Our Place in God's Great Story

How the New Covenant Changes Everything

We’ve all heard a lot about who God is, who we are, and what that means for our lives, but there are three things I need you to know:

1. The Bible is not what many of us have been told it is.

It’s not:

-a big set of rules
-a guide book for our lives
-a love letter from God written directly for you
-a list of answers to life’s most pressing questions
-a scientific recounting of the creation of the world

It’s actually something so much bigger and so much better. 

2. We cannot put God into a box.

No denomination or theological persuasion has cornered the market on understanding and explaining God. He is bigger than we’ve been led to believe and better than we could ever imagine.

3. God’s story and our place in it is so much more accessible than we think.

The Protestant Bible contains 66 books, 1,189 chapters, and 31,102 verses. It seems that many Christians’ favorite thing to do is grab a group of those verses, take them out of their context, and use them to support their favorite ideology. When they do this, not only is the meaning of the individual verses perverted, the story (and our place in it) is altered. 

I believe with my whole heart that every single person in the history of humanity has a place in God’s great story. But finding our place isn’t always easy, especially when the story we have- the bible- is so vast that it spans almost 2000 pages. It’s even harder because many of those pages have been misinterpreted, misapplied, and mishandled in ways that have really hurt people.

Historically, Christians have inserted themselves into the wrong parts of God’s Story, taking passages out of context and ignoring the intent for their original audiences, and the results have been catastrophic; consider that the Crusades, chattel slavery, conversion therapy, Manifest Destiny, and the Trail of Tears were all propagated by people quoting the Bible.

And this is still happening today. I don’t think you need a list of the ways Americans are misrepresenting scripture to justify their bad behavior.

What I’m saying is this: The stakes are high.

So we must ask ourselves, “What is my place in God’s Great Story?” And in order to answer this question, we must start with the basic understanding that God has related to different people in different ways throughout time. 

The primary way he has done this is through something called Covenants— contracts made between God and humanity. Think of covenants like a handshake agreement: God has a part to uphold, humanity has a part to uphold, and, when both parties agree on the terms, they shake on it. 

Covenants are signposts throughout scripture signifying the way God is relating to and interacting with humanity at any given time. Understanding these Covenants helps us to find our place in the story.

Here’s my proposal, and it may be different from what you’ve heard in the past:

We can be inspired, encouraged, and educated by the entire Biblical story, but we are only accountable to a part of it.

Or, to put it language we’ve been using thus-far, if God has related to humanity in different ways throughout history, how does he relate to us now? What Covenant has he made with us?

The Five Covenants

The first thing to know is that there isn’t a consensus on the exact number of Covenants God has made with humanity throughout scripture, but most scholars agree on the big ones. Here’s a handy chart to help us keep track as we go:

The Adamic Covenant

The first covenant between God and humanity is found at the very beginning of the story in Genesis 1 and 2.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” 

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Genesis 1:26 and 2:15-17

God made humanity in His image and gave them the authority to rule over creation. This is commonly called the Adamic Covenant.

Humanity’s only requirement in this Covenant was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good of evil. This sounds trite, I know, but this tree represents something much bigger than a dietary restriction: humanity is given the choice to trust God or to trust themselves. To rule God’s way, or to rule their own way.

Most of us know the story. Like all of us, Adam and Eve chose to trust themselves and rule their own way. They ate the fruit and the Covenant was broken.

Adam and Eve were banished from Eden. Once outside the garden, humanity quickly descended into violence and evil. 

Adam and Eve’s son, Cain, kills his brother, Abel. Cain’s descendant, Lamech, later writes a song about all of the women he has treated harshly and all of the men he has killed. And on and on. The world continues spiraling deeper into violence and oppression until it eventually reaches its apex in a city called Babylon.

In Genesis 11, the Babylonian’s invent something new: bricks. These bricks allow the people to make large structures quickly for the first time, and they use these bricks to make a tower called The Tower of Babel. They believe this tower will reach up into the heavens, making them equal with God and making their names great.

