Lesson 2: “Covenantal Love”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson does not define God’s covenants, their terms, nor their beneficiaries.
- This lesson teaches that all may experience God’s covenantal love if they accept and share His love.
- Belief and repentance are never mentioned as requisites for receiving God’s covenant love.
This lesson is especially difficult to examine because it selectively focusses on collections of texts and on descriptions of God’s love that stress His commitment to His people and to bringing them into relationship with Him and blessing them. Further, it stresses that humans need to respond to God’s love and receive it, sharing it unconditionally—as God does—with those around them.
Yet these statements and conclusions about God’s love and the proper human response to God’s love are flawed because they are built upon a worldview that does not address the biblical revelation of man’s natural depravity, his need to repent and believe, nor does this lesson address the biblical truth about God’s covenants, the terms of His covenants, nor the recipients of His covenant blessings.
In other words, the picture this lesson paints is of God’s unconditional love for humanity but the frustration God experiences when humanity does not respond to Him and to one another with love. This lovely picture of Covenant Love is flawed in the same way a beautiful building rising above a crowded city is flawed if the unseen foundation of that building is cracked and never meets code requirements. A building, no matter how lovely and expensive, is doomed to fail if its foundation is flawed or nonexistent.
This week’s lesson paints a picture of God’s relationships with man without dealing at all with the Bible’s revelation that we are by nature dead, condemned, and under God’s wrath, unable to receive God’s love or to enter a covenant relationship with Him without His direct intervention. We can’t be in a covenant relationship with God without responding to Him on His terms.
This lesson never tells us God’s requirements that we repent and believe Him and trust the Son.
We Determine God’s Blessings Toward Us
Throughout this week’s lesson the author drives home the point that no one can experience God’s covenant love unless one learns to experience and to share God’s love. It stresses that God’s steadfast love is “extremely reliable, steadfast and enduring”, but a person can’t receive the benefits of that love unless one is willing “to obey and to maintain their end of the relationship” (p. 20).
The persistent point of the week is that we humans must receive God’s unconditional love and then love others unconditionally. Unless we keep remembering God’s love and sharing it with others whether we like them or not, we won’t benefit from God’s covenant love.
To demonstrate this running theme through the week’s studies, I will share some quotes:
God’s ḥesed shows that His loving-kindness is extremely reliable, steadfast, and enduring. Yet, at the same time, the reception of the benefits of ḥesed is conditional, dependent upon the willingness of His people to obey and to maintain their end of the relationship.—Monday’s lesson, p. 20
God calls and invites every person into an intimate love relationship with Him (see Matt. 22:1–14). Responding appropriately to this call involves obeying God’s command to love God and to love others (see Matt. 22:37–39). Whether one enjoys the benefits of this relationship with God depends on whether one freely decides to accept or reject His love.…
These and other texts teach that maintaining the benefits of a saving relationship with God depends upon whether we will accept God’s love (which involves willingness to be vehicles of that love, as well).—Tuesday’s lesson, p. 21
Just after John 15:12, Jesus told His disciples, “ ‘You are My friends if you do whatever I command you’ ” (John 15:14, NKJV). And what did Jesus command them? Among other things, Jesus commanded them (and us) to love others even as He loved them.…If to love God entails that we love others, we should with urgency share the message of God’s love, both in word and in deed.
The love of God was intended to be reflected in human relationships. God universally seeks a relationship of reciprocal love; the continuation of an intimate relationship implies an appropriate human response. The human side of the covenant-maintaining love involves keeping God’s commandments and loving one another, which are human activities, empowered by God’s love.—Teachers Comments p. 26
Jesus teaches that God’s loving forgiveness, which comes first, depends on our forgiving attitude toward others. In other words, the loving relationship with God is conditionally supposed to be reflected in human relationships (see John 15:12, 1 John 3:16, John 4:7–12). Otherwise, our loving relationship with God will be forfeited.—Teachers Comments, p. 29
What Are God’s Covenants?
This lesson does not teach that God made unconditional covenants and promises through the ages along with one conditional covenant, nor does it teach what the terms of those covenants are.
The unstated assumption in this lesson is that God has made one overarching covenant with man, and all the accounts in the Bible are additional revelation of His expectations and provisions. But what does Scripture tell us?
We all know that God made an unconditional covenant with “all flesh” and with the earth after the flood. He learn in Genesis 9 that He promised never to destroy the earth again with a flood, and He gave us a perpetual sign of this unconditional promise: the rainbow.
