Why a Covenant?

           The Covenant is the tool of freedom of choice.  If we were not free to choose, the defining characteristics of our relationship with God seem to me to have two options.  One, according to Paul, is that every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, because in the revealed glory of God, there is no way to stand against that.  The second, everyone carries the consequences for their sins, and, according to Paul, the wages of sin is death.

          In other words, God could reveal the Divine Majesty and we are all bowled over into belief and praise.  Or God could let us bear the consequences of our fallen natures.  No freedom of choice. 

          But that is not how God created us.  The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is a very sophisticated way of trying to explain human nature.  Without free will, our options are either the Ultimate Good, God’s Glory, or the Ultimate Evil, punishment for what we have done against God.  In this dichotomy, God created a middle way.

          The human being is an amalgamation of good and evil.  There are very good and very evil people who have claimed Christianity as their faith.  There are very good and very evil people who have nothing to do with our faith.  And we have the ability to choose how we will behave.  But we are more than just choice.  We are inclusive of instinct, addiction, environment, and circumstance.  And the rules of Good and Evil change.  And there are exceptions.  The classic?  One does not lie, but, in the Second World War, if one were hiding Jews, one would lie to the Nazis who came knocking to save their lives.

          It is this messiness called Humanity that God has chosen to deal with.  God begins with a promise, I will be your God…  And this is a good promise because God is love.  Then God establishes the parameters of the Covenant, what we generally call ‘the Law’, as the measure of right behavior.  Then God establishes grace, a way of restoring our right standing with God when we breach the terms of the Covenant.  Which we will as humans are flawed, fallen beings.  This is the consequence of free will. 

          That grace finds ultimate expression in Jesus.  By His death and resurrection, He carried the consequences of our sins and He descended into hell.  But He rose again from the dead and, in his resurrection, opens the way to bowing knee and confessing freely that He is Lord. 

          That’s why a covenant.  A tool for allowing people of free will, even when that free will cannot measure up to the perfection of our God, it brings us to the God who loves us.

Peter Hofstra