So God, frustrated with the people’s continued choice to go their own way, comes down to confuse their languages and scatter them over the earth, thus limiting their ability to rebel. After the scattering, factions begin to form and just thirteen chapters after God looked at His creation and called it “very good,” humanity is at war.

The Abrahamic Covenant

Following the scattering of the Babylonians, God enacted a new plan. He chose a man named Abram, later called Abraham, with whom to make a Covenant.

Here are the terms of the Covenant from Genesis 12.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.”

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.

Genesis 12:1-4

God’s plan in this moment was to restore his relationship with Abraham’s family in order to restore his relationship with all of the families of the world. God made this Covenant with Abraham to bless his offspring so that all humanity would be blessed through them.  

In return, God asked Abraham to leave everything he had ever known and follow wherever he would lead.

Abraham agreed to the Covenant and promised to trust God, shepherding his family the way God had asked him to. But six verses later, Abraham stopped trusting God and went his own way.

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”

Genesis 12:10-13

Abraham convinced his wife to lie and say that she was his sister. When they arrived in Egypt, Pharaoh took her to be his wife. And that was just the beginning. Like each of us, Abraham had ups and downs, faithful and unfaithful moments. Ultimately, he failed to perfectly uphold his end of the Covenant and another one was broken.

The Mosaic Covenant

Next comes the Mosaic Covenant, which God made with the tribe of Israel after he freed them from slavery in Egypt.

Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ The people all responded together, “We will do everything the Lord has said.” So Moses brought their answer back to the Lord.

Exodus 19:3-8

Can you hear the similarities from the Abrahamic Covenant echoed in these verses? God confirmed his purpose for the people of Israel: he wanted them to be a Kingdom of priests who ministered to the people around them. He blessed them so that they might be a blessing to others and, thus, restore His relationship with the whole world. 

He then called Moses up to Mount Sinai to receive the ten commandments (and about 600 others!) that were meant to shape Israel into a nation of justice and generosity as a catalyst for God’s love for the whole world. These 600+ commands are found throughout the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

The Mosaic Covenant is full of things we struggle to understand. It forbids things like eating pork, shaving sideburns, and mixing fabrics in clothes. But we have to remember that we are not the recipients of this Covenant; this is a completely different time, place, and culture from ours. God is relating to humanity differently at this point than he relates to us now.

Therefore, we are not accountable to these laws.

The partner in this covenant is the ancient Tribe of Israel, not Christians in the twenty-first century. And this Covenant made sense for them. It doesn’t make sense for us, because it’s not for us. Our Covenant is still to come.

It’s also important to point out that when we understand the Law in its context, it’s truly amazing; marginalized people of all stripes- slaves, women, children, immigrants- were all treated significantly better under these laws than any other nation at the time. But Israel could not keep the laws, no matter how hard they tried, and the covenant was broken.

The Davidic Covenant

We have one more Old Testament Covenant to cover before we get to ours. This one is called the Davidic Covenant and it’s found in 2 Samuel 7.

When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’”

2 Samuel 7:12-13, 16

God told David that he would establish his throne forever through David’s offspring. In return, God asked David to rule and guide his nation God’s way.

Things went really well until David committed a terrible act: he forced a woman, Bathsheba, to sleep with him and had her husband, Uriah, killed. Not long after, David’s family started falling apart. One of his sons tried to kill him and then was murdered. Honestly, that’s some of the milder stuff that happened in David’s family. 

Just like the Adamic, Abramahic, and Mosiac covenants, the Davidic Covenant was broken.

Are you starting to see God’s relentless pursuit of relationship with humanity, despite how we continued to break our promises to him? It’s truly an amazing thing.

These first few covenants were simply not working; God kept making them and humanity kept breaking them. God knew that it was time for something different, something new.

The New Covenant

While humanity was floundering in sin and totally unable to hold up their end of the bargain, God was using people called “prophets” to predict a day when God would bring fulfillment to these Covenants and begin a new Covenant. We first hear of it from the prophet Jeremiah.

