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Covenants and Death: Another Way to Describe the Atonement

I love the Atonement. 

I love studying it, meditating on it, listening to sermons about it, hearing analogies describing it, watching movies that remind me of it, rejoicing in it in song…the story of what God in Christ has done to rescue the human race is the most beautiful story I have ever heard.

The Atonement is also a great mystery. 

I don’t understand exactly how Jesus’s death forgives my sins and makes relationship with God possible. I believe it. I experience it personally and am thankful for it, but I can’t say I have it all figured out. 

 

Over the course of my life I’ve heard a lot of attempts to explain why Jesus had to die and I think many of these are helpful, but it’s important to remember that most of these explanations take the form of metaphors and every metaphor breaks down somewhere. A common legal metaphor is the idea that Jesus “takes our punishment” on himself or that he “pays our debt” on the cross (Penal Substitutionary Atonement). Generally speaking, I agree with this explanation, but it is quite easy to misunderstand the context of this metaphor in a way that makes God seem unloving, unjust, or both. It’s also not even the main way that the New Testament talks about the death of Jesus. Other so called “atonement theories” that have biblical support include the ransom theory of atonement and Christus Victor.

I’ve actually been quite surprised at how often people limit their understanding of the Gospel to just one explanation of the Atonement and I’ve been even more surprised at how rarely certain theories are presented. Today I’m feeling compelled to write about one specific explanation of the death of Jesus, simply because it seems to me to have been so neglected even by many scholars.

So here’s how this story goes:

God really loves people and he wants to be in relationship with us. Relationships require commitment and the deeper the relationship the deeper the commitment. Throughout the Bible we see God seeking to establish intimate relationships with humanity and the main way he does this is through covenants. 

We don’t have many covenants in our culture so people sometimes just equate covenants with legal contracts, but that’s not quite accurate. For example, contracts exist between parties who don’t fully trust each other so that each is legally protected if the other breaks their word. Covenants, on the other hand, involve people who DO trust each other making special promises and commitments to one another so as to strengthen and deepen their relationship. In a covenant, the parties make promises which they vow to keep regardless of the actions of the other party. 

In western culture, the only covenant that is still common is marriage (although our society tends to treat marriage more like a contract as well). In a healthy marriage, two people commit to one another and promise to love each other unconditionally. That unconditional commitment part is what makes it a covenant. A pre-nup, on the other hand, is an example of a contract.

Both contracts and covenants are legally binding agreements but they get their power from different sources. A contract is a set of conditions and gets its strength from the law and the consequences of failing to meet the conditions. A covenant is based on promises and gets its strength from the character and integrity of the ones making the promises. While a contract is in-force as long as both parties keep up their respective sides of the bargain, if one party fails to keep their commitment, the contract is broken and the other party is released from their responsibility. That’s not the case with a covenant. A covenant can and often does involve conditions and consequences, but these take the form of promises and the bottom line is that one party failing to hold up their end of a covenant does not release the other party from keeping the promises they made.

In ancient times, covenants were usually established by the ritual of sacrifice. Probably this was because 1) the action of eating together was a powerful way to for the parties to express their mutual trust and acceptance, 2) they were invoking their God or gods to witness and bless the covenant, and/or 3) the slaughtered animal and shed blood was meant to serve as a reminder and warning of the consequences of breaking the covenant. As the parties participated in the sacrifice ritual and witnessed the slaughtering of the animals, they were essentially saying, “May this also be done to me, if I fail to keep the covenant.” (Incidentally, a similar formula is used by many people throughout the Old Testament when making oaths). This is likely the cultural context for the covenant ceremonies we read about in the Old Testament. 

In Genesis 15, God has Abraham kill some animals and God himself (represented by a flaming torch and smoking firepot) passes between them, establishing the unconditional Abrahamic Covenant. In Exodus 24, Moses presides over the ritual that establishes the covenant between God and the nation of Israel. Moses kills several bulls and sprinkles their blood on both the people of Israel and the altar (which represents God) saying, “This is the blood of the covenant.” This ritual makes more sense when we look at it from the perspective of the culture’s covenant-making practices described above. In essence, both God and the people are swearing to be faithful to the terms of the covenant on pain of death. The leaders of Israel then ascend the mountain and share a meal with God (Ex 24:11) and that’s how the covenant with Israel is established. 

So imagine a modern wedding where, as the bride and groom say their vows, the pastor slaughters a goat, pours its blood on them and leads everyone present in the chant “May you die like this goat if you ever break these vows.” The goat is then prepared and served at the reception and everyone understands that by eating it, they are participating in the covenant they have just witnessed and will hold the couple accountable to their vows. It might seem less romantic, but it would certainly be memorable. 

That’s essentially what is going on in Exodus 24. God and the people of Israel are getting married, making their vows to one another, and formalizing their commitment with a sacrifice and a shared meal. The Israelites vow to keep all of God’s commandments and God vows to bless them when they obey. 

But the tricky thing is that God’s vows include this:
“You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child. If you do mistreat them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry, and my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword.” (Ex 22:22-24)

In fact, God makes many vows to Israel that if they refuse to follow his commandments, he will punish them severely (e.g. Leviticus 26 & Deuteronomy 28). Keep in mind that these are not simply contractual terms established by a legal code, these are covenant promises made by a perfect God who cannot lie or change his mind. Sure, God could have chosen not to make these promises, but then how would we believe he truly cared about the rights of widows, orphans, the poor, foreigners, slaves, etc.? God’s covenants reflect his values which include his love for all nations, justice for the weak and the oppressed, and moral purity.

