Where's Your Treasure?

A covenant is a divinely constructed legal mechanism revealed to humanity by God. A covenant affords the grantee assurances that the grantor will do unto them exactly as they have promised. At the center of a covenant is the relationship between the two parties and the foundation for a covenant is their love for one another. In giving his covenant, God sets a pattern for his people as to how we ought to relate to him and to one another.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹ “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark; it is for every beast of the earth. ¹¹ I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” ¹² And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: ¹³ I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶ When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” ¹⁷ God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Genesis 9:8-17

Other Texts: Genesis 6:18, 15:17-21; 17:1-27; 21:22-34; 26:26-33; 31:43-54

A covenant is a legal instrument between two or more parties that constitutes an unconditional promise on the part of one party to the other or both parties to each other. The term “covenant” often strikes a person as an outdated relic of the past, but most are familiar with its better-known sibling, a contract. Like a covenant, a contract is an agreement between two or more parties where one or both make promises to the other. However, unlike a covenant, a contract contains provisions to void the responsibilities that each party has to the other if one side doesn’t fulfill their obligations. In simple terms, under a contract, when one party doesn’t hold up their end of the donkey then the other is no longer required to hold up theirs.

A covenant doesn’t contain such provisions to back out of the agreement. Under a covenant, both sides must do as they’ve promised to the other, come hell or high water. Although they aren’t used as frequently as they appear in Bible times, covenants are still made today. They’re often a part of the set of legal documents that are executed in the sale of businesses, for example. Because a covenant doesn’t contain provisions to weasel out of the agreement, a covenant can be risky business. For this reason, the foundation for a successful covenant is the relationship between the two parties. If the relationship between them is good, then the covenant stands a good chance of being fulfilled. If not, then the covenant will face challenges.

Many theologians consider God’s covenants to be a metaphor used by the Biblical authors to communicate the nature of God’s promises. This suggests that God wasn’t establishing “real” covenants with the characters in Scripture; rather, he was revealing his promises to them according to the customs of their day for the benefit of their understanding. However, this presumes that covenant was a human construct prevalent in ancient near eastern culture and known amongst the people of the day including Noah and Abraham before God established his covenant with them. If it were not so, then they wouldn’t have understood the meaning of the metaphor.

I do not believe that God’s covenant is a metaphor. I believe that when God established his covenants with the characters in Scripture, he was establishing a real covenant with real legal obligations. I also believe that God’s covenant with Noah alluded to in Genesis 6:18 and established in Genesis 9:8-17 was the introduction of covenant to humanity. The earliest recorded non-Biblical use of a covenant in the ancient near east (ANE) was a treaty (by definition, treaty falls under the umbrella of “covenant”) between the Hittites and the Mitanni, dated to 1500-1400 BC. God’s covenants with Noah and Abraham predate the treaty by a wide margin (at least hundreds of years). If this is true, then covenant couldn’t have been known to Noah and Abraham prior to God introducing it to them. However, by the time of the treaty, covenants had already been made many times amongst the characters identified in Genesis.

There is another reason to believe that covenant finds its origin in God rather than in ANE culture and it has to do with the philosophical underpinnings of what law is in the first place—law is like math; it isn’t created but is rather discovered. If this is so, then law (and therefore covenant) has been woven through the fabric of reality by an all-knowing Creator, just as math has (perhaps more on this in a later post)! The implication is that ancient near eastern people didn’t create covenant—God did—and in his divine benevolence, he revealed it to humanity as a pattern for how we ought to relate to him and to each other. Considering God’s covenant to be an actual covenant rather than a metaphor affords it a far richer meaning, I believe.

God made covenants on numerous occasions throughout the Biblical narrative (with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and through Jesus, for example), yet these covenants aren’t to be regarded as separate covenants but rather further revelation of his redemptive covenant, which he refers to as “my covenant (Genesis 6:18).” The phrase “my covenant” occurs 55 times in the ESV Bible and every occurrence refers to God’s series of redemptive covenants, which he regards as one singular covenant. It is interesting that he refers to his covenant in the possessive, because covenants typically aren’t considered to be owned by the parties to them. Even though there are many other instances where characters in the Biblical narrative make covenants with each other, none ever refer to these covenants as belonging to them. Perhaps this further substantiates that covenant is a legal form that originates from God and is therefore his possession.

When God made his covenant in Genesis 9, he (the grantor) made an unconditional promise to all post-flood living beings (the grantee) to never again destroy all flesh. No one was forcing God to make the promise that he did. He freely placed himself under obligation never to destroy all life again, come hell or high water (well…maybe not high water…God did promise not to do that again, after all)! It doesn’t matter how vile humanity may become (and God is under no illusion as to how bad humanity could become, see Genesis 8:21), God can never destroy all life again because he required himself not to. He made an unconditional promise to Creation, locked it up and threw away the key. When God revealed covenant to humanity, he revealed his unending love.

The same holds true when it comes to the covenant God gave to Abraham—he bound himself in covenant to do unto Abraham what he had promised him (Genesis 15:17-21). One of the reasons that he does this is to give Abraham assurances over and against his doubts (Genesis 15:8-9)! God understands the frailty of the mind of fallen mankind (Isaiah 53). Therefore, he bound himself to us in covenant for our benefit. In revealing covenant, he sets a pattern for how we are to relate to one another and the covenant relationship pattern trickles down throughout the Genesis narrative. When Abraham has a dispute with Abimelech, he resolves it by making a covenant with him (Genesis 21:25-34). When Abimelech recognizes that God is with Abraham’s son Isaac, he seeks to make a covenant with him (Genesis 26:26-33). Later, when Isaac’s son Jacob has a dispute with his deceitful father-in-law Laban, they resolve it by making a covenant with each other (Genesis 31:43-54).  

When God revealed covenant to humanity, he revealed his unending love.

Though the foundation for God’s relationship with his people is his one-sided obligatory covenant promise to us, God isn’t content to leave us where we’re at. God is always calling us to walk forward with him, and this is true when it comes to his covenant. In Genesis 17, he further reveals himself and his purposes to Abraham, pressing deeper into his covenant relationship with him. Rather than issuing another one-sided promise to him, God calls Abraham and his spiritual offspring to partner with him in his covenantal promise (Genesis 17:1-2; see also Genesis 18:17-19). In his covenant, God’s plan is that he and his people would bind themselves to each other, each party fulfilling what they have unconditionally promised to the other for the benefit of the whole world. God’s people are to love him and obey him faithfully and he is to love them and pour out his redemptive blessings through them. The foundation for this covenant is God’s never-failing love for his people and his people’s reciprocated love for him, eternally sealed by the perfect blood of his Son.

When God gifted us the revelation of covenant—that legal mechanism that he designed and lovingly wove into the fabric of reality—he set a pattern to teach us how to relate to him and to each other. By wrapping his promises in covenant, he taught us to be people of our word, and he did so by example. When God’s people say “yes,” it means yes (Matthew 5:37). He was under no requirement to place himself under obligation to us, but he freely chose to. And he didn’t leave us where we were at, but he called us to partner with him in his covenantal love for the benefit of the world. By bringing us into his covenant, he teaches us to love him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31). The foundation for every successful covenant is love and it all traces back to God’s perfect and unconditional love for us!