The Covenant (part 2 of 3)

To summarize to this point, if you are willing to pay the price, you can modify a contract. If you determine to do so, you can dissolve a marriage covenant, but the suffering of doing so is immeasurable. You can alter both a contract and a marriage covenant, but such is not the case with God’s covenant. 

While God uses marriage as a symbol of His relationship with us, the parallel goes only so far before we must springboard into a deeper understanding of how God views our relationship. As people who are included in the life of Christ via salvation, we are in actuality participants in a blood covenant between God and Jesus. 

There are two aspects of this covenant that are significant for my purposes in this note to you: First, this covenant is between God and Jesus, not God and us. 

As you know—or as I hope you know—because we are in Christ Jesus, we are members of God’s family. From our Heavenly Father’s perspective, this position we occupy is as it has been since before the foundation of the world. When God entered into covenant with Jesus, because we were seen in Him by God, we were included as beneficiaries of the covenantal agreement they made. 

Second, this is a blood covenant, not a marriage covenant and certainly not a contract. What’s that distinction and why does it matter? 

A blood covenant is sealed with blood and is made between equals. 

Obviously, even though God desired for us to be the beneficiaries of His covenantal heart, we were not—are not—His equal. This means we were not qualified to enter into covenant with God. Thus, in order to resolve our inadequacy and His desire to spend eternity with us, He had to conceive a plan for reconciliation. To achieve this end, He placed us in the crucified Christ long before we ever physically showed up (cf. Eph. 1:4; Rev. 13:8 (NKJV); Gal. 2:20). 

By placing us in Christ Jesus, God included us in His covenant when He and the perfect man, Jesus Christ, agreed to covenant together. An agreement, or contract, or pledge were insufficient to accomplish what was in God’s heart and achieve what He desired. Only one instrument was of sufficient legal force to bind God’s heart and our hearts inseparably. And, this type covenant exists in perpetuity. 

But why does this matter to us? That's next. In the meantime, I've assembled some resources below. 

Resource options:  

To read about the blood covenant in depth, I highly recommend Malcolm Smith's, Power of the Blood Covenant.

In addition, I have dealt with the blood covenant in novel form in both No Mercy and Battle for the Round Tower.