‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’ (Luke 22:20).
To understand how God makes and keeps his promises we must understand what a covenant is. In human phrasing a covenant is an agreement between 2 people or a group of people.
It is a legally binding contract spelling out duties and responsibilities of all parties involved in the agreement.
Just as Businessmen put in place all sorts of contracts to guide their affairs and to ensure integrity of purpose, over the years God has instituted certain covenants with His children containing conditional or unconditional agreements and promises.
In making a conditional covenant, God promises a blessing for obedience to certain commandments. Conditional covenants means that for God to fulfill his part, children of God must fulfill their part first.
It reveals God as a businessman. Unconditional covenants of God on the other hand are those that God fulfills freely as he exercises his divine power over the affairs of men.
Let us have a look at the instances of conditional and unconditional covenants instituted by God in the Bible.
The people of Israel needed to keep certain conditions of a covenant for them to abide in the promise land ( Isa. 5:1-7). Unfortunately, they continually broke the covenant and were eventually evicted from the land.
Unconditional covenants however reveal the Fatherhood of God: for example, the general behavior of a child or his performance in school (good or bad) does not in any way affect the parents’ commitment to pay his fees through school.
God’s covenant with Abraham is unconditional and serves as the foundation of all other covenants (see Genesis 12:1-3).
Children of God are free to enter a personal covenant or corporate covenant with God on their heart desires (healing, prosperity or long-life) if they keep with associated conditions in the Bible. (See Genesis 28:20-22)
However, as a Father, God longs to have a relationship with His children, through covenants, to call fallen humanity to himself and to reveal his righteousness.
The overall purpose of God’s covenant, whether conditional or unconditional, is God seeking a committed and steadfast relationship with people and revealing his faithful love.
But as a businessman he understands that the performance of certain aspects of His covenants must be contractual.
His Fatherhood and Business nature often converge in his dealing with His children: even when the people of God broke the covenant and sinned against God, he remained steadfast, faithful, and true even though they did not escape His punishment within a given covenant.
The death of Jesus is the new and ultimate covenant establishing a new relationship between God and humans mediated by Jesus upon the sincere belief that one accepts Him as Lord and savior.
No businessman goes into any deal prepared to suffer a loss but God as a devoted Father so love the world that He, predetermined, in an ultimate covenant of grace to lose his Son that he may gain the most precious bargain, the lost souls of men (John 3:16).
The single condition to enjoy the ultimate covenant of Fatherhood from which all divine transaction of blessings flows is free and open to all: it is to belief and accept Jesus into your life as your Lord and Savior. Will you do that today?
If you have done that but have fallen out of grace will you retrace your step back to Jesus today? The terms and conditions are free, and He is ever willing to accept you back to Himself.
Reading
Genesis 17: 1-20
