A Covenant with God

Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come.” (Genesis 17:9)

One of the things I love about Emanuel Swedenborg’s view of the Bible is that it does several wonderful things at once: It harmonizes the Old and New Testaments so that instead of saying different things, they converge on the same meaning and message. It shows us how every story in the Bible is also a story about the Lord Jesus’ inner life—what he was doing inwardly while he was here on earth. And it also shows how the very same stories that are about the Lord’s life are also about our own inner life, so that the Lord’s life becomes the pattern for ours.

The story of God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17:1–10 and the story of Jesus calling his first disciples in Mark 1:14–20 (which I invite you to read using the links) are a particularly good example of how Swedenborg’s view of the Bible harmonizes the Old and New Testaments. If you look at them outwardly, they seem to be about two entirely different things. One is about God making a covenant of circumcision with Abram, and changing his name to Abraham. The other is about the Lord Jesus beginning to preach, saying, “The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news,” and also about him calling his first disciples.

These stories seem to be about two entirely different things. But if we look deeper, through the lens of spiritual understanding that Swedenborg offers, both stories are really about the same thing. They are about our relationship with God, and what we must do to have a good relationship with God. They are also about our relationships with one another, which depend on our relationship with God.

What is a “covenant”?

To see this more clearly, let’s look at the meaning of the word “covenant.” A covenant is an agreement. In modern business terms, we would call it a “contract.”

A business contract is a signed agreement between two parties. One party agrees to do something, and the other party agrees to do something in return. Usually, one party pays the other money to have the other provide products or services that the first party wants. For example, when we get a job, we may sign a contract with our employer. The employer offers to pay us a certain amount of money in return for the particular work that we will do for the employer.

A contract is a binding relationship between two people, or between a person and an organization, or between two organizations. And even though a contract is words on paper, and is usually about money, work, and products, it is really about a relationship between the two parties who sign the contract.

When we sign a contract or form a relationship with someone, there are criteria that must be met for that contract or relationship to take place. There are some people and organizations that we would sign a contract with, and others that we wouldn’t. The same is true of friendships. Whether or not we are aware of it, we have criteria that we use to evaluate people to decide whether we think this friendship will work out.

What makes a relationship work?

One of the criteria is that there must be common interests. If we have nothing in common, what is there to bring us together? If we like to play golf and they don’t, or if they’re in real estate and we aren’t, these things provide no common interest to draw us together. Why would we sign a business contract with someone if there were no common interest? As an example of a common interest, we may want to hire someone to build a house, and a contractor may want to build the house for us in return for the money we are offering. In this case, there is a common interest in building. We form relationships and sign contracts with people who have interests in common with us.

We also generally sign contracts and make relationships with people who aren’t antagonistic to us. If we know that someone is going to fight against us, it is unlikely that we will form a relationship with that person. Of course, we might do so anyway for some greater purpose. But usually we don’t form relationships with people that we know are hostile toward us. We form relationships and sign contracts with people who will work with us on a reasonable and friendly basis.

And finally, we sign contracts with people or institutions that we think we can trust—that we believe will fulfill their side of the deal. If one side or the other does not fulfill the contract, this breaks both the contract and the trust, and it is very unlikely that another contract will be forthcoming. It is the same with relationships. If we form a friendship with someone and build up a certain amount of trust, and then one of us violates that trust, it will be very difficult to rebuild that relationship. Trust is an essential part of any relationship.

To sum up: We form relationships with people who have common interests. We form relationships with people who aren’t antagonistic to us—or to put it in a positive way, with people who have some level of care and thoughtfulness for us. And we form relationships with people whom we feel we can trust to hold up their side of the relationship.

When a covenant relationship is fulfilled, everyone wins. Everyone is richer in one way or another. In business contracts, the ones paying the money get valuable goods or services that they want. The ones providing the goods or services get paid money to live on. Ideally, they also get to do satisfying and meaningful work. Everyone gains from a contract that is fulfilled. It is the same with a relationship: everyone involved gains from the relationship. Everyone becomes spiritually and emotionally, if not financially, richer from it.

