Covenant Confusion

I was preparing to teach from the Older Testament when I was shaken by what I was reading in the text.

I’ve mainly been teaching from the Gospels for the last few years, and I was experiencing what I can only describe as “covenant shock.”

The Old Covenant often sounds like: “Obey me and I will bless you.”

The New Covenant sounds like a relationship, not a transaction.

There is an important distinction here. The Older Testament is full of grace, mercy, and God’s steadfast love. Israel didn’t earn the Exodus—God delivered them before giving them the law.

But once Israel is living under the covenant, there is a very clear pattern:

Obedience brings blessing. Disobedience brings consequences.

The promise in the Old Testament was largely about entering and possessing the promised land in the here and now.

The promise in the New Testament is ultimately about the Kingdom of God arriving in its fullness when Jesus returns and all things are made new.

The promise in the Old Covenant was, in effect, “Obey me and things will go well with you.”

Jesus, on the other hand, promises suffering as we follow him.

There will certainly be blessings.

There will be joy.

There will be answered prayer and unexpected grace.

But those blessings aren’t a divine payment for proper behavior.

Jesus doesn’t promise us a life without suffering. He tells us to take up our cross.

That’s where I think we get ourselves into trouble.

Christians keep trying to apply the Old Covenant in New Covenant times.

We think that if we just do the right things, believe the right things, vote the right way, pray the right prayers, give the right amount, claim the right promises, or discover the right spiritual technique, God will bless us.

Thus the endless river of books, teachings, conferences, programs—and even denominations—dedicated to getting what we want from God by applying the proper techniques.

Do this.

Believe this.

Claim this promise.

Speak these words.

Give this much.

Pray this way.

And God will give you what you want.

Most of it is aimed at avoiding suffering and gaining prosperity, and very little of it has anything to do with the actual teachings of Jesus.

We’ve turned the relationship into a transaction.

And when we do that, we aren’t really worshiping God anymore.

We’re trying to use God.

That’s idolatry.

And at its most extreme, it becomes a kind of Christianized magical thinking—the belief that possessing the right knowledge or applying the right spiritual formula gives us power over the outcome.

Expect God to make you healthy, wealthy, and wise?

That’s not the God of the New Covenant.

Turn the nation “back to Jesus” and the nation will prosper?

Are you electing Moses?

Wrong covenant.

Again.

The New Covenant says something very different:

“I have loved you, forgiven you, and made you my own. Now learn to live as my beloved.”

That’s the transition from transaction to relationship.

And perhaps one of the most beautiful expressions of that relationship is Jesus’ words in John 15:
“I have called you friends.”

Not servants trying desperately to earn a paycheck from heaven.

Friends.

And that changes everything.

Because under the New Covenant, God’s love for us isn’t measured by our circumstances.

You can be sick and still be beloved.

You can be poor and still be beloved.

You can fail and still be beloved.

You can grieve and still be beloved.

You can walk through the wilderness and still be beloved.

You can even die and still be beloved.

Knowing that God is well pleased with you under the New Covenant requires faith, because his joy in you may not be reflected in your circumstances.

But his joy in you is real nonetheless.

And perhaps that is the hardest thing for those of us raised on transactional religion to believe:

God doesn’t love you because everything is going well.

Everything doesn’t have to go well for God to love you.

You are already loved.

Now learn to live as his beloved.