Selections from a Timothy Keller sermon: A Covenant Relationship
In modern society, relationships more and more start like this. Two people look at each other and they say, “I will be what I should be, as long as, and to the degree that you are what you should be. And if you’re not, I’m out!”
But in a covenant, two people look at each other and say, “I will be what I should be whether you are being what you should be or not.” Therefore, it’s scary to get into a covenant, and it only works if both people in a covenant say that…
If only one says that, and the other does not, then what you’ve got is exploitation, or even abuse. But if you really do get into a covenant relationship where two parties are each saying, “You are more important than me. The relationship is more important than my needs. I will be committed to your needs before my needs. I will be committed to the relationship, even if it’s not meeting my needs at the moment. I give you my independence. I give you part of my freedom as a gift of love.”
If one side and the other side are both saying that — if both people are saying, “I’m not after my needs, I’m after your needs; I will sacrifice for you” — that is a far more fulfilling, far more deep and profound, far more life-changing and joyful relationship than a consumer relationship in which each side says, “I’ll be in this as long as you’re meeting my needs.”
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If the most profound, most joyful, most life-changing, most deep and glorious relationships are covenental relationships, then your relationship with God has got to be, through and through, a covenental relationship. It has to be.
Here is the problem. Modern people have trouble mixing law and love together. What they say is, “Oh, I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious.” Sociologists for years now have been finding modern people like to say “I’m spiritual but not religious.” What does that mean?
Here’s what it means. “I believe in God. I want a relationship with God, but I don’t want to go to an institution, I don’t want to go to a church or a synagogue, I don’t want people to tell me what I have to believe, I don’t want to give up my freedom, I don’t want to give up my freedom to determine what is right and wrong for me.”
In other words, what everybody’s saying is, “I want a personal relationship with God, but not a covenental relationship.”
But the Bible says that’s impossible; God only relates in terms of covenant. Every time he relates to somebody — Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Moses — it’s always covenental.
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When you hear God say, “I will never forgive you if you break the covenant” …you say, “Wait a minute, I thought God was a forgiving God!” And yet, if he’s a covenant God, what good is a covenant if you just ignore the penalties and say, “Who cares!? I’ll forgive you.”
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On every page [of the Bible] you have statements like this, where God says, “I cannot bless a disobedient people. I cannot. You must obey. I’m a just judge. I cannot wink at guilt. An earthly judge who winked at the guilty would be run out of town; how much less can I? …I can’t overlook it…
There are also…hundreds of statements that say, “I will never leave you. I will never give up on you. I will always accept you. I will never forsake you.”
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This apparently irresolvable tension is the very plot line under all the other plot lines of the Bible…You see God’s people failing, and failing, and failing. And then the question comes up: “Will God give in to his people, and just accept whatever they do?” Then what about his holiness? “Or will God give up on his people?” Then what about his faithfulness?
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Are the blessings of God conditional or unconditional? Do the blessings of God come conditionally (you’ve got to be good; you’ve got to fulfill the covenant) or unconditionally (it doesn’t matter what you do; you’re going to get them anyway?
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The problem is that the Bible, over and over again, seems to give contradictory answers. This is so pervasive, and so apparently irreconcilable that almost every one of us tends to come down on one side or the other, instead of following the biblical balance…
Most people either read the Bible in a liberal way…they say, “Yes, you need to obey. Yes, you should obey the Ten Commandments. Yes, you should be good but, in the end, God loves everybody and will accept everybody…
Or you can come down on a conservative side, and you can say, “Well, yes, God is very loving but, in the end, you’ve got to be good, or he won’t love you.”
Everybody comes down on one or the other. Everybody says, “Law is the reality, and love is secondary.” In other words, basically, the promises and blessings of God are conditional. Or they say, “No, love is more real than law; love is the important thing, the Law is secondary.” And therefore they believe that the promises and the blessings of God are basically unconditional…
Everybody, because they don’t understand how to resolve this tension at the heart of the covenant, tends to slide toward relativism or moralism, toward being a Saducee or being a Pharisee, toward basically feeling like “I pretty much can live the way I want to, ultimately, because God’s going to love me anyway,” or feeling guilt-ridden and condemned, because you’re never living up…
Are the blessings of God conditional or unconditional? Yes!
Yes? Why?
Because on the cross, Jesus Christ absolutely fulfilled the conditions of the law, so that God could love you absolutely unconditionally.
With his perfect life, Jesus Christ completely fulfilled the terms of the covenant, and he earned the blessing. With his sacrificial death, he completely fulfilled the curse of the covenant. And that leaves the blessing for you, and me, and anyone who lifts the empty hands of faith and asks for it.
Jesus Christ fulfilled the conditions of the covenant so that we could be received unconditionally…
If you understand this…it will lead you into paradoxical obedience. What do I mean by paradoxical obedience?
Until you grasp the covenant…until you grasp the gospel, you have a tendency to either look at the law as something you’ve got to obey or God’s gonna get you…so you either look at the blessings of God as conditional, so you’re always feeling like “I’m not living up” …you always feel kind of a sense of condemnation…or you basically believe God just loves everybody unconditionally, and you feel like the law is a good thing, but you don’t take it all that seriously.
But when you understand that Jesus Christ fulfilled the conditions at radical, infinite cost to himself, so that we could be loved unconditionally…now, when I look at the law of God, first of all, the law of God is the conditions of the covenant, and I say, “I’ve got to take those things seriously…really seriously…because Jesus died to fulfill this. This is important!”
So I, with all my might, I try to obey. With every fibre of my being I try to obey the will and law of God, and the terms of the covenant. But, when I fail, and I will fail, and I do fail, I know there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
My obedience is a way of saying “Thank you!” to God, and it is a way of becoming like God, but it is not a way of earning my way in to God.
If you understand the gospel, there is this fascinating balance in your attitude toward the law. You resist sin like crazy, and you never have a sense of condemnation and despair when you fall into it.
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Modern spirituality gives you a wispy god, who’s kind of anything you want him to be. Covenant theology gives you a crunchy God: a God that’s real, a God that bites back.
C.S. Lewis puts it like this:
“An impersonal god? Well and good. A subjective god of beauty, truth, and goodness, inside our own heads? Better still. A formless life-force, surging through everyone, a vast power which we can all tap? Best of all! But a living God? Pulling at the other end of the cord? Approaching at infinite speed? The hunter? The covenant Lord? The husband? That is quite another matter! There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion suddenly draw back. Supposing you really find him? We never meant it to come to that! Worse still, supposing he found you! If there is a god you are, in a sense, alone with him. You cannot put him off with speculations about your neighbour’s hypocrisy, or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count when the anesthetic fog we call the real world fades away, and the divine presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?”