COVENANT

In the Bible many people who understood covenants well. Covenants were made to define and describe their relationships with each other.

Abraham & Abimelech as they resolved their conflict over a water source (Gen. 21:22-34).

David & Jonathan made one for their friendship (1 Sam. 18:3 and 23:18).

Jacob & Laban, made one which promised never to harm the other. (Gen. 31:43-53).

The basic difference between covenants and other agreements is the relationship that exists between those making the covenant. You make a specific promise and expect certain benefits (and penalties, if the promises were broken) based on the terms of the covenant. But this relationship went far beyond legal concepts.

Those entering a covenant viewed each other as friends who were bound together permanently. Abraham's covenant with Abimelech allowed these two very different men to live in peace in the same area (Gen. 21:34). David and Jonathan, lived a covenant that was of mutual loyalty and love (1 Sam. 18:3). To be in covenant was to be in relationship.

Covenants were “cut” not made. We have to fully understand what it means to “cut” not by today’s standard of distorted views but by what God showed us in the Old Testament. Even so, today, we could freak out on its true meaning.

The cutting, symbolized by the slaughter of an animal (Ex. 24:5,8), indicated that each person in the covenant promised to give his or her own life to keep its terms. To break a covenant was to invite one's own death as a penalty. There are no more serious relationships than those that are a commitment of life itself.

The highest example of a covenant is the one we find in Jesus. It is only in Jesus that we can fully understand this love. In Him, God fulfilled the promise he made to his people giving his own life to seal the covenant he had made with them.

God's choice of the covenant to describe his relationship with his people highlights the degree of his love for us. Not only does the great sovereign Creator of heaven and earth descend to be in relationship with sinful human beings, but he offers his own life to provide escape for covenant breakers.

What are your covenants? Who have you established one with? Are you living to the best of your ability, the covenant you have cut with someone?