In Genesis 15 we read about God’s unconditional covenant with Abraham in which He promised to give him Seed, land, and blessing. He put Abraham into a deep sleep so his fallible human promises could not weaken the terms of God’s unconditional covenant, and we see the rest of the Bible revealing the ways God has been fulfilling those promises ever since.
Abraham’s great-grandchildren became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel, and from the tribe of Judah came the promised Seed: the Lord Jesus. The blessings the world receives through the Lord Jesus are still being realized, and even the promise of the land for Abraham’s descendants will yet be fulfilled.
And what were the terms of this covenant?
They were unilateral: God promised He would do them, and He did not make any demands upon Abraham to make those promises conditional.
What was Abraham’s response to God’s promises to him?
Abraham believed God. We read about it in Genesis 15:6:
Then he believed in Yahweh; and He counted it to him as righteousness.—Genesis 15:6 LSB
Abraham believed. That was all he did. Furthermore, he did not participate in any way in the making of this covenant. God unilaterally promised that He would give him seed, land and blessings—and neither Abraham’s disobedience nor that of any of his descendants.
Ellen White, however, says in Patriarch and Prophets page 137 that when God made His covenant with Abraham, Abraham “reverently passed between the parts [of the sacrificial animals], making a solemn vow of perpetual obedience.”
She blatantly contradicted Genesis 15 which clearly states that Abraham fell into a deep sleep and did NOT participate in the covenant ratification. After setting out the sacrificial animals pieces, He fell into a deep sleep, and God Himself passed among the animal pieces in the forms of a smoking furnace and a blazing torch, and He made unconditional, unilateral promises. Abraham was not permitted to participate!
In Exodus we see God dramatically displaying His faithfulness to keep His covenant promises to Abraham. God led Israel out of Egypt where they had been enslaved for 400 years—just as He had told Abraham they would be when He revealed His covenant to him in Genesis 15—and he led them into the Sinai wilderness where He made another covenant. This time He made a covenant with the people of Israel and gave them His law.
Moses mediated the law-giving, acting as the representative of the nation of Israel and meeting God on the smoking Mt. Sinai. He received the tables of the covenant and put into motion the terms of the covenant as he directed Israel to make the tabernacle and its furnishings—all of which represented God’s declaration that the consequence of sin was death—but the sacrifices that were built into the Mosaic law were representative sacrifices that substituted for the lives of the disobedient Israelites and prefigured the one Perfect Sacrifice who would fulfill this law one day.
Ten Commandments Not Eternal
The Ten Commandments, importantly, were not an eternal document that God gave Israel in writing. Rather, they were the essence of this conditional covenant with the nation. Here is what we learn in Exodus 34:27, 28:
Then Yahweh said to Moses, “Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have cut a covenant with you and with Israel.” So he was there with Yahweh forty days and forty nights; he did not eat bread or drink water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments.—Exodus 34:27, 28 LSB
Furthermore, this covenant with Israel, unlike the covenant with Abraham, was conditional. Abraham was not asked to do anything to ensure that God would keep His promises, and Abraham’s response to God was to BELIEVE Him.
Israel, however, did make promises to God. God promised them that they would be blessed for obedience and cursed for disobedience, and Israel boldly promised, over and over, that they would do all that Yahweh demanded. Here, for example, is one account of their promise:
Then Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of Yahweh and all the judgments; and all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which Yahweh has spoken we will do!”—Exodus 24:3 LSB
We know the sad story of Israel. They were unable to keep the words of the covenant. Over and over they broke their promises to God, and the terms of obedience were shattered until—just as God had said He would do—He sent the Assyrians and in 722 BC they took the northern kingdom of Israel into captivity. In 587, the Babylonian captivity of the nation of Judah was finally complete, and God’s judgment on Israel came to pass according to the terms of the conditional Mosaic covenant.
Yet even as Israel was failing to keep its promises under the conditional Mosaic covenant, the unconditional promises of God which He gave to Abraham and the patriarchs never ceased to move towards their fulfillment.
After 70 years of Babylonian captivity, God restored Judah to the land where they rebuilt the temple and the city of Jerusalem. Although they did not have an independent kingdom again but remained under the authority of Persia and then of Greece and eventually of Rome, they did have a national identity, and they were governed by the priests.
Enter the Seed
Then, at exactly the right time, God sent His Son.
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.—Galatians 4:4 LSB
Adventism tells us that Jesus came to show us how to keep the law, to be obedient and good and to obey in all the ways Israel failed to obey.
