A covenant is a binding promise. One example is the covenant of marriage, where both husband and wife promise to be faithful to each other until death. If one party fails to keep the agreement, the relationship breaks down, and there are serious consequences. If the covenant is kept by both parties, the relationship flourishes.
The Bible describes several covenants between God and humans, following a similar pattern to the Suzerain/Vassal covenants (conditional) or Royal Grant covenants (unconditional) of the ancient world. When God makes a covenant, the promises and requirements are non-negotiable. Human beings can choose either to keep the requirements of the covenant or break them. The story of the Bible is that although God has always kept His promises, human beings have failed to respond in love and obedience – despising His promised blessing and bringing down God’s anger upon themselves.
The first covenant we find in the Bible is in Genesis 1-2, where God establishes His relationship with Adam, the first human. God makes commitments to Adam and requires commitments in return. He tells Adam that he is to ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it’ (Genesis 1:28) and He tells him to care for the earth. In return, God promises that He will provide food for him (Genesis 1:29-30). In Genesis 2:16-17 God tells Adam what he must do to be in relationship with Him and what the consequence will be if he does not: ‘And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.”’ The covenant is: if Adam obeys God he will receive life (Genesis 2:9) and be allowed to dwell in God’s presence. If he disobeys God, the consequence is death and separation from Him.
This covenant has not changed, but in the rest of the Bible there are other covenants that God makes with His people, which expand upon or even replace previous ones. There are covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David, which set the tone for God’s relationship with His people throughout the Old Testament. However, these covenants all point forward to a greater covenant – the ‘New Covenant’, which is established by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Christ fulfilled all the covenant requirements of the Old Testament by being completely obedient to them. By doing so He brought their promises to fulfilment so that we could have a restored relationship with God (Hebrews 7-10). We enter and remain in this New Covenant relationship with God only by His grace and not by our own ability to keep His law (Ephesians 2:1-13).