Covenant and ScriptureSýnishorn

Characteristics of God’s Covenants

The covenants that God forms with his people follow the pattern of historical covenants. The biblical covenants create a servant nation. The faithfulness of this covenant community is vital to God’s historical purposes.

God forms covenants with people of his choosing. Like a powerful human lord, he designates covenant terms without negotiation. With each covenant, God sets apart a tribe, a nation, a people —a covenant community.

Faithfulness of the Covenant Community

The faithfulness of this covenant community is vital to his wider purposes. They are a servant community — a community called to serve God’s purposes. As such, God extends his favour and blessing to them. Even so, his blessings are not the goal. God blesses the covenant community so that they may serve him and glorify his name. Whenever this principle becomes obscured, the covenant community risks frustrating God’s purposes.

Keeping Covenant

means preserving the solemn relationship. This requires submission and obedience to the terms of the covenant. Rituals, including confession and sacrifice, provide restitution for minor breaches. More serious breaches call for repentance and renewal.

Keeping covenant ultimately calls for wholehearted participation in the covenant community’s vocation. That is the reason that God calls a community into covenant with him. That they may become a faithful servant community.

Breaking Covenant

The relationship at the heart of the covenant is always greater than the covenant terms. Thus, the covenant relationship can be restored following occasional breaches. However, when a covenant community repeatedly, or flagrantly breaches the terms, there is a problem. This indicates a loss of the solemnity of the relationship.

Continual faithlessness leads to the punishments and curses incorporated in the covenant terms. Breaking covenant is significant because it frustrates God’s wider purposes. Covenant faithlessness is the sign that the covenant community has abandoned its vocation. The servant community is no longer capable of serving God’s purposes.

Certainty of Divine Covenant

God won’t change his mind. He will do what he has purposed to do through his covenants and through his Covenant Community. Even when God’s people break the covenant, God remains faithful to his purposes. Because his character is unchanging, his eternal purpose remains intact. When God makes a covenant he is committing himself to fulfilling his purposes through that covenant. This is why he swears an oath. He does so to confirm the unchangeable character of his intentions.

Reflection

• What happens when God’s covenant community neglects his purposes?
• How are blessings and curses related?
• How does Scripture challenge cultural ideas about curses?