Covenant Religion, Part 1: The Necessity of Covenants

How many religions will assert that their God has condescendence to enter into a covenant with them? For that matter, how many religions will even admit that they need such a thing?
The biblical understanding of redemption includes far more than “do this” and “don’t do that.” The Bible talks a lot about works, about love, about mercy, about forgiveness, about faith, and so on. However, it’s a big mistake to assume that any of those are the key to our acceptance before God. What I will seek to create in your mind is the understanding that things like justification, faith, works, redemption, sanctification, glorification, and the rest, are elements of covenants. In so saying, I hope to alleviate the conception that we should focus solely on any one of these means.
The big picture looks like this: Humans have been defiled and failed to be redeemed. And God has been loving and has not forsaken us.
But why do we need a legal pact like a covenant? Why can’t God just forgive us?
Such questions arise from a wrong perception of the spiritual world. The earth is not a classroom; it’s not a playground; and God didn’t simply place us here to see whether we would obey Him or not. We are caught right in the middle of a war between the forces of good and the forces of evil; between the powers of darkness and the powers of light; and between the realm of death and the realm of life.
The simple fact of the matter is you’re either on God’s side or you're on Satan’s side. So you see it’s not really an issue of whether your good deeds out way your bad and so on, but whether you’re fighting with God or against Him. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were pretty good people on the outside, but Jesus told them that they were of their father, the devil—and that, not just because they did evil, but because they wanted to do evil. (John 8:44)
It's a shame that Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup. He sold his very livelihood to satisfy a craving and it brought him much sorrow. (Heb. 12:17) But what of this: Adam sold the human race to Satan for the ability to know what evil was. (I plan to discuss this more later.) Foolishness has marked our existence from the very beginning. When Adam sinned, birth itself became an enlistment into Satan’s army. David even says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” (Psa. 51:5) We can say from a human perspective that Adam started a tragic cycle. “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” (Rom. 5:12)
So it’s no wonder that we are born into a world that is quite alive but ever dying. If we were on God’s side, we could expect things to be very different, but as Thomas Boston points out: “Is man’s nature wholly corrupt? Then, no wonder that the grave opens its devouring mouth for us, as soon as the womb has cast us forth; and that the cradle is turned into a coffin, to receive the corrupt lump: for we are all, in a spiritual sense, are dead-born; yea, and filthy (Psa. 14:3), noisome, rank, and stinking as a corrupt thing, as the word imports.”
Paul tells us that if we sin, we fall short of the glory of God. (Rom. 3:23) In other words, he means that we’re not good enough to be part of God’s forces. So we need reconciliation: “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” (Rom. 5:10)
Covenants are the way that God has extended His hand to some of His enemies. In the end, God’s going to win. But for us, it’s God’s love that determines the difference between destruction and redemption.