A New Covenant
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We’re in the middle of a series entitled “Invitation”, a look at the new-creation life Jesus invites us into when we choose to walk in his kingdom—the kingdom he launched through his life, death, and resurrection. So far, we’ve discovered that first and foremost, Jesus invites his followers to see in a new way, beginning with how we see our Creator. He invites us to see God as a loving Father who longs for his human family to be healed, redeemed, and reconciled as a part of his larger plan to redeem and restore all of his very-good creation. Last time, we carried that understanding even further to realize that because our Father God sees value in all of his image-bearing children, we are also called to do the same, to see value in each and every human life, and to joyously welcome home anyone who chooses to come, no matter who they are or what they’ve done.
This week let’s dig a bit deeper into how the ideas of “value”, “relationship”, and “commitment” are all a part of the relational bond Jesus calls us into as followers in his new-creation kingdom—a bond the biblical writers call “covenant”.
In a previous episode, we looked at the definition of “covenant” and how it was used in the ancient world. To review, the word “covenant” in Hebrew is “berith”. It can mean “a treaty, an alliance of friendship, a contract, or a promise”. In Greek the word is “diatheke” meaning “a testament or will, an arrangement, or a promise”. On the surface, a covenant is an agreement or alliance between parties, but at its core, it’s a personal relationship; a unified partnership, involving mutual value, commitment, and trust.
If you’ll recall, in ancient times covenants were made for all sorts of reasons: personal promises of friendship or commitment, political alliances between kings or nations, or legal contracts between parties with shared interests, and there was much symbolism involved in how they were made. Covenants were an important way of establishing relationships in the ancient world and, as we discovered in our Kingdom Story series, since our Creator God is a relational God, it’s no wonder that covenant relationships are foundational to the whole of the biblical story.
“Covenants” are important from the very beginning. Even though the word is not used explicitly, the Genesis creation story is the first time we see a covenant relationship between the Creator and his image-bearing creatures, and this initial covenant sets the stage for all the rest. In that symbolic Genesis story, we see God bring his good creation into being, and fill it with life in all its diversity. He creates water creatures, sky creatures, and land creatures and blesses them all. Just a quick side note here. It's obvious that Genesis 1 does not contain an all-inclusive list of the diversity of creatures God created. Of course, there are creatures who are in-between—those who are both sky and land creatures, or land and water creatures, or creatures who begin life as one thing but must change in order to become who God intends them to be. We know God blesses these in-between creatures as well, because he includes them in the covenant he establishes with “all living creatures” later in the story (Genesis 9:9-10).
After creating this amazing diversity of life, and as a crowning masterpiece, God creates humans, in all their diversity, to carry his image and reflect it into his new world. As we’ve discussed previously, it is precisely through the diversity of humanity—the unique and beautiful identity of each human being—that the image of God is most fully reflected. Like the animals before them, God also blesses his image-bearers and, as a part of that blessing, invites them to be fruitful and multiply their new family. Then, the Creator does something absolutely astounding! He commissions humans—male and female, without gender hierarchy, each equally and fully created in his image—to rule over everything he has made, in partnership and unity with him. The Creator chooses humanity, out of all the creatures he created, to be his partners; to be the ones through whom his light, his love, his life, his creativity, and his wise rule would flow out, to steward and bless creation. He establishes a covenant relationship with them. Humanity, in loving, trusting, committed, unified partnership with their Creator, is promised a beautiful, abundant home and a family, and tasked with the purpose of reflecting their Father’s image and his blessing into the world; valuing, caring for, and working in service of each other, and his creation; and helping the beauty and diversity of life to flourish and grow.
In addition to this covenant relationship between God and his image-bearers, the book of Genesis also gives us the first glimpse of covenant between human beings as well. In the creation story, we discover that just as the Creator is relational—Father, Son, and Spirit in perfect relationship with each other—he also did not intend for humans to be alone. Humanity was created for relationship with him, and for relationship with each other.
The story tells us that after bringing all the amazing diversity of creation into being and proclaiming it all “good”, the Creator surprisingly declares that there is something that is “not good”. He says it is not good for the human to be alone. So, he decides to make a “suitable helper” for the human (Genesis 2:18). If you’ll recall, the word for “helper”—“ezer”—is not meant in a subordinate or hierarchical sense. In fact, it’s a word most often used in Scripture to describe the powerful help God himself provides to his people. And the word for “suitable”—“kenegdo”—means “corresponding to, or in front of, in the sense of standing opposite to, or standing face-to-face with”. It means someone who is “a counterpart” or “a partner”. Notice that neither word is gender specific, nor do they imply anything about difference in physical anatomy. The solution to the human’s “aloneness” problem is not about needing someone “different”, it’s about needing someone “similar”, as we’ll see as the symbolic story continues.
