A Covenant With God

4/21/2024

Ref:

  1 Corinthians 11:24-30

  [See also: Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; Hebrews 13:20 (NASB95)]

            It is amazing to me that we so seldom receive Bible teaching about COVENANT.  Why is teaching about this critically important topic most often overlooked, and why would I think it’s ‘critical’?

            What is a covenant?  A covenant is simply an agreement between two or more parties that have bound themselves by promises to honor the agreement.   Back into farthest antiquity, the most binding covenant was known as the ‘blood covenant’, wherein all parties to the covenant ratified their part of the agreement by shedding, and “swapping” their blood.  This meant that the parties to the agreement were putting up their own blood as collateral, saying in effect, that they would shed their own blood, if it became necessary, in order to honor the covenant.  After the bloodletting, gifts were exchanged by all parties as a token of their promises to honor the covenant. 

            With this in mind, it is important to note that all of God’s conditional promises to His people (His family), are based on His covenant with His people, and to us, through the blood of Jesus Christ, which ratified, and initiated His promise of eternal Salvation, given as His gift to us.  Without having a valid covenant in effect between us and God, only through the blood of Jesus, it makes no difference at all how much we factually know about the Bible, or Jesus Christ.  Knowing about Jesus is no more important than what nonfamily members knew about my dad.  I qualified because I shared his blood, making me family.

            The Bible makes it very plain that all life is “in” the blood.  When we partake of the sacrament of communion in our churches, the token substitution of the very blood of Jesus is the wine, or juice, and we are strongly admonished to only take it into our bodies in a ‘worthy’ manner.   The apostle Paul stressed in his first letter to the Corinthian church, chapter 11, that it had already been a fatal mistake for some in the church to have taken the sacrament in an ‘unworthy’ manner.  My opinion on this is that they must have incurred life-threatening curses by partaking in the sacrament without having a covenant relationship already in place with Jesus Christ. 

I have been in churches that teach we should ‘examine ourselves’, as Paul taught, but only to the extent of making sure we had forgiven everyone we had yet failed to forgive.  While this is good and proper, it does not go far enough, and I do not think it is what Paul primarily had in mind when he told the Corinthians to ‘examine’ themselves.  Rather, I believe he meant that the partakers should first make certain they weren’t trampling upon the blood of Jesus by taking part in the sacrament in ignorance of its significance.  In effect, the blood of Jesus is Life to those who believe, but it can result in death to those who do not. 

Personally, I find it grievous to take communion without even basic instructions on what it means, and how serious the sacrament is, in God’s eyes.  I wonder how many church members are sick because they brought it on themselves by succumbing to peer pressure, when they should have declined to accept the elements until further self-examination? 

Having a good understanding of covenants is vitally important as we approach God for the healing we need in our bodies, and our situations.  Psalm 91 is pivotal, and to me, it is the open door to all of God’s conditional promises in the whole Bible.  I cannot imagine approaching God’s throne without first knowing my legal “standing” with Him is healthy through my blood covenant with Him. 

My household is a covenant household and will remain so until we pass on into eternity.  Our covenant with God, ratified by the blood of Jesus Christ, contains our promise to remain faithful to Him even unto death; His covenant with us, ratified by the same blood, promises to grant us Eternal Life.  This is the most binding covenant, and it is only available to us as we live in our mortality, but the promises of God will live on forever.

John