“The New Testament is hidden in the Old, and the Old is made manifest in the New”.
(Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, 16).
God’s purpose for his Creation is expressed in one of the most repeated phrases in the Old Testament:
“I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
You’ll find that phrase at least 30 times in the Old Testament, and six more in the New Testament. It forms the second part of what is called the New Covenant, found in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people”.
Jeremiah 31:33
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God.
Ezekiel 36: 26-28
God can’t be our God in all the ways he wants in the fallen world as it currently exists. So he is actively redeeming Creation from sin and death, and we’ve been given a role in that process. Os Guinness explains in Carpe Diem Redeemed:
“Things have gone wrong, badly wrong, and things are still going wrong. The world needs to be put right, and those who know and love God become his covenanted partners in repairing and restoring the world to the state it was designed to be and one day will be again.”
Carpe Diem Redeemed, by Os Guinness, Kindle loc 852
What is a Covenant?
In our experience, covenant is a legal term that we seldom use and barely understand. Trent Hunter and Stephen Wellum have an excellent definition of covenants in Christ from Beginning to End.
“What exactly is a covenant? Covenant is an older word that has fallen largely out of use today. It refers to a means by which we structure a relationship. Our contemporary word contract is the most familiar way we structure relationships today, and a covenant and a modern contract have some similarities.
But a contract and a covenant also have important differences. While a contract involves a relationship for the sake of obligations, a covenant involves obligations for the sake of a relationship. A covenant is a chosen relationship between two parties ordered according to specific promises.”
Christ from Beginning to End
The only covenant we have experience with today is marriage. Biblical marriage is a covenant because it forms a relationship between a husband and wife, according to specific promises they make to each other.
God made a series of covenants with specific people and groups in the Old Testament – with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Israel (through Moses), and David. They all lead up to the new covenant we just mentioned. Each successive covenant gives us a little more insight into how God will accomplish his plan to be our God and make us his people. And each one narrows the focus onto who will finally accomplish it. If we imagine God’s plan for redemption as a gemstone with multiple facets, each of the Old Testament covenants shows us a facet of his plan.