What Is Covenant – Part 1

This teaching goes deep into Truth about covenant. As a result, it is in two parts and it will only scratch the surface of how to explain what covenant means. Stick with this teaching and study it, don’t just read it. If you’ll do that, you’ll discover a new freedom found in the covenant of promise given to us by God.

Western Christianity has very little understanding of covenants. We are confused about covenants. Eastern cultures and African culture are more aware of covenant than we are, even though it appears they are starting to move away from it.

God has always dealt with people from the beginning through covenants. His agreement or covenant with Adam was a blessing. He said “Adam, be fruitful and multiply”. You notice it didn’t say God commanded Adam to be fruitful and multiply, it said “and God blessed him and said be fruitful and multiply”. Fruitfulness and multiplication is not something to work at….It’s a blessing.

How about Abraham. His covenant with him is one of blessing. That reveals what the Father is like. Then there’s Noah and the blessing of the rainbow. It reveals the promise that there would no longer be a worldwide flood. It did promise a number of things. It promised there would be summer and winter, heat and cold, day and night, and there would be seed time and harvest. We’ve learned to cooperate with everything above except seed time and harvest. Now, farmers have learned and understood this covenant promise and have learned how to cooperate with it. They understand the power of the seed.

The covenant He makes with Abraham is of great importance to us. Let’s look at some verses in Galatians 3 about that.

10 For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse; for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law, to do them.”

In other words – if you insist on believing you must follow certain rules/laws that have been laid before you by a religious organization, denomination, assembly or person(s), then you better be prepared to keep all the law detailed in the Old Testament. No, not just the “Big Ten”, but the over 600 laws therein. Get yourself some lambs and prepare for the yearly sacrifice ritual.

11 But that no one is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for “the just shall live by faith.”

12 Yet the law is not of faith, but “the man who does them shall live by them.”

13 Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”),

14 that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

15 Brethren, I speak in the manner of men: Though it is only a man’s covenant, yet if it is confirmed, no one annuls or adds to it.

16 Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,” who is Christ.

17 And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect.

18 For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.

So God makes a covenant with Abraham which is a promise covenant as stated in the verses above. If you look at Genesis 12, you will see the first declaration God makes to Abraham. He tells Abraham to leave his house, family, and country and go to a land God will show to him. Then God tells him He will make him a great nation; will bless him; make his name great; and that he will be a blessing.

Then God says He will bless those who bless him, and curse those who curse him. Finally God says that through Abraham, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. This is God’s Promise. The beginning of His covenant to Abraham, and it still stands today.

Then look at Genesis 15. God makes a statement to this pagan man that He has chosen. In the first verse God says “Do not be afraid Abram, I AM your shield, your exceedingly great reward. Not just your reward, not just your great reward, but your exceedingly great reward. God is saying to Abram (before we move on from here) you need to understand something….You have Me. You don’t have to perform for this reward. You don’t have to earn this reward. You don’t have to qualify for this reward. I am your reward. Not I will be, but I am.

You’ve heard it before in many of these teachings, but it bears repeating. “God does not bless you based on your performance, He blesses you based on His promises”. I don’t know about you, but right there in the Old Testament, the first book of the Pentateuch, I see such great grace.

As you continue to study Genesis 15 you see Abram doing what many of us do with the promises of God. We try to figure them out on our own. Abram says to God that he has no offspring, but I guess Eliezer is the heir, since he was born in my house. Strictly worldly logic at work here.

Well, look at God’s response. It’s a resounding NO. Not this one, but one that shall come from your own body. Then God says “Come outside for a moment with me Abram. I want to show you something. Look up at the sky. Do you see all those stars? If you can count them, which I know you can’t, they represent the number of your offspring”. I paraphrased that portion, but study it for yourself in verses 4 and 5 of Genesis 15.

Now get ready, because here it comes. Here comes the key verse of the bible. Verse 6. It reads “And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness”. That, right there is the foundation for the New Testament that we live in. Abraham believed God and it was accounted to Him for righteousness. Paul, in his writings, refers to this verse over and over.

As you study through the rest of the chapter, you will see God instructing Abram to prepare the animals for the cutting of the covenant. Up until now, God has not cut His covenant with Abram, but has declared the promises that will be in the covenant.

So Abram does as God says and gets the animals prepared. We see that Abram becomes very tired and falls into a deep sleep. While he is sleeping, God comes in the form of a smoking oven and burning torch and walks between the pieces to complete the covenant. What is God saying? He’s saying that Abram has to do nothing in this covenant. He’s saying that this is a unilateral covenant that is unbreakable. There is no work or effort that has to take place. God has cut the covenant and it is Abrams. Guess what? We are heirs of that covenant. All the promises of God are yeah and amen to us.

