A covenant of love

Without denigrating lawyers (my sister is one), I would prefer to order my life without the assistance of solicitors. Nevertheless I have required their services in the purchase of property, making wills and challenging our local council. Undoubtedly lawyers’ expertise helps sort out the issues, and certainly when drawing up contracts we want to be sure that they are watertight and that they say and do what we mean and intend.

The word covenant has an ancient history and is used richly throughout the religious, biblical, legal and political worlds. In Hebrew the word berith relates both the sense of unconditional gift from God (as with Abraham) and the conditional sense where certain requirements must be met in order to maintain the covenantal relationship. Though we often think of there being one covenant between the Lord and his people, there are several, each deepening the relationship between both parties.

Covenants are contracts. They establish the expectations of the parties who enter into an agreement to provide a service or goods.

The covenant made by God with his people does have one most important difference: it requires faith (Hebrew 11:1 – 19). As imaginative as the story of Abraham and Sarah is – leaving Ur, setting up in Canaan, Sarah’s pregnancy, the promise of innumerable descendents – we need to understand it is already infused with faith. The covenant is the actual means of understanding the mutual commitment that God and humanity have between them. You will be my people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36:28). There are mutual obligations.

The stories that emanate from scripture constantly remind us of God’s fidelity to that covenant and humanity’s struggle with its obligations. One major stumbling block was the Hebrew’s knack codifying every aspect of their lives in relation to that covenant, so that the Law became more important than the relationship. In Jesus the New Covenant is established which again sets God’s love, his desire to be in relationship with you and me as pre-eminent.

There is nothing more important in that relationship than knowing that God loves us, and that he loved us unconditionally.