LEADERSHIP LETTER ARCHIVES

A MONTHLY READING FOR ALL ARC LEADERS
August 2006

COVENANT

The essence of our relationship with God and our relationships with one another is expressed in covenant. God has established a new covenant with us in Christ, and we enter into this covenant of faith through the work of the Holy Spirit. In a similar way, we express the commitment of our lives to one another by establishing covenants.

Just as God has promised our redemption in the form of a covenant, so we too externalize our life together in the form of covenant. We look to the Holy Spirit to empower and lead us that our covenants might increasingly reflect the faithfulness of our God who keeps covenant with us.

-- ARC Common Concerns

The core nature of God is expressed in both His triune nature as Father, Son and Spirit and in His covenant making and keeping.  From the very beginning He makes covenant with Adam, Noah and Abraham.  The covenant with Abraham is of special significance because it links to the new covenant on the ground of faith.  He also makes covenant with Israel, David and of course, most profoundly, with Christ and us in the new covenant sealed by the Spirit.

This is who God is—One who commits to human beings on the basis of promises rooted in His character (steadfast love) and sacrifice.  We are regularly put in remembrance of His covenantal nature through participation in the two sacraments –Water Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. In baptism there is a faith re-enactment of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.  In the Lord’s Supper we re-enact by faith His pronouncements at the Last Supper that these elements are as His body and blood which we are to eat and drink at this covenant meal.  This covenant of faith cannot be expressed any closer—we are to eat and drink of Jesus or as Paul states we enter into a “participation (koinonia) in the blood of Christ” and a “participation (koinonia) in the body of Christ” (I Cor 10:16).

But in this profound participation in Christ we find that we are connected to “more” than Jesus—we are also participating in each other’s lives, for as Paul states in the same letter, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (I Cor. 12:12-13).  To be in covenant with Christ is to be in covenant with all the people of Christ in an expressed life together marked by love and unity.  We are called together to live a covenantal life with one another and with the Father, Son and Spirit.

Too often our experience of this kind of life is quite limited.  We are deeply afflicted in our culture by individualism and consumerism.  Covenantal relationships seem far too restrictive.  There is an instinctive recoil that occurs typically in the sinful human heart when it is challenged by covenantal commitments.  We draw back and protect ourselves from sacrifice.  But this is exactly what Jesus meant when He teaches His disciples: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Lk. 9:23-24).  We find our lives in Jesus, as we lose our lives in His covenant and mission.

Because of 2000 years of fragmentation in the body of Christ, we are faced with a challenging test of discernment and faith regarding how and with whom we are to enter into covenant.  Are we committed to everyone in the worldwide body of Christ equally?  In spirit, yes, but otherwise this is utterly impractical.  We are called to live out our lives in loving covenant with a local body of believers.  In the ARC we believe that this covenant ought to be sufficiently explicit regarding the expectations we should have of one another in our common life together.  It is insufficient to say that we are covenanted with Christ in Spirit but never give explicit expression to that kind of covenant life together.

A good example of this re-making of covenant is found in the book of Nehemiah.  Because the Israelites had thoroughly and persistently broken covenant with God over many years (490 to be exact), He had them exiled to Babylon for 70 years.  When that time was fulfilled, a contingent returned to rebuild the temple and the wall.  In Nehemiah 9 the people confess their unfaithfulness to the covenant of God and rehearse their history of divine consequences.  But they also talk to Him this way, “Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you. . . “(Neh. 9:32).  At the end of their repentance they place themselves under God, “Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites and our priests” (Neh. 9:38).  And further in the next chapter we hear this kind of covenantal talk, “The rest of the people . . . and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God . . . join with their brothers . . . and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law . . . and to do and observe all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his rules and his statutes” (Neh. 10:28-29).  For the rest of the chapter they explicitly rehearse their commitments--over 25 corporate commitments regarding their relationships together, their relationship to God’s ways, their financial commitments and their commitment to the house of God.   In Nehemiah 10:35 is the expression, “We obligate ourselves.”  Here is the great modern fear—binding obligation.  This is the spirit of the world that we must radically reject. 

God has obligated Himself to us in covenant with Christ and He calls us into the same.  Paul describes this heart of God wonderfully in Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things.”

Consequently in the ARC we encourage formal covenantal commitments, explicit written statements that obligate members rightly to Christ, His people and His mission.  We encourage formal reception of covenant members preceded by a season of teaching and dialogue that clarifies how any re-making of covenant is rooted entirely in the grace of God expressed in the cross and resurrection of Christ.  We intend no improper burdening of souls, but appeal to this unchanging Jesus who calls us to die with Him and thereby live fruitfully with Him.

--Ned Berube