After announcing that he will make an “ezer kenegdo” for the human, God brings all the animals to the human first, but none among the created animals was found to be a “suitable helper”, so God creates woman from one “rib” of the human (Genesis 2:20-22). Scholars tell us that the word for “rib” used here, is most often translated in Scripture as “side”. In other words, a “counterpart”—a “similar partner”—was not found among the animals, so God took “one side” of human and made “woman”—another human—unique and yet the same. Then the human said, “At last this is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh…” (Genesis 2:23), a phrase used elsewhere in Scripture not in a hierarchical or gender specific way, but to describe a relational bond of kinship (Genesis 29:14, 2 Samuel 5:1). At last, the human had another human—an ”ezer kenegdo”—to be in relationship with.
Genesis 2 goes on to describe how the two shall “cling” to each other and become “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Again, “one flesh” refers to a relational bond of kinship, and the word “cling” is not usually used in Scripture in a sexual or gender-specific way either. For instance, it’s used in the book of Ruth to describe the deep feeling of commitment Ruth has for her mother-in-law (Ruth 1:14), and in the book of Deuteronomy it’s used for the loving, faithful, committed relationship the nation Israel was to have toward God—they were to “cling” to him (Deuteronomy 10:20, 11:22, 13:4). This “clinging” and becoming “one flesh” in Genesis 2 is describing how we leave our first covenantal kinship bond—our family—and partner in unity with another, to create a new kinship bond—a new covenant relationship. Although the word is not mentioned here, this is where we get the concept of “marriage”.
Yes, this first “marriage” was between a man and a woman, with procreation as a necessary part (to populate the earth); and indeed, that is how the biblical authors viewed marriage throughout Scripture; it’s what they knew based on their culture at the time; but looking deeper, the underlying foundation of the relationship seems to be a bond of kinship, a “covenant”, a relational bond and committed partnership between “ezer kenegdos” working together as one, which certainly can include, but does not require, gender difference or procreation.
In addition to what the ancient biblical authors believed about gender in marriage, we also know that they believed marriage (sometimes multiple marriages) and children to be the norm and the goal for everyone. To be unmarried, widowed, or childless was the cause of deep shame and hardship in the ancient world. Certainly, that is not our thinking today. Those who choose to enter into a marriage covenant make committed promises to love, honor, and care for each other whether they are of the same sex or opposite sexes and whether children are in the picture or not. And those who choose to remain unmarried and enter into deep, meaningful, covenantal friendships, still fully and purposefully reflect the image of God in their singleness, as both Jesus and the Apostle Paul, among others, make clear.
It's interesting to note that this concept of the marriage covenant is used later in Scripture to describe the relationship between God and his people—the nation Israel—as well as the relationship between Jesus and his followers—his church—those who are being transformed into his “likeness”. God’s people in covenant partnership with him, working together in unity with him and with each other. Certainly, this “marriage” covenant between God and his people does not have to do with gender difference, sex, or procreation. While these are all good things in a marriage, covenant goes deeper. The marriage covenant is a loving, trusting, committed, relational partnership between human beings, joining their lives and working together as one, and it represents in a small way, the loving, trusting, committed covenant relationship the Creator desires with all his image-bearers. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus upholds this mutually-valuing, covenantal, marriage relationship when he is confronted by a group of religious men asking if they can break their marriage covenants and de-value and discard their wives (image-bearers of equal and immense value to God in their own right), whenever they grow tired of them. Jesus leaves no doubt in that conversation, he values each and every human being, and he values committed covenantal relationships. If the marriage covenant is the picture used to describe the relationship between Jesus and his followers, perhaps it’s time for those who follow Jesus to think differently about how we define the marriage covenant, who can enter into it, and what its foundational purpose and blessing are really about.