Jesus Christ the God-Man became our full response to God. He fulfilled our side of the covenant relationship. Nothing is dependent upon you. God never intended that you should fulfill your side of the covenant relationship. This is the gospel of grace. Grace is not justice, because it’s above fair.

Another covenant comes into being 430 years later. It is called the covenant of Moses or the covenant of law. This covenant lasts until the New Covenant starts, which is at Calvary. Jesus says “this is my blood of the New Covenant”. It doesn’t start at Matthew 1. It doesn’t start at Matthew 5. It starts when Jesus says “this is my blood of the New Covenant”.

Then we come to Galatians which shouts – This covenant isn’t really new, it’s Abraham’s covenant. We just simply get into Abraham’s covenant through Jesus, because Jesus was the seed God was referring to when He made a promise to Abraham. You see, there was no LAW when God cut His covenant by grace with Abraham. The law came 430 years later.

Now that’s a whole lot of bible in a short time that I’ve just given you. It would take years to track through all the time span between the covenants and the New Covenant of grace and then you would still not complete it in detail.

Where is all the confusion about this. It comes because we do not discern how to rightly divide the Word of Truth. We are trained and told we HAVE TO read our bible, yet God never told us to read our bibles. He told us to study to show ourselves approved and He told us to meditate on His Word. Instead we read to get through 3 chapters a day and a couple Psalms and one chapter in Proverbs.

That is a performance mechanism created by man and religion to give us a way to read through the bible in a year. Then we feel proud of ourselves when we achieve that work. If we fail, we feel guilty. The problem is we do not know what we read, because we didn’t study….allowing the Holy Spirit to bring us revelation.

Also, the little bit we might have picked up in our reading, we do not discern properly and rightly divide. The reason is because we are working so hard to perform, we are not listening to the voice of the Spirit trying to bring us revelation. As a result, the fellowship we could be having with the Lord as we study is absent.

The point is not “that” you read your bible it is more what you study. God is not interested in quantity, He is providing quality, which is only gained by studying. God is not impressed with you when you read your bible to some planned program. Besides, God cannot be more impressed with you than He already is.

As a result of our performance oriented belief system, we are living as New Covenant believers, but we don’t know what to do with the law. After all, how could something that was given by God in so much glory on Mt. Sinai be so bad? This has lead to a new theology that we got saved so that God could empower us to keep the law that we could not keep before. Well that’s just garbage. Sounds so spiritual, but it is nothing but religious double talk.

We were saved by promise and we live by promise, because the covenant is a covenant of promise not works under the law. It is everything that God said He will do and all that we can do is receive it. Here comes Romans 5:12-20. Study that and pay particular attention to verse 17 where it says “much more those who RECEIVE….” It doesn’t say those who perform. Come on. This stuff is simple. The covenant was made under grace and it is ours as heirs by grace.

God said to Abram I have accounted righteousness to you because you believed me. Then the Word goes on to say that we who believe are the seed of Abraham and are made righteous through the blood of Jesus, hence heirs to the promise. Since we who believe are righteous, the law is not our portion….AT ALL. The law was not made for us.

1 Timothy 1:9-11

9. knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,

10. for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine,

11. according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God which was committed to my trust.

Just look at that. The law IS NOT MADE for a righteous person. Then there are a litany of people and things it is made for. One being sinners. What? Wait! Did that just say that since I believe, the law was not made for me and I am not a sinner? YES, that’s exactly what it says. You can’t be righteous and a sinner at the same time. It is one or the other and it doesn’t change based on your good or bad performance, because the covenant is God’s covenant and it’s a covenant of promise.

Also, look and see the part underlined in verse 10. It says the law was made for any other thing that is not sound doctrine. So, those who would say we have to try and keep the law, or perform, or read our bibles, or go to church, or pray for three hours, or …..fill in the blanks. The law was made for those very people or institutions who purport to be Christians, but are bound in religious legalism.

People get obedience to God confused with being an heir. We want to obey God because we are His children, but we don’t become His children through obedience, we don’t become an heir through obedience. We become an heir because we are born into His family. How were we born into His family? “Just like Abraham” (see my teaching of the same name). We believed God and it was accounted to us for righteousness. What an amazing covenant.

There is so much more to this teaching, but I’m going to put it in part two. Let me leave you with this from Graham Cooke.

“Grace always comes before truth. It’s as if Grace is the springboard for truth.” Why is this important to understand? Because without receiving the “abundance of grace” as stated in Romans 5:17, you will never get to the truth that you are an heir and that you reign in Christ Jesus.

John 1:14 says “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

John 1:17 says “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

You see grace is the springboard for truth. It’s as if grace comes, as John 1:17 says, even comes running at you and jumps on the springboard so it can splash all over you with truth. Without grace you will not be able to receive the truth. Don’t miss part two as we continue to unfold the mysteries of the covenant.

Grace and Peace. Mark Kunerth