Holding Nothing Back: Our Covenant-Keeping Father

In my last post I considered that we have been given a new identity by virtue of our adoption by the world’s greatest Dad.

This new identity is granted to us by means of a new covenant that God has made with us through Jesus.

The clearest prophetic model of covenant in Scripture is that which God makes with Abram. In Abram’s culture, as nomadic shepherds roaming a land that had no central government or police, tribes would form allegiances together for safety and trade by “cutting a covenant” with one another (see Gen. 14:13 & 21:22-27 for an example). By doing so, these tribes took on a shared identity and shared resources.

Instead of living as two different tribes of herders, they cut a covenant together and became one tribe that herded flocks together. This ensured peace and safety for them both in a territory that could be dangerous and hostile. Their old identity became subsumed by their new covenant identity. When one was in trouble the other was obligated by the terms of their covenant to help since they had “become one” (the true meaning of covenant). They would share one name, share their possessions and share an obligation to lay down their life for their covenant partner. (You can see why marriage is a picture of covenant relationship—cf. Eph. 5:25—hence why the vocabulary of covenant is the vocabulary of family).

Abram was invited into a covenant with God (see Genesis 12 onwards). There was a promise of shared land that God had created (Gen. 12:2-3), a promise of protection and provision (Gen. 15:1), a sacrifice to ratify the covenant (Gen. 15:9-11), a new covenant name (Gen. 17:5), a scar in the flesh (Gen. 17:11), a curse pronounced if the covenant should be broken (Gen. 17:14) and a covenant meal (Gen. 18:1-8). These are all the classic steps to cutting a covenant (“cutting” refers to making a scar in the flesh that both parties would make as a sign of being in covenant together). Abram then receives a new name “Abr-ah-am” that reflected God’s own fatherly identity (“Father of many nations”), along with access to the provision and protection of God (his covenant partner). In return, Abraham makes all he had available to God (take a minute to figure out who gets the better deal here!).

In like manner, we have now been invited into a new covenant through Christ. There was a promise of a shared home (John 14:2), shared provision (John 14:13; 1 Tim. 6:17), protection (John 10:9-11; 1 John 5:18), a ratifying sacrifice (Eph. 5:2), a scar (Col. 2:11), a new name (Acts 15:17; Rev. 2:17), a covenant meal (Luke 22:20) and a new shared covenant identity (2 Cor. 5:17). And in this covenant identity exchange, Jesus takes on our identity so that we could take on His identity. He became sin so that we become sons.