Now, let’s look again at that covenant relationship between humanity and their Creator at the very beginning. It involved a covenant promise and a covenant purpose. Unfortunately, we know what happened next. The image-bearers listen to a different voice and mistrust their Creator, thereby breaking their covenant relationship with him. By mistrusting their Father and putting their trust elsewhere, they hand over their authority to rule, and abandon their covenant purpose. The partnership based on love, trust, value, and commitment is broken, fracturing all other relational bonds as well, and so, the humans first hide from each other, and then they hide from their Creator (Genesis 3:7-8). As you’ll recall, things begin going downhill pretty quickly from there. But as we’ve seen, God refuses to give up on his original covenant partnership with his image-bearing creatures. He continues to reach toward them throughout the biblical story, with the promise of redemption and restoration of the covenant.
As the story continues, God reiterates a part of the original covenant blessing to Noah, his family, and all living creatures after the flood, but the version of the covenant promise that becomes the bedrock of the Hebrew story is the covenant promise made to Abraham and his descendants. It is this covenant that carries through the biblical story and forms the foundation of Israel’s identity, and Jesus’ own mission as well. The covenant, in essence, is this:
If Abraham will listen and trust him, God promises him a land, a great name, and many descendants. Then God blesses him and tells him that he will be a blessing to others. In fact, God tells Abraham that through him and his family, all the families of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3, 7, 15:5-7, 18, 17:1-8).
Think about that covenant promise. Does it sound familiar? God promises a home and a family, he blesses the family, and then he commissions them to take that blessing out to the world. Do you hear it? God is promising to restore the original covenant promise to all of humanity, but he is saying that he is going to partner with Abraham and his family to do it. The covenant is made with Abraham and his descendants, but it is for the benefit of the entire world.
This covenant promise is reiterated to Abraham’s son and grandson, and it becomes the hope of his descendants who eventually become the Nation Israel. The covenant becomes even more specific at Mt. Sinai after the dramatic Exodus rescue, as God details, through Moses, how his people are to trust him and stay connected to him, and how they are to relate to and bless others. And the covenant is restated yet again to King David, with the addition of the revelation that it will be one of David’s own descendants that will bring the covenant promise to its fulfillment.
Sadly though, just as with the original covenant in the beginning, Abraham’s family is unable to trust God and fulfill their covenant purpose; to reflect his loving, light-filled image into the world, and to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. The covenant promise made for the sake of the world, instead becomes distorted, it becomes nationalistic, rule-bound, inward-focused, and exclusionary. And yet, the Prophets foresaw a time when the Creator God, through his Messiah, would usher in and reestablish the original covenant with humanity, but he would do it in a new way; a way that would involve rescue, healing, forgiveness, and new hearts and spirits (Jeremiah 31:33, Ezekiel 34:25-31, 36:26).
When Jesus arrived on the scene, announcing that the kingdom of God was indeed at hand, he was activating this long-held covenant hope. But his interpretation was not what his listeners had been expecting. He talked about new wine needing a new wineskin, he gave his followers a new command to love as he had loved them, he talked about offering new life, and the evening before his death, he took the symbolic Passover cup and announced a new covenant. The word choice is fascinating here. The word “new” Jesus uses, is translated “kainos” in Greek. Although there is another Greek word, “neos”, which means “new” in the sense of something brand new, never seen before, “kainos” means “new” in the sense of a new quality of something, a fresh understanding of it, something that has not been seen exactly like this before. In other words, Jesus was not saying he had come to abolish everything that had come before and start something from scratch, he was saying that he had come to restore something in a new and fresh way. He had come to bring people a new understanding of their story, their scriptures, and their God; to bring a new interpretation of their previous command to love God and love their neighbors; to bring a new understanding of who their neighbors were; and to bring a newrevelation of what it means to live out the covenant relationship their Creator, Father, God established with humanity in the beginning.
To believe Jesus, to choose to walk in the kingdom he revealed, is to choose to accept his invitation to be healed, forgiven, and reconnected to God, and to enter into that original covenant relationship with him in a new way. The restoration of the covenant, the new-creation covenant—modeled in his life, accomplished and launched through his death, revealed in his resurrection, and empowered by his Spirit—is what he invites all humanity to be a part of now, and what he will bring to complete fullness in the “age to come”. Life in God’s new-creation kingdom is a life lived in loving, trusting, intimate relational partnership with him; it’s a life lived in compassionate, mutually-valuing, loving relationships with each other; it’s a life lived in purposeful, intentional, loving, care and stewardship of his creation; it’s a life lived as his image-bearers, people through whom the Creator’s loving, light-filled, life-giving image and his blessing overflows to “all the families of the earth”. A new covenant, a new Spirit-led life, a new way of being human.