THE COVENANTS
THE COVENANTS: THE DUAL DYNAMIC IN THE BLESSING OF SALVATION is a study Bible.
God makes covenants with people who want His blessing of salvation. THE COVENANTS: THE DUAL DYNAMIC IN THE BLESSING OF SALVATION is a study Bible containing the Old Testament books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, passages from Second Chronicles, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and the complete New Testament.
Through the use of color highlights layered onto the Bible passages, this study Bible helps us to see these covenants and see how God interacts with people regarding the subject of salvation and the privilege of going to Heaven when we die. The themes and obligations of God’s covenants do not change. They are consistent from the Old Testament through the New Testament, and they still are in effect today.
This study tracks the covenant that God makes with Abraham and the covenant that God makes with the children of Israel through their leader Moses. God’s covenants with Abraham and Moses present a two-part dynamic. They are two parts of one truth, and they interact with each other. In the first part of this dynamic. God makes a promise to bless a group of people—to bless the descendants of Abraham’s son Isaac. God’s promise to bless is unconditional, and God will fulfill this promise no matter what happens. In this study, I refer to this unconditional promise to bless Isaac’s descendants as the “group covenant.”
The second part of the dynamic is the covenant that God makes with specific individuals who are a part of this “group”—individual people who are Isaac’s descendants. In this covenant, God presents specific terms and obligations that the individuals must keep if they want to remain a part of the blessed group. The passages describing this covenant show that individuals, through their thoughts and behavior, can break this covenant with God and lose the privilege of being in the blessed group. In this study, I refer to God’s covenant with individuals as the “individual covenant.”
The Bible describes a group covenant that is unconditional and an individual covenant contingent upon the individual’s thoughts and behavior. These two covenants interrelate and create the structure of the blessing of salvation.
The Old Testament tells the sad story of how the individuals, through their thoughts and behavior, break the individual covenant. The Old Testament also describes the sad consequences that come to the individuals because of their breaking the covenant. The group covenant, however, stays in tack, for the group covenant is based upon God’s unconditional promise to bless, and this promise cannot be broken. It is only the individual covenant that becomes broken.
But the Old Testament also declares that God will make a new covenant with this group of blessed people. This is a new “individual covenant.” There is no need for a new group covenant, for the group covenant is not broken. The only covenant that is broken is the individual covenant.
The New Testament shows us that the “new individual covenant” is not much different from the “old individual covenant.” The new individual covenant still contains the same or similar terms and obligations that individuals must keep if they want to remain a part of the blessed group and go to Heaven when they die.
On the subject of salvation, the new individual covenant differs from the old in only two basic ways: 1) the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ replaces the blood sacrifice of animals, and 2) the Holy Spirit comes to live within individuals and provides individuals with the grace and strength to obey the terms and obligations of the individual covenant. The terms and obligations though remain the same as in the old individual covenant. What changes is the power to fulfill the terms. Since the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have access to the grace and strength of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit can help us to obey and fulfill the individual covenant.
