1
CHAPTER 1:
COVENANT AND COVENANTS
The Bible is a big book with many stories, laws, genealogies, and even dedicates a great amount of space to instructions for construction. Some of the content seems easy enough to understand. Other content seems strange. All of this content comes bound together as one book, but there are two so-called “Testaments” (old and new) as well as sixty-six individual books written over the span of about 1,500 years. Do all of these books fit together somehow? Is this one book or many? Is this book telling one story or many different stories? It can all be quite overwhelming and intimidating to get the big picture.
Trying to arrive at a big picture view of Scripture involves working through many details.
That can …show more content…
In order to begin, we must first ask the fundamental question: What is a covenant?
Usually when we want to know what a word means, we run to a dictionary and look up the definition. That is certainly a way to discover the meaning of a word. But sometimes dictionary definitions can’t explain the many characteristics of a word in its various contexts. O. Palmer
Robertson, in his book The Christ of the Covenants, relates trying to define a covenant simply is like trying to define the word “mother” with a dictionary definition. A mother is a female who has borne and takes care of children. Is that factually correct? Why, yes. But does that really tell us what a mother is? Not really. Simple definitions leave us lacking something.
Nevertheless, we need to start with a definition and then begin to describe covenant in a little more detail. There have been many definitions through the years offered for covenant.
Here’s what we will be working with:
A covenant is a bond created by God in which he publicly declares who and what belongs to him, how they are to relate to him, and how he will reward faithfulness and punish …show more content…
Their lives and stories are now all wrapped up together in this union.
But in Scripture this bond is not only between God and people or people and people. This bond is also realized in God’s relationship with non-human creation and, by image, our relationship with non-human creation. We and God are bound in covenant with the earth, trees, animals, etc. We see it early on and explicitly in Scripture. In Genesis 9, after God flooded the earth and delivered Noah, his family, and the animals, God made a covenant, not only with Noah but also with every living thing (Gen 9.8ff.). Within this covenant is the promise of the order of the seasons (Gen 8.22). God’s covenantal union is realized with all of creation, even the sun, moon, stars as the cosmic clocks. In Jeremiah 33.20, 25 God makes it explicit again that he has a covenant with day and night. All of creation exists in the covenantal relation, this bond with God.
When God created the world and man in it, he stood in relationship to all of it. By virtue of creation itself God bound himself or united himself with his creation. This union in Scripture is called covenant. Every relationship that God has is covenantal. In redeeming man and
CHAPTER 1:
COVENANT AND COVENANTS
The Bible is a big book with many stories, laws, genealogies, and even dedicates a great amount of space to instructions for construction. Some of the content seems easy enough to understand. Other content seems strange. All of this content comes bound together as one book, but there are two so-called “Testaments” (old and new) as well as sixty-six individual books written over the span of about 1,500 years. Do all of these books fit together somehow? Is this one book or many? Is this book telling one story or many different stories? It can all be quite overwhelming and intimidating to get the big picture.
Trying to arrive at a big picture view of Scripture involves working through many details.
That can …show more content…
In order to begin, we must first ask the fundamental question: What is a covenant?
Usually when we want to know what a word means, we run to a dictionary and look up the definition. That is certainly a way to discover the meaning of a word. But sometimes dictionary definitions can’t explain the many characteristics of a word in its various contexts. O. Palmer
Robertson, in his book The Christ of the Covenants, relates trying to define a covenant simply is like trying to define the word “mother” with a dictionary definition. A mother is a female who has borne and takes care of children. Is that factually correct? Why, yes. But does that really tell us what a mother is? Not really. Simple definitions leave us lacking something.
Nevertheless, we need to start with a definition and then begin to describe covenant in a little more detail. There have been many definitions through the years offered for covenant.
Here’s what we will be working with:
A covenant is a bond created by God in which he publicly declares who and what belongs to him, how they are to relate to him, and how he will reward faithfulness and punish …show more content…
Their lives and stories are now all wrapped up together in this union.
But in Scripture this bond is not only between God and people or people and people. This bond is also realized in God’s relationship with non-human creation and, by image, our relationship with non-human creation. We and God are bound in covenant with the earth, trees, animals, etc. We see it early on and explicitly in Scripture. In Genesis 9, after God flooded the earth and delivered Noah, his family, and the animals, God made a covenant, not only with Noah but also with every living thing (Gen 9.8ff.). Within this covenant is the promise of the order of the seasons (Gen 8.22). God’s covenantal union is realized with all of creation, even the sun, moon, stars as the cosmic clocks. In Jeremiah 33.20, 25 God makes it explicit again that he has a covenant with day and night. All of creation exists in the covenantal relation, this bond with God.
When God created the world and man in it, he stood in relationship to all of it. By virtue of creation itself God bound himself or united himself with his creation. This union in Scripture is called covenant. Every relationship that God has is covenantal. In redeeming man and