Our Relationship with God
Covenant Theology 101 (#3)
Covenant Breakers and the Covenant Keeper.
A parishioner once introduced me to a friend saying, “This is my pastor—he’s like my dad.” I laughed and said, “That’s kind of you, but I already have kids of my own!”
Relationships differ. I love my wife as a husband, my children as a father, and my congregation as a shepherd—but not all in the same way. Each relationship has its own shape and structure, its own kind of love and commitment. What exists between my wife and me isn’t what exists between my children and me, nor between my parishioners and me.
Having seen who our covenant God is in our last post, we now turn to what that means for us personally: what kind of relationship does this God invite us into?
It’s important for us to speak clearly about our “relationship” with God. What kind of relationship is it? Scripture tells us it’s unlike any other; it’s not casual—it’s covenantal. It’s a relationship that God himself establishes, defines, and secures in love.
The Bible teaches that covenant is the way the infinite Creator relates to us, his finite creatures. Our relationship with God is covenantal, as the Westminster Confession says:
“the distance between God and the creature is so great…they could never have any fruition of Him…but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part which He has been pleased to express by way of covenant” (7.1).
Because God is God and we are his creatures, we owe him obedience and worship. Yet we can only enjoy him as our ultimate blessedness because he has come down to us in covenant love.
A covenant is the formal way God enters into relationship with us. Psalm 25:14 describes it: “The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant.” “Friendship” (sod) means intimate companionship. Our relationship with God is deeply personal. Covenant theology is about this reciprocal relationship—God communicates himself and his gifts to us; we respond in love to him. It’s knowing and being known by God (Gal. 4:9). As Jesus’ said, “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father” (John 10:14).
Knowing and being known describes communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Continuing Covenant Theology 101 let’s explore the essence of our relationship with God.
The Archetypal Relationship Between Father and Son
Before understanding our relationship with God, we must realize there’s another—a higher one—between the Father and the Son (and, Scripture adds, the Holy Spirit). This is the archetype or blueprint of all divine-human communion.
Before a house is built, an architect draws blueprints. The architect’s idea gets put onto paper. Likewise, before we exist, the perfect fellowship is that which exists eternally between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s the pattern: “as the Fatherknows me and I know the Father.”
The Father knows and loves the Son; the Son knows and loves the Father. Ancient theologians called this perichoresis—the intimate, mutual indwelling of the persons in one another. They are distinct yet each one’s constant, perfect love and communion pervades one another.
The very word Father speaks of love—eternal and perfect. The Father has and will always love his Son. The Son loves the Father. The Father loves his Son perfectly; and vice versa. It’s so holy, we can scarcely imagine it, since our experiences of fatherly love are often marred or lacking. Yet there is a pure archetype of love. It exists in God alone.
The Analogous Relationship Between Us and God
This archetypal relationship has relevance for us. The love that eternally flows between Father and Son becomes the pattern and source of our communion with God. “I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.”
Through Christ, we are drawn into that very fellowship. The Puritan Thomas Manton wrote, “Believers have a room in Christ’s heart as Christ in the Father’s bosom” (Works). God’s love for his eternal begotten Son is of an infinitely greater quality and quantity than I can even conceive, let alone experience as a creature. But I can experience it by analogy. As much as my infinite Father can love a finite creature like me, so I’m loved.
We see this beautifully in John 17. Jesus gave eternal life to all the Father gave him (v. 2). He explained “eternal life” as “they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (v. 3). When he prayed “for those who will believe in me through [the apostles’] word” (v. 20), he asked, “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you (perichoresis!), that they also may be in us” (v. 21). That’s covenantal relationship! This relationship(“glory”) between Father and Son (v. 22) is extended to us: “I in them and you in me…so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me” (vv. 22–23). Finally, Jesus declares, “I made known to them your name…that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (v. 26).
Covenant Breakers and the Covenant Keeper
I have all kinds of relationships—with my wife, my children, and my congregation. So do you. But none compares to this: the relationship we have with our covenant God. The love that exists between the Father and the Son has been opened to us through Jesus Christ.
Ponder that. Through covenantal grace, covenant breakers are welcomed into communion with the Covenant Keeper. This is not a cold contract but a living bond of love with the Triune God.
This is what covenant theology is all about: our relationship with God—the Covenant Keeper.