants and the land they were to occupy reveals His grace: God confers greatness on Abraham, rather than rewarding it (Just 2005). Third, this is a unilateral, unconditional covenant where God is the “sole party responsible to carry out its obligations.” In fact this precise point is vividly illustrated when the Lord, “having put Abram to sleep, walks through the pieces of the sacrifice alone” (Busenitz 1999, p.176,182).

The Abrahamic covenant, therefore, is a continuation of God’s dealings with mankind.

The Mosaic Covenant

After the children of Israel had been in slavery in Egypt for four hundred years, God “remembered His covenant with Abraham” (Ex 2:24) and gave Moses the mandate to lead His people out of bondage. Thus, God’s explicitly reciprocal relationship with the Israelites (“I will be your God, you will be my people” Ex 6:7) was an inevitable result of God’s covenant with Abraham. God had, in effect, obligated Himself to deliver His people and bring them to Mt. Sinai where He could bring order to their chaos, as He had done with Noah (Just 2005).

In the covenant made at Sinai (Ex 19), God first asserted His sovereign right as the divine deliverer to exact strict obedience and complete monotheism from Israel. Israel had been chosen as God’s possession, and was therefore obliged to be sanctified and holy. Consequently, the Israelites were given explicit covenantal stipulations, beginning with the Ten Commandments, and followed by numerous explications and applications. An ongoing commitment to this covenant was demonstrated through sacrifices, ceremonies and Sabbath-keeping. Israel was a vassal people for whom obedience was not so much an expression of holiness but rather a choice between a life of service to God or rebellion and death. Israel’s holiness was solely “on the basis of God’s grace and His faithfulness to His covenant promises” (Deffinbaugh 2006b). Yet despite the Israel-centric nature of the Law, God’s covenantal purpose remained that which it had been since the beginning: the nations of the world were to come to Him through His chosen people (Van Groningen 1996).

The Mosaic covenant, therefore, was another extension of God’s universal purpose for mankind.

The Significance of Blood

At the conclusion of the ceremonial sacrifice, blood from the victim was sprinkled on the altar and upon the people (Ex 24:6-8), symbolically stating that “both parties were pledging their lives to the endurance of the covenant relationship” (Bandstra 1999). The blood represented life (Lev 17:11) so the shedding of blood represented an inviolable commitment to loyalty on pain of death (Robertson 1980, p.11).

This concept was not without secular precedent, as early Semitic brotherhood covenants were initiated by men who drank each other’s blood (Estes 2003). God, however, rose far above such ritualism, declaring not only the symbolism of blood, but His divine ownership of all life and the authority to grant or deny eternal life (Deffinbaugh 2006a). Much later, Jesus equated His own blood with spiritual life (John 6:53) as the means by which God accepts atonement for sin, graciously admitting sinful mankind into His fellowship. Blood is, therefore, an enduring representation of life, both earthly and eternal, and is an integral element of each covenant (Unger 1988).

The Covenant with David

By the time of David, the people of Israel had an unshakeable confidence in their unique calling among the nations to be a holy people. The land of Israel was theirs by divine grant. They knew God demanded unwavering monotheism and strict adherence to the law. Following the return of the Ark of the Lord to Jerusalem (2 Sam 6), David considered constructing a temple, whereupon God addressed David in covenantal terms through the prophet Nathan (2 Sam 7:5-16). In this covenant, God placed Himself under obligation to perpetuate the reign of the descendants of David, which would ultimately be fulfilled in the Messiah (Busenitz 1999, p.176,182). God thus established the royal Davidic dynasty, and gave his son Solomon the mandate to build Jerusalem’s first temple, where his presence would dwell, and which would itself become a covenantal sign (Just 2005).

The covenant with David, therefore, was far from a new or separate agreement. To the contrary, it was produced from God’s two-fold purpose: the election of His people, from whom would come universal salvation.

The New Covenant

However, by the time of Jeremiah, who lived and prophesied during the reigns of the final five kings of Judah, the nation of Israel had fallen into a state of spiritual, political and economic ruin (‘Jeremiah’ 1986). The Mosaic covenant had “long since been vitiated by the disobedience and apostasy of the nation” (Milne 1982, p.236). Israel was experiencing a theological emergency caused by the seeming abandonment of the nation by God, and consequently when Jeremiah predicted a ‘new covenant’ (Jer 30-33) Israel began to look forward to a complete reversal of its contemporary spiritual, political and economic situation.

Notwithstanding the blessings promised in this new covenant, a period of despair and exile was imminent. Israel had broken the covenant and was now liable for its curses (Van Groningen 1996). The blessings would inevitably come, however, facilitated by a change in the participants’ nature, caused by the inscription of the covenant within the heart (Curtis 2006). For His part, God promised He would no more remember the sins of His people (Jer 31:34). McComiskey notes that ‘remembering’ “connotes appropriate and obligatory action” (1985, p.81). Therefore the covenant brings with it true forgiveness.

The new covenant is also mentioned in Ezekiel, where it refers to the Messiah by the name ‘David’ (Ezek 34:23) and in Isaiah, where “the servant is himself called a covenant” (Isa 42:6), being the “instrument that assures the inclusion of the Gentiles in the promised inheritance” (McComiskey 1985, p.89-90).

The similarity of this new covenant to the old is striking. Indeed, the new covenant “included all the elements of those that preceded it” (Bradshaw 1998): God’s longing for holiness on the part of His chosen people, His concern for their welfare, His desire to see their expression of love for Him and for their fellow man and His affirmation of their election. The spirit of obedience to the heart and purpose of the Law was unchanged, and the law itself “could never be abrogated” (McComiskey 1985, p.85, 92). The salvific principles of faith, blood and grace are not new. They are all “active principles in the Old Covenant. Yet there was a tremendous newness in the miraculous change in the recipients of the covenant. It was to be the indwelling, sanctifying, and empowering effect of the Holy Spirit, which could only be made possible by the cleansing blood of the Messiah (Curtis 2006).