So with the establishment of this covenant, God has made himself legally obligated to punish Israel for their sins and he cannot do otherwise as long as this covenant is in effect. To not punish Israel’s wickedness (e.g. for oppressing widows and orphans) would be to break his promises. God would not be good if he broke his promises to widows and orphans. 

But these promises actually put God in a pretty tricky position. He made unconditional promises to Abraham that he would bless his descendants and that all the nations of the world would be blessed through him. But then he also promised Israel that he would not leave their sins unpunished. Through his covenant promises, God bound himself to the people of Israel, but they broke their side of the covenant in every way imaginable. So the question is: how can God do anything but punish them? Some might suggest this is as easy as God just choosing to forgive instead of punish, but this would require breaking his covenant promises. One thing that God will never do is break a covenant promise. It’s against his nature. 

Somehow, God has to get himself and Israel out of this covenant so the plan to bless all nations can get back on track. But this can’t happen as long as the covenant parties are alive. Also, finding some legal technicality to get out of his promises isn’t really consistent with God’s character either, so if he’s going to bring an end to the covenant, it needs to be done right. The covenant with Israel needs to be brought to ultimate fulfillment and accomplish its true purpose. 

Jesus’s perfect life and sacrificial death on the cross is the brilliant solution to this tricky covenant problem. God, in Christ, becomes an Israelite and perfectly keeps the covenant in a way no other Israelite ever has. He perfectly fulfills the Law and satisfies its every demand. Then, as the perfect Israelite, Jesus is able to legally die on behalf of his people, which frees them from the Old Covenant and its corresponding punishments. Simultaneously, God in Christ dies, thereby freeing himself from the Old Covenant and his corresponding obligation to punish sins. A covenant no longer applies if both parties are dead. 

Paul explains this in Romans 7 using the analogy of a marriage covenant:

“Don’t you understand that the legal part of the covenant is only binding for someone as long as they’re alive? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies, she is released from her marriage covenant. She would be committing adultery if she went to live with someone else while her husband was still alive, but if her husband dies, she is free from her marriage covenant and it’s not committing adultery if she marries someone else. Likewise, you too have died to the Old Covenant Law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead.” [Romans 7:1-4 Dan Coombs paraphrase]

Paul points out that just as a marriage covenant ends with the death of the spouse, the covenant with Israel can end if God and/or Israel die.

But God also promised to establish a NEW covenant with Israel…and I’m sure you realize by now what establishing a covenant requires. The author of Hebrews talks about both the ending of the Old Covenant and the establishing of the New Covenant using a second analogy:

“Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that frees them from the violations committed (and penalties promised) under the first covenant. For where a will (an inheritance covenant) is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For an inheritance covenant only takes effect upon the person’s death, since it is not in-force as long as the one who made it is alive. Remember how Moses established the first covenant with blood? It’s like that. [Hebrews 9:15-22 Dan Coombs paraphrase]

Marriage covenants (from a biblical perspective) can only be ended by death. Wills (i.e. inheritance covenants) only go into effect after a death. In the same way, ending the Old Covenant and establishing a New Covenant required either the death of Israel or the death of God or both. In Jesus, the Old Covenant is fulfilled (Matt 5:17). In Jesus, the people of God die to the Old Covenant (Col 2:9-13, Gal 2:19,20). In Jesus, God abolishes the Old Covenant so he can establish the New Covenant (Hebrews 10:9).

When Moses inaugurated the covenant with Israel, he took the blood of a sacrifice, held it up and said “This is the blood of the covenant.” When Jesus inaugurated the New Covenant, he took a cup representing his own blood, held it up, and said, “This is the blood of the New Covenant.” His death freed his people from the curses of the Old Covenant and inaugurated a new era where the blessings of God could spread to the whole world. Those who join with Jesus in this new “marriage” also share in his death and get to share in all the blessings of this New Covenant (Eph 1:1-14, I Peter 1:3-5). 

This is one way to understand the atonement. 

I realize this explanation might not resonate on a deep emotional level especially since it is so tied to foreign cultural practices, unfamiliar rituals, and non-intuitive legal assumptions, but think about what this says about the character of God. Here we see a God who desires so much to give good gifts to his creation that he vows, on pain of death, to bless us. When people are wicked and perpetrate injustice in his good world he promises to right the wrongs, and yet he would rather die himself than carry out the punishment. Not only this, but we see a God willing to speak to people in ways they can understand even if it means using bizarre and primitive rituals. We see a God who is relational and longs to be in a marriage-like covenant with us. We see a God who goes to ridiculous lengths, beyond anything any of us could ever comprehend, to always keep his vows. This is covenant faithfulness.

So when God says that he will one day right all wrongs, we can trust that he will. When he promises that even the wickedness and pain plaguing the world will be redeemed and turned into the greatest joy, we can take him at his word. And when we see the lengths Jesus went to to free us from the consequences of our rebellion, it should cause us to pause and ponder anew this beautiful mystery of the Atonement.