Blood Covenant, Part 1: An Introduction to Bible Covenants

There are a lot of Covenants in the Bible.

Obviously the most important one is the New Covenant.

It's important that you understand what covenant means.

Covenant has been in our history right from creation.

God made a covenant with Adam and Eve and then it went on from there.

There are many covenants. The pagan world even recognized covenants.

In ancient times, people really understood covenant. In fact, they would die to keep their covenants.

Men would lay down their lives when they were in covenant with others. That was their duty.

In some cases, it meant actually dying for their enemies, and giving up their own lives to protect the lives of others.

In one way, it is a true revelation of what real love is.

The greatest love is to lay down your life for another.

Effectively, when in covenant, one is saying that the other person's enemies become their enemies, and their enemies become the other person's enemies.

It's an alliance where there is strength in unity.

In unity there is protection and security.

In today's world, Satan has gotten rid of the whole concept of covenant.

Young people growing up today have no idea what loyalty is, what agreements are, what contracts are, and especially what it means to be in a covenant.

They do not truly understand what it means to stand by your word.

When you say something you should mean it and do it.

How many people commit to something in word, but then do not follow through and keep their word?

Covenant incorporates the whole meaning of a contract between two parties.

In the New Covenant, it is really more about what God has done and is doing. Though it involved two parties, we didn't really have to do anything.

The Bible Covenants

The goal of this teaching is to:

1. To bring understanding of the intimacy of the relationship we have with God and His Word.

This revelation and understanding of Covenant, particularly the blood Covenant that we've entered into in the New Covenant, really does give us a firm foundation in the Gospel message.

To truly understand the Gospel and to come into the obedience of Christ, we have to first of all understand the importance of Covenant.

This is why in today's world so many Christians are brought up in society and a way of life where there is no accountability, no responsibility, and no obedience in any way. Satan has really destroyed the whole understanding of loyalty and what contracts are today. This is especially true of what a Covenant is.

Today, contracts have replaced the concept of Covenant, though God started this right from the beginning. God is a covenant-making God. His reputation stands on Covenant.

When you truly understand what Covenant is, it will set you free. Because then, you will be able to trust God and stand on His Word. If anything will not fail you in this world, then it is definitely God and His Word. This is what you must come into a greater understanding about.

2. To learn how God deals with Man based on Covenant.

We see this right at the start of creation.

3. To understand our New Identity in God through his Son Jesus Christ.

Through the Covenant we come into a clear understanding of our covenant with God in Christ.

When you understand the Covenant, then you really get a meaningful picture of what it means to be in Christ.

4. To learn what God's role is and what our role is.

There are roles. There are conditional covenants and unconditional covenants.

The New Covenant is unconditional.

That is the beautiful thing about God's covenant with us. He recognized the weakness of Man's flesh.

He knew that Man could not be trusted. He showed that to Israel through the Law of Moses.

Psalm 25:14 (Amplified Bible) The secret [of the wise counsel] of the Lord is for those who fear Him, And He will let them know His covenant and reveal to them [through His word] its [deep, inner] meaning.

It is so important for you to understand the concept of Covenant, as well as the differences between the various types of Covenants.

The Covenant is a win-win for us.

God wins and we win!

Truly, in all honesty God in His great love has gotten the raw end of this deal.

Of course, God does not see things this way because He is perfect love.

He was prepared to take the fall for us.

We come out the winners.

He did it all for us.

God wins ultimately because He took the punishment.

He got the victory and He takes the glory.

He gets us as part of His reward.

This is how precious you are! When you understand what Jesus went through, then you can understand how precious you are to God.

He went through this and made this Covenant with us so that we could be one with Him.

That is the awesomeness of God!

What a loving God we have.

God is all about family. He wants family.

Family is all about Christ. It is all about God. It is all about Covenant.

God is a Covenant-Keeping God

We need to have full knowledge of our covenant keeping God.

The Old Testament equals the Old Covenant.

The New Testament equals the New Covenant.

As God's children we can have full assurance of God's promises by His Word, knowing that

He keeps them through his awesome power.

God keeps His promises because of His Word.

He is the Word.

How much can we rely on the creator of the whole universe, when we can see His marvelous works all around us?

We can see that He is a God of truth.