Therefore, although the new covenant injected invigoratingly fresh concepts into the divine relationship with man, it was nonetheless firmly within God’s universal and eternal purpose.

Covenant in the New Testament

A study of the covenants of the Old Testament is incomplete without the New Testament perspective. During His final night with His disciples, Jesus ate a Passover meal (Mat 26:20-29) and offered his own body and blood in sacrifice “as the means of a new exodus and the establishing of a new covenant” in which the “church inherits the promises to Israel” (Milne 1982, p.210,235).

In Hebrews ch 8-10, the writer “clearly connects Jesus as the high priest and mediator of Jeremiah’s New Covenant” (Curtis 2006). Jesus had proclaimed Himself as the “High Priest who offered himself as the Passover Lamb” to inaugurate, fulfil, and permanently establish the renewed covenant (Van Groningen 1996). Christ’s last supper established “the Holy Communion as a covenant meal” and superseded two old covenants: “the curses of the Sinai covenant were removed and the promise of the Davidic covenant fulfilled” (Fensham 1996).

There is some debate over whether old covenant stipulations continue on into the new covenant. Fee and Stuart propose that only those aspects of the Old Testament ethical law that fall directly under the command to love God and neighbour are retained in the New Testament (1993, p.153) while Klein, Blomberg and Hubbard suggest that the entire Law is still relevant, yet only within its fulfilment in Christ (2004, p.347).

Conclusion

It is clear that God’s sovereignty is at work in the Old Testament through His choice and maturation of a people for Himself. The development of God’s purpose saw expression in a progression of covenants, which were not so much sequential as they were a deepening revelation of the heart of God, as He freely committed Himself to deliver His people and to remain their God.

God’s dealings with creation, with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David, all may be seen within a covenant framework; and the new covenant, predicted by Jeremiah and fulfilled in Jesus Christ places modern believers firmly within the context of the vassal recipients of a covenant of grace.

The application for these modern believers is that their relationship with God does not depend on their own grasp upon Christ. It is “not qualified by disobedience and half-hearted responses” (Milne 1982, p.70). Rather, Christians may wholly depend upon the sovereign God of the covenants who has initiated and fulfilled an unbreakable covenant, written in the blood of the Lamb, freely given to the elect, who are chosen by grace for His glory.

References

Bandstra, BL 1999, Reading the Old Testament, Wadsworth, Belmont, CA, http://www.hope.edu/academic/religion/bandstra/RTOT/RTOT.HTM [accessed 6/10/2006].

Bradshaw, RI 1998, Covenant, http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/article_covenant.html  [Accessed 5 July 2006].

Brown, F, Friver, SR & Briggs CA 2003, Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, CD-ROM, Biblesoft, Seattle, WA.

Busenitz, IA 1999, ‘Introduction to the Biblical Covenants: The Noahic Covenant and The Priestly Covenant’, The Master’s Seminary Journal, vol.10, No. 2, Sun Valley, CA.

Curtis, DE 2006, Jeremiah: The New Covenant, Biblical Studies Foundation, Richardson, TX, http://www.bible.org/page.php?page_id=1806  [accessed 6/10/2006].

Deffinbaugh, B 2006a, The Noahic Covenant, Biblical Studies Foundation, Richardson, TX, http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=69  [accessed 6/10/2006].

Deffinbaugh, B 2006b, Israel’s Covenant Renewal, Biblical Studies Foundation, Richardson, TX, http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1402  [accessed 6/10/2006].

Dumbrell, WJ 1984, Covenant and Creation, Paternoster, Carlisle, UK.

Enns, P 1989, The Moody Handbook of Theology, Moody Press, Chicago.

Estes, DF 2003, ‘Covenant’, International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia, CD-ROM, Biblesoft, Seattle, WA.

Everett, WJ 1999, ‘Recovering the Covenant’, Christian Century, Christian Century Foundation, Chicago, http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1495  [accessed 13/10/2006].

Fausset, AR 2003, ‘Covenant’, Fausset’s Bible Dictionary, CD-ROM, Biblesoft, Seattle, WA.

Fee, GD & Stuart, D 1993, How to Read the Bible for All its Worth (Second Edition), Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids MI.

Fensham, FC 1996, ‘Covenant’, New Bible Dictionary, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL.

Janowski, B 2000, ‘The one God of the two testaments: Basic questions of a biblical theology’, Theology Today, vol.57, issue 3, Princeton, NJ.

‘Jeremiah’ 1986, Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary, CD-ROM, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN.

Just, F 2005, Covenants, Pillars and Theologies in Ancient Judaism, SCU Jesuit Community, Santa Clara, CA, http://catholic-resources.org/Bible/Covenants.htm  [accessed 6/10/2006].

Klein, WW, Blomberg, CL, & Hubbard, RL 2004, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN.

McComiskey, TE 1985, The Covenants of Promise, InterVarsity Press, Nottingham, UK.

Milne, B 1982, Know the Truth, Inter-Varsity, Leicester, England.

Robertson, OP 1980, The Christ of the Covenants, Presbyterian and Reformed, Phillipsburg, NJ.

Spillman, J 1998, ‘The Image of Covenant in Christian Understandings of Judaism’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, vol.5, issue 1, Philadelphia, PA.

The Holy Bible: The New American Standard Bible (NASB) 1977, The Lockman Foundation, La Habra, CA.

Unger, MF 1988, ‘Covenant’, The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, CD-ROM, Moody Press, Chicago.

Van Groningen, G 1996, ‘Covenant’, Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI.

First posted: May 2007

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