By James Wilson
Covenant
as both concept and reality has its origins in the people of the Old
Testament. The earliest recorded
covenant is between Noah and God the Father.
God promises to bless Noah and his descendants and to never again flood
the earth; Noah promises to serve God all his days. A later covenant is between Abram – later
Abraham – and God the Father. In it God
promises to bless and prosper Abram and his descendants and the patriarch
promises to serve God to the exclusion of all others. He commits to circumcision as a sign of his
belonging to Yahweh – God. The covenant
with Moses is more elaborate, spelling out ten standards of behavior that will
indicate human faithfulness to God while He gives them the promised land, Eretz
Israel, and blesses and prospers them in the land. By the time of the Mosaic Covenant other
nations and cultures were entering into such agreements, but the Hebrews were
unique in claiming their covenants were with the One God and originated with
Him.
Covenants
are agreements between two corporate parties, one of whom is clearly the senior
and stronger partner. They state rights
and responsibilities for the protection and blessing of the weaker by the
stronger and the service or obedience to be rendered by the weaker to the
stronger. Covenants differ from
contracts in that they are open ended – more like a cornucopia than a closed
container. Within the parameters of the
Covenant – the Ten Commandments in the case of the Biblical Old Covenant – both
parties are free to expand. God can do
more than He promised and the people can offer more profound service, but
neither is free to give less than originally promised.
The first American covenant – as opposed to a
charter or contract of incorporation – is the Mayflower Compact of 1620. The Pilgrims pledge to give all glory to God
and advance the Christian Faith as they establish a human government for making
such laws as would facilitate their divinely ordained purposes and the general
good of the people. In other words, the
people themselves are the senior and stronger party; they create and commit to
blessing government in order that it might serve them. Other American civil covenants – such as the
Constitution – follow this pattern.
The
point here is that most people think government the senior and stronger party
because it has the backing of armed forces and agencies. But the genius behind our Constitution and
the laws created to implement it is that the people are sovereign. We created and bless a government – but only
so long as it serves us as the stronger and senior partner to whom it owes
allegiance and submission. That is why
we specify which powers government may wield and state that any powers not specifically
granted are not its property. That is
why we have a Bill of Rights for the protection of the people and nothing for
the protection of government.
Truth
is we have never lived up to our end of the covenant with God; I refer here to
Old and New Covenants that – in Christ – apply to all peoples everywhere. The beauty of the founding of America is that
our first leaders understood and proclaimed this reality. Some periods have been better than others,
the Great Awakenings coming immediately to mind. But the sovereignty we hold over government
was a gift of the sovereign God to Whom we owe all we have. Instead of serving Him we have all too often
exercised the sovereignty we were given to enslave some and slaughter others. We have ceded power to government it was never
meant to have. We did all these things
because of what we thought emergencies – as though God failed to foresee the
westward expansion, the Great Depression, or even the War on Terror, and we had
to step in and do what He could not.
This is idolatry – worshipping ourselves and our intellect in the place
of God. And the fruit is in the bin.
Today
we have massive unemployment, fifty million Americans on food stamps in the
richest country in history, a government spying on us and threatening our right
of religious liberty, free expression of ideas, and the responsibility of
parents to seek appropriate medical aid and education for their children
without government interference. Even
our children’s diets are under supervision.
There
is a way to address this impasse in a potent way, but it will require a lot
more than some massive get-out-the-vote drive and educating the population
regarding our origins and destiny. The
next posting of this blog will begin that address.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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