Our relationship with God

Now we can see how these two Bible stories are really talking about the same thing. They are both about covenant: about God’s relationship with us, and our relationship with God.

In the story in Genesis 17, God’s side of the covenant is a promise to give Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan. Abraham’s side is that all the males in his clan, and their descendants, will be circumcised. This seems like an odd arrangement. Yet the underlying meaning of their agreeing to be circumcised was a willingness to turn their lives over to God and follow God’s commandments. In other places the Old Testament, God says that Abraham and his clan must follow God’s laws as part of the covenant. Spiritually speaking, it means the same thing.

In the story in Mark 1, the Lord is also making a covenant with the disciples. “Disciple” means “learner” or “student.” In the story, Jesus calls certain people to be his disciples, and says, in essence, “I will be your master and friend; in return, you must leave your former occupations and follow me.” He says to Andrew and Peter, to James and John: “Leave your fishing and your nets, follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” If they follow him, he will give them a new task and a new mission in life. That is a relationship.

If we look at it this way, these two stories from the Old and New Testaments are about one and the same thing. They are about God’s relationship with us: what God will do for us, and what we must do for God in return. God is promising us the land of Canaan, and also promising us a relationship with God. These two are the same! Spiritually speaking, Canaan means heaven—and heaven is relationship. It is a loving relationship with God, and a loving relationship with other angels in the heavenly community. Heaven is all about community and relationship, both with one another and with God.

God gives us this promise. God tells us: If you will follow me (that’s our side of the covenant), I will give you peace and joy in relationship and community. I will give you a fulfilling and happy life in friendship with others. I will also give you a sense of mission in life. You will know why you are here. You will know what you love to do. And you will be able to do it, and fulfill your deepest desires in the process.

The meaning of circumcision

God requires something of us in this covenantal relationship. It is expressed in the Old Testament story by circumcision. In the New Testament story, it is expressed in the words that Jesus preached: “Repent, and believe the good news.”

Circumcision was considered by the ancient Hebrews to be a ritual of cleansing. In commanding circumcision, God was commanding them to cleanse themselves. God gave it as a physical ritual to represent the spiritual cleansing that we must do in our lives. Spiritually, we must cleanse ourselves by putting away the wrong that is in us. To use the New Testament term, we must repent.

Circumcision is a physical ritual that symbolizes our repentance: our willingness to give up our old bad habits and bad feelings, our wrong ways of thinking, and our faulty self-justifications. We must give up these unclean parts of ourselves, just as in circumcision males gave up a part of their bodies that was considered ritually unclean in some ancient cultures. Circumcision in the Old Testament is expressed by repentance in the New Testament. The two mean the same thing.

What God gives, and requires

Now let’s look at God’s covenant with us.

Consider the money in a contract. God generally doesn’t give us money—at least, not directly. But God does give us spiritual currency. In Bible times, gold was the most valuable currency, and gold is a symbol of love. God pays us in love: God’s love and love for one another. This is the promise God gives us: God will give us love, and along with it, God will give us a new understanding of the issues we are struggling with. Spiritually, silver, which was another common currency in Bible times, represents truth and understanding.

But God requires something of us if we are to receive this spiritual currency. God requires that we use this love and understanding to love and serve one another. And to do this, we must also use the love and understanding that God gives us to root out everything that blocks us from treating others well and serving them out of love. In other words, we must repent and be spiritually “circumcised.” This is our part in the covenant that God wants to make with us.

When we make this covenant with God, we not only build our relationship with God, but we also improve our relationships with one another. Only when we follow God’s way of love can we have truly loving and healthy relationships with one another.

God promises this not only to “Abraham”—to each one of us individually—but to all of Abraham’s “descendants.” Who are our spiritual descendants? We can think of them as all the people we benefit when we accept God’s love and commit ourselves the way of truth, justice, and service. We then radiate God’s love and truth out from the center within us. There is tremendous fruitfulness and outreach when we touch others with the love and understanding that God has given us! This is an expanding covenant that extends to all the people we are in contact with, now and in the future. God says to Abraham that it will be an “everlasting covenant.”

