Our Contractual Agreement With God

  A contract is an agreement with specific terms between two or more persons or entities in which there is a promise to do something in return for a valuable benefit known as consideration (Law.com). God has always defined His relationship with man through contracts, or covenants.

Throughout time, God has always desire a relationship with man. In Ezekiel 11.19-20, God said, “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” A fundamental relationship is stated here: I will be your God; you will be my people.

This is the contract in which God makes to man. He makes an offer to be our God, and He will accept us as His people. It is a promise in which God has made countless times in the Old Testament: “And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Leviticus 26.12). Repeatedly, God says, “I am the Lord your God.” As surely He says, “I am your God,” we must act on the condition set before us that we “shall be holy” (Leviticus 19.2).

Our willingness to accept His contract must include faith, repentance, confession, and baptism. God’s covenant involves a saving faith that is more than just believing; it involves a commitment to what we believe (James 2.14, 19). To go back on the commitment of our faith is a most serious thing (2 Peter 2.20-22). Repent is a commitment to change. “Performing deeds in keeping with their repentance” is to maintain the commitment in practice. Apologies are useless if they are not backed up by a commitment to change (Matthew 3.7-8). Honest confession involves a commitment to be true to Christ (1 Timothy 6.12-14). When we confess Christ, we make a pledge of faithfulness to that which we acknowledge as our belief. Confession is not merely an intellectual or emotional acknowledgment that Jesus is Lord, but a commitment of the will to accept His lordship (Colossians 2.6). Scriptural baptism involves a commitment to walk in newness of life (Romans 6.3-4). In the New Testament, the “meaning” of baptism is two-fold: it is a burial to the old life and a resurrection to the new! A scriptural understanding of baptism looks both backward (remission of sins) and forward (walk in newness of life). Without a true commitment of the heart, baptism is an empty act.

To make a covenant agreement with God requires us to turn to God, to uphold the conditions of the contract we made with Him. Indeed, God asks us to commit ourselves to Him entirely (2 Corinthians 8.5; 1 Peter 4:19). It is “foolish” to make any contractual agreement with God and not make any commitment to it (Matthew 7.24-27).

Kevin