Everything that is good in this world He created. The Bible tells us that.

When He created the world He was pleased with it and it was good until the enemy came along.

Covenant is an unconditional binding promise between God and Humankind in which God pledges enduring love and only asks for our love in return.

Our love towards God incorporates faith, obedience, and trust.

We are in God's righteous right hand.

As little children we come to God.

He reaches out to us, takes us out of the lost world and out of the darkness, then brings us into His awesome Covenant.

In Covenant with God we have awesome security for eternity.

Covenant: Diving Deeper into the Hebrew Meaning

The Hebrew word for Covenant is "berith". It means to cut a Covenant to bind.

In this definition, there is already an expression of the fact that the Covenant of God does not have the character of a contract between two parties, but rather that of a one-sided grant.

This word "berith" is not defining when you have a contract between two people. It is more where there is a covenant in which one side is giving to the other party.

This corresponds with the covenant idea in the Old Testament in which "berith", even in human relations, sometimes refers to a one party guarantee in which a more favored person gives to a less favored one.

It is very one-sided.

Again, when you really look at it, from a human perspective, God has really gotten the raw end of the deal.

God doesn't look at it this way.

But by understanding this, where you can really see a contract between two parties in effect, this is the ultimate deal.

It is the best that anyone could ever have, hope for, or dream of!

Genesis 17:9 (Amplified Bible) Further, God said to Abraham, “As for you [your part of the agreement], you shall keep and faithfully obey [the terms of] My covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations.

All we have to do is keep our part of the agreement.

God made it. God created it. God did it all for us.

All we have to do is be obedient to our part of it, which God gave us.

Everything came from God.

God even strengthens and enables us to keep our part of the Covenant.

All that is required of us is to make a choice.

That choice is obedience.

In the Covenant that God made with Abram, God cut the animals down the middle.

He put Abram to sleep, and then God (Christ) passed through the middle as a smoking oven and a flaming torch.

He passed through the middle of that sacrifice while Abram was asleep.

That really does show you what this means.

Abram was put to sleep while God made this Covenant with him.

It was an agreement and a promise.

Abram really had nothing to do with it except to be obedient by faith.

That's what the New Covenant is all about. Us trusting God.

He will do it for us.

When you look at the righteous requirements of the Law, when Jesus arrived, He revealed the Kingdom.

He came to reveal the Kingdom of God.

He came to show the Jews how to come up to God's true standards.

They thought the Law was a high standard, but they didn't know the truth. Keeping God's standard was much harden than they thought.

For example, with adultery, Jesus said that to even look upon a woman lustfully was to create adultery in your heart.

So, the whole aspect of being righteous before God was impossible with man.

Someone asked Jesus, "Well, then who can be righteous?"

Jesus said, "With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible".

This is why God had to put Abram to sleep so that he wouldn't have any part of it.

Our ways are foolishness to God.

As high as Heaven is above the earth, God's way are higher than our ways.

The Covenant was cut with Abraham, and then all Abraha had to do was walk it out by faith and be obedient to God's leading.

Christ was being revealed through all of this. The promised seed, which was Christ.

Covenant: Diving Deeper into the Greek Meaning

The Greek word for Covenant is "diatheke", which means "Last Will" or "Testament".

When God established a covenant with man, this monopleuric (a disposition or arrangement imposed by one party on another) character is very much in evidence, for God and man are not equal parties.

God is the Sovereign who imposes His ordinances upon His creatures.

This is the same as with the potter and the clay.

God so ordered the life of man that the covenant idea should develop there as one of the pillars of social life.

In today's world, the concept of Covenant has become very alienated from our understanding.

Satan has done this purposely by bringing in more and more wickedness into the world.

People become very distrustful. We can see this with binding. legal contracts. They are very easily broken.

God cannot break His Covenant. Man might break it but God does not break His Covenant.

After the concept of Covenant had so developed, He formally introduced it as an expression of the existing relationship between Himself and Man.

God is a covenant-making God.

The Covenant relationship between God and man existed from the very beginning, and therefore long before the formal establishment of the Covenant with Abraham.

That goes right back to when God created Adam and Eve.

God has created the Edenic Covenant, the Adamic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, etc, which we will cover more in detail in another blog post.