Yet Jesus did not come to show US how to obey the law; He came to FULFILL the law!
Jesus was the Seed promised to Abraham, and He came to initiate a new covenant that God promised Israel He would make with them in the future:
“Behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I cut with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, but I was a husband to them,” declares Yahweh. “But this is the covenant which I will cut with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Yahweh: “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”—Jeremiah 31:31–33 LSB
This covenant was UNCONDITIONAL, and Jesus came to inaugurate it. The Lord Jesus came, God the Son in human flesh—the only baby ever born on earth that was not dead in sin. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and He was never spiritually dead. He was sinless and always alive, and He lived a perfect, sinless life and fulfilled every demand of the law in Himself.
Ultimately, He even fulfilled the heart of the law: the death sentence. As Paul tells us,
He made Him who knew no sin [to be] sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.—2 Corinthians 5:21 LSB
Because Jesus, the sinless Lamb of God, took the sins of the world on Himself and offered Himself to God as the sufficient sacrifice to pay for all human sin, He initiated the new covenant in His blood. Just hours before His crucifixion, Jesus celebrated the Passover with His disciples, and as He gave them the wine and the bread, He fulfilled the symbols of the Passover supper and gave His followers a new remembrance: the Lord’s Supper.
And when He had taken [some] bread [and] given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.” And in the same way [He took] the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in My blood.”—Luke 22:19, 20 LSB
Jesus fulfilled the Mosaic covenant as the Perfect Israel. He became the fulfillment of every shadow established by the law: the sacrifices, the sabbaths, the rituals, the sanctuary, the light of the world, the bread of life, the cities of refuge, the living Law who now indwells each person who places their faith and trust in Him! No longer do God’s people have to look to the shadows of the law to be reminded what sin is or who God is. Now the author of the law indwells each believer, and He makes His eternal word alive and teaches us to apply it to our lives.
Entering Covenant Relationship
In Israel, the sign of becoming a member of the covenant community of God was circumcision. When a man was circumcised, he became a full member of Israel and was subject to the law. When Jesus came and fulfilled the law, all those beautiful rituals and traditions were filled full of their meaning in the Person of the Lord Jesus. Hebrews 8 tells us:
Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law; who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned [by God] when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, “SEE,” He says, “THAT YOU MAKE all things ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN WHICH WAS SHOWN YOU ON THE MOUNTAIN.” But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises.… “FOR I WILL BE MERCIFUL TO THEIR INIQUITIES, AND I WILL REMEMBER THEIR SINS NO MORE.”—Hebrews 8:4–6, 12 LSB
Now we enter the new covenant on the basis of believing and trusting the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. We receive the covenant blessings by admitting that we are sinners and unable to please God, and we entrust ourselves and our sin to Him. We believe that He died for our sins according to Scripture, that He was buried, and that He rose on the third day according to Scripture (1 Corinthians 15:1–4).
We do not enter a covenant relationship with God by mustering up the ability to receive His love and to share it. Never is “receiving” and “sharing” love established in Scripture as the basis for being in a covenant relationship!
The Bible is clear how we receive God’s covenant blessings and become part of His covenant people. He tells us how. On this side of the cross, there is only one command: Believe. Jesus said,
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”—John 5:24 LSB
This week’s lesson sounds pious, moral, and beguiling, but it is not telling the truth. It does not acknowledge that by nature we are all dead in sin, unable to seek, to please, or to know God. It denies that we cannot even come to Jesus unless the Father draws us, and it denies that there is only one way to know and receive the Father’s love: acknowledging our sin and entrusting ourselves to the One who died for us.
Only the blood of Jesus opens the new and living way to the Father. We can’t ignore the blood and grasp our way into God’s good graces by obedience and good deeds. We have to give up our good deeds and acknowledge that we are helpless—and we need a Savior.
When we believe and trust that Jesus has paid for our sin fully, that nothing we do can ensure our attachment to God but that only our trust that Jesus blood has redeemed us—then we are born again, indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and adopted by the Father.
When we have been born of God, then He causes our lives to bear fruit for Him. We cannot secure ourselves to Him by our love and good deeds; we can only trust Him and allow Him to bring fruit from our lives as our spirits, alive in Him, worship Him and trust Him.
He will keep His unconditional promises to us when we have trusted the Son because He makes us joint heirs with Christ. When we trust the blood of Jesus, we will know what it means to receive the covenant love of God. †
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