If there’s one thing I brought back from the message at MaryBeth’s wedding this weekend, it’s that we Reformers sure like to talk about the Covenant. In fact, if you’ve ever seen the catechism material our churches like to use - at least the few I’ve been to - you’ll understand. As a friend pointed out to me, every single lesson is about covenant.

The interesting thing in watching messages or listening to messages from outside my circles is how they seem to focus on Jesus, almost never mentioning any Covenant of any kind. Not because they necessarily aren’t covenantal in their theology, but more because it’s not something that’s in the forefront of their minds or tacked on as the foreword to every concept.

I’ll be the first person to tell you that covenant is essential. For Israel, their covenant with Yahweh was the jewel (or the centrepiece) of their entire faith as it was expressed in the nation itself. They were in a much more tangible sense than we are in direct, visible covenant with God. But at the same time, the covenant itself isn’t the endgame: there’s more to it. In fact, the whole thing points in the end to the person who made it with the people who joined into it by choice or otherwise. For the Jews of the Old Testament, that person was God as he revealed himself to them. Covenantally, to be sure. But in the end, the Jews came to focus on that covenant instead of what it pointed to, I think. That is to say, their nationhood and its personality in relation to this earth became more important - think of the uprising during Roman times - than what it actually meant.

More to the point, they concentrated on the relationship more than they concentrated on the author of the relationship. In that, they became static: the OT covenant was very much about the Mosaic Law, and the Mosaic Law became something of an idol to the religious leaders, regardless of their particular racing stripes. They guarded it with their verbal law, basically hedging the Law around with “safeguards”, or garnishing the ground around their statue. Whatever you prefer to call it. Eventually it got so bad that the garnish obscured the object of their effections, and I think that’s when it all went bad. Not only had they removed the Covenant from the context of relationship with Yahweh, they also removed the Law from its context of that relationship until there was such a divide between what the Law and Covenant really meant and what it was supposed to represent that they couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Not, of course, to say “screw the covenant and concentrate on the relationship”, but instead put your Law back in the context it deserves and let it show you the things it’s meant to show you. I think this is part of what Jesus came to show to the people of Israel: your Covenant with Yahweh is not about your nationhood. Your nationhood is, instead, about God. But of course, once your nation is the penultimate theological drive in your life, it’s difficult not to crucify the things getting in the way.

Not only that, Jesus came to tell them the same thing that Hebrews tells us. Both Covenants, however you arrange and separate them, are about the Christ. The law is imperfect in that it cannot save. The old covenant is imperfect in that it centres around that Law. Christ, however, is perfect in that he can and does save from sin, and the new covenant in his blood is therefore perfect. This is, I think, extremely orthodox.

But the same thing applies today: our faith is not about the new covenant. The new covenant is, instead, about Christ’s death and resurrection. And when I say a generous orthodoxy in the title of this post, what I mean to say is that we - focusing perhaps too tightly on covenants - and those such as the Emergent Church - focusing perhaps too tightly on Christ - are pretty much saying the same thing.

This is how I would say it: the covenant is not the centrepiece of our Christian faith. No, Jesus Christ is, and our relationship to him as individuals, churches, and the church. We are in a covenantal relationship with him, yes, but let’s not get all hung up on what type of relationship that is all the time, because while it may be academically helpful and scripturally fruitful, it’s just a means to an end. The means: covenant. The end: relationship with Jesus.

I heard a pastor friend of mine once comment that a sermon isn’t quite complete without Jesus. All of scripture points to him. The finger it uses is these different covenants, and though we may not agree on all the garnish, we do have a point of ecumenical agreement with other churches in that fact, whether we talk about the relationship or the object of it.

Which is just my way of saying that we aren’t so different after all.

Tags: scripture, theology