The inner relationship

As we have been learning in this series about the inner life of Jesus, every story in the Bible is not only about our relationships with God and one another; it is also about the relationships within the Lord. For some insight into this, here is what Swedenborg says in Secrets of Heaven #1990.3:

The Infinite Reality, which is Jehovah, never could have been revealed to humankind except through a human nature—that is, except through the Lord. As a result, it never was revealed to anyone but the Lord alone. The Divine sought a way to be present with humankind, and to connect with us, even though we had completely alienated ourselves from it, as we surrendered to our vile cravings and so to concerns centered purely on the body and the world. For this purpose, then, the Divine put on human nature itself in a tangible way by being born, so that the Infinite Divine would be able to form a connection with humankind despite our distance from it.

That’s quite a mind-bending read, isn’t it! What is Swedenborg talking about?

Looking at ourselves for a moment, we know that we have both an outer self and an inner self. We have an outer self that loves and desires things that are on a lower level: we enjoy the pleasures of this world; we like people to praise us; we like to have fun. All of these outward things are part of us—and they will lead us astray if we focus on them too much. If we like eating too much, it can lead us astray. If we like friends too much, and are indiscriminate about it, this can also lead us astray.

Yet if we look deeper, we also have an inner self. And in our inner self we have a conscience that guides us to better and higher ways of living.

The Lord Jesus had these two sides also. He had an outer self: he had a human mother, who gave him all the weaknesses that we inherit from our parents. He also had an inner self: he had no human father, but a divine Father. He had the Divine Being itself within him as his own inner nature.

And just as we go back and forth between our higher and lower natures, sometimes following the lower way and sometimes the higher way, Jesus also went back and forth between his two natures, sometimes being more conscious of his lower nature, and sometimes being more conscious of his higher nature—though unlike us, Jesus always took the higher path.

Yet his goal was to completely unite the human and divine natures within him. His goal was to have the Divine fill him from top to bottom—all the way from his innermost soul to his outermost self. He struggled to make a “covenant” between his inner self and his outer self. And our belief is that by the end of his life, he had fully united his human side with his divine side.

Our relationship with God, practically speaking

That’s still a little theoretical. What does it mean for us? And what about the teaching that unless this had happened, we could not possibly have a relationship with God?

Let’s look at it from our common experience. How do we relate to one another? Most of us are not skilled at ESP. We have to see and talk to people to have a relationship with them. In other words, we relate to each other through our bodies. We approach each other and get to know each other through the things we physically say and do. Even our contact through computers and the Internet is just a technological extension of this reality. Without physical brains and bodies, we couldn’t even use a phone or a computer.

It’s the same in our relationship with God. It’s very hard to relate to a theological concept or to a vast and undefined infinite being. But we can relate to a human being.

God came to us as Jesus precisely so that we could relate to God as a human being. God became human just like us, and filled that humanity fully with God’s own divine self. Because God did this, we can now have a relationship with God just as we can have a relationship with our friends.

Our friendship with God

God wants to be our friend. And God has come to us personally, and both taught us and shown us the things we must do if we want to be God’s friend.

God is still present with us today. God is still available to us as the divine human being, Jesus Christ. God is present with us as a person we can relate to and have a friendship with, and yet know that the one we are having a relationship with is none other than our all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful Creator. Through this human presence of God, we can know who God is, know what God is like, and know how we must arrange our own life so that we can have a true friendship with God.

This is what our covenant with God is all about. It is about learning of the Lord Jesus and his ways, setting aside everything within us that conflicts with those divine ways, and becoming the Lord’s friend by following the path that Jesus has shown us.

That path is the path of loving God, loving one another, and serving our fellow human beings with thoughtfulness and love.

(Note: This post is a revised version of a talk originally delivered on March 14, 2004. For the next article in this series, please see: “Communing with God.” To start at the beginning of the series, please go to the article, “What Child Is This?”)

For further reading:

• The Divine Birth
• The Logic of Love: Why God became Jesus
• What Does it Mean that Jesus was “Glorified”?
• How did the Incarnation Change God’s Relationship with Us?
• How does Jesus Appear to Us? Can We See God Face to Face?