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

Jeremiah 31:31-34

The prophets predicted that this New Covenant would be ushered in by a Messiah, a Savior. As the Old Testament ends and the New Testament begins, we are introduced to Jesus Christ. You may not know this about Jesus, but his last name isn’t Christ— Christ is a title that means Messiah. Jesus is the long-predicted Messiah, the Savior of the world, predicted by the prophets.

A few things about Jesus:

• We’re told that He is the Last Adam,¹ fulfilling the Adamic Covenant by doing what the First Adam was unable to do: trust and obey God.

• He’s from the family of Abraham, so he is the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant by bringing blessing to the whole world.

• He’s the faithful Israelite, the first and only person to truly obey the law and fulfill the Mosaic Covenant.

• He is the King from the line of David who rules God’s way and brings about God’s Kingdom. The David Covenant is fulfilled.

How is Jesus able to be all of these things? Because Jesus is God with skin on. God left the perfection of heaven, came to the brokenness of earth, put on human flesh and fulfilled all the covenants humanity couldn’t. 

God became a human so that he could uphold our end of the bargains! Then, as a man, Jesus shook God’s hand on our behalf and made a covenant that could never be broken. A new covenant.

Jesus inaugurated this new Covenant at the Passover meal right before he was arrested and killed on the cross.

When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God…”

And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.

Luke 22:14-20

Notice Jesus didn’t say it was “a” new covenant. He said it was “the” New Covenant. When the disciples heard Jesus say this, they would have immediately thought back to Jeremiah 31 and the promise from God to introduce this New Covenant in which he would take away the sins of the world.

The New Covenant did what all the Old Covenants could not: it restored God’s broken relationship with all of humanity.

“Jesus used his final Passover meal to announce the end of Passover as they knew it and to signal the inauguration of a new covenant. Not a new covenant between God and an individual, as was the case with Abraham. Not a covenant between God and a particular nation, as was the case with Israel. This was the big one. The final one. The everlasting one. This was a covenant between God and the human race.”

Andy Stanley

This is our Covenant! And listen, it’s not just a new Covenant. It’s a better Covenant; the Bible says as much in the book of Hebrews.

The ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises.

For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said:

“The days are coming, declares the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they did not remain faithful to my covenant,
and I turned away from them, declares the Lord.“
This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest.
For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.

Hebrews 8:6-13

The Old Covenants have been fulfilled. We can be inspired, encouraged, and educated by them, but we are not accountable to them. They are now obsolete because, through Jesus, God has done something beautiful and brand new.

The New Covenant isn’t an add-on to the Old Covenants, it’s something completely new. And the promises of this New Covenant really are so much better.

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The Law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the Law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so the just requirement of the Law would be fully satisfied for us.

Romans 8:1-4

Here’s the agreement God has made with us in this New Covenant: we place our faith in Him and He does the rest. To put it another way, He does everything and we trust Him to do everything. 

This is our place in God’s great story. The New Covenant. An agreement between us and God where we place our faith in Him and He promises to:

• Adopt us into His family (Romans 8:15)

• Make us a new creation (2nd Corinthians 5:17)

• Give us a full life (John 10:10)

• Spend eternity with him in paradise (Revelation 21:3-4)

• Take away our sin (1 John 1:7)

• Free us from guilt and shame (Romans 8:1)

• Give us the righteousness of Jesus (Philippians 3:9)

• Deliver us from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13-14)

• Give us an inheritance (1 Peter 1:3-4)

• Make us a light in the world (Matthew 5:14-16)

• And much, much more

In short, He’s given us everything.

All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.

Ephesians 1:3

This New Covenant can never be broken, because Jesus made it on our behalf. It is Perfect and Eternal. The New Covenant is our Covenant. This is our place in the story.

We need to know our rightful place in God’s great story. The consequences are dire if we try to insert ourselves somewhere else. 

Even more than that, when we understand and live in the New Covenant, we are able to step into the incredible things God has for us in this life and in life eternally.

1. 1 Corinthians 15:45