More Than A Contract (Gospel: Part 5)
More Than A Contract (Gospel: Part 5)
By Bradley Bennett
Growing up I always thought group projects were the absolute worst.
They always seemed to end up following the same script. One part of the group pulls more than their fair share while others just float by. And then at the end of the day, everyone shares the same grade no matter how much effort they put in!
One year I had a teacher who shared everyone’s loathing for group projects and implemented a welcomed change. She made every member of the group sign a contract before starting the project.
The contract simply stated that the others in the group could decide if a person put in enough effort to receive the team grade or something lower. It was awesome and changed the dynamic of our group project that year.
What I learned that day is that contracts are a very good thing.
Why?
Because they ensure that people perform the way they should, and if they don’t, we can then bring repercussions. Contracts protect us because they are based on performance, and that’s not a bad thing.
Contracts are often the way that we relate to people in the world around us.
“As long as you agree and continue to do x, then I agree to continue doing y.” And there is nothing wrong with this, contracts are a needed and helpful thing!
But so often we can bring this way of relating with people into how we relate with our spouse. And it can limit the oneness that God has commissioned your marriage to live out!
You see, while contracts are a helpful way of dealing with people in a group project, it’s a harmful way of dealing with a spouse in marriage. In fact, God designed your marriage for something far better. He desires for your marriage to be more than a contract.
More Than A Contract, Designed For Covenant
In Ephesians 5:31, the Apostle Paul shares the vision for marriage started back in Genesis…
31 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. ~ Ephesians 5:31
This vision of marriage, oneness with each other that glorifies God, is not something that can be achieved through a contractual relationship. Seeing the fruition of this vision in your marriage requires understanding and living from something totally different…
A covenantal relationship.
In the next verse in Ephesians, The Apostle Paul shares that marriage is supposed to model the covenant relationship between Jesus and His church.
31 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. 32 This mystery is profound, but I am talking about Christ and the church. ~ Ephesians 5:31-32
Paul here is saying that when it comes to relating to each other in marriage we should take our cue from our Christ, not our culture.
So, how is Christ united with His church? It’s through a covenant relationship. A relationship that is centered not on performance, but on promises. And it is on this foundation that Christ seeks to become one with His church.
And if we are to take our cue from our Christ, then we must see that our marriage is also designed for covenant.
But what does that mean and how can it change the dynamic in your marriage in a powerful way?
The Power of Covenant
In our culture, the idea of a covenant relationship is not common. But in Jesus’ day, it was considered one of the strongest and most binding of relationships. A covenant was sealed with blood, it was supposed to be life-long, and it was to never be broken.
But above all, a covenant was all about relationships and growth. It wasn’t about protecting one person from another but was about creating a framework for ongoing partnership and relationship to flourish.
In a covenant relationship, both parties make promises to relate to one another in specific ways that will help push the relationship forward. It’s a relationship made on trust rather than mistrust.
When we look at the love Jesus has for His church, for His people, we see it is based on the framework of covenant. He gave Himself for us and has promised to love, forgive, and purify us from all unrighteousness.
We enter into this covenant with Jesus by trusting in Him and following Him with our lives. We make these promises of faith, trust, and obedience to Him as a form of partnership in His renewing work within us.
This covenant relationship allows for the continual beautification and purification of the church into the blemishless bride of Christ. As the church continues to trust in and follow Christ it is beautified, cleansed, and united with Him according to His promises and work within it.
That is covenant. It’s a partnership based on trust, blessing, and promises that draw both parties into a closer relationship and oneness.
Covenant requires both parties to approach it 100% rather than meet in the middle. It’s giving all that we can to live out the promise we have made in partnership together.
It’s in this type of relationship that oneness can grow and flourish.
Culture’s Story: Keep A Contract
I still remember the exciting day that Amanda and I got to go to the courthouse and fill out our wedding license. We were so excited to go fill out this piece of paper that we made a whole day out of it. We got lunch, spent some time downtown near the courthouse, and just enjoyed celebrating!
Essentially, though, what we were signing was a legal contract. And in our culture, this is what we are told our marriage is all about, keeping a contract.
As long as you keep up your end of the bargain, then I will keep my end. But the moment you don’t, I am going to leave.
It is at its core, performance-based. Contracts are more about keeping the status quo than they are about partnering together to grow and flourish.
This is why contracts are great for renting out your apartment to a stranger but will stifle any major progress you desire to make in becoming one.
Viewing your marriage as a healthy contract doesn’t mean you’re doomed to failure. While it may “work” it will also hinder your marriage from experiencing the fullness that God intended.
You may have “good enough” but we want you to desire “God’s best” in your relationship!
This joining into one flesh, or becoming one, is the outcome of marriage viewed not as a contract, but as a covenant.
Viewing your marriage as a contract will never empower you to become one. It will put performance and mistrust center stage in your marriage and will provide a framework for stagnation rather than flourishing.
Thankfully there is a better way.
Through Jesus and the good news of the gospel, we see how our God has made a way for us to live out a marriage that is more than a contract. In Jesus, and through the good news of the gospel, we can live out a covenant marriage.
The Gospel Story: Establish A Covenant
In the good news of the gospel, we see that God calls us into a relationship with Him that brings us into unity and oneness with Him. And then calls us to love each other in the same way.
Created In Covenant
At the beginning of creation, we see Adam and Eve in a perfect relationship with God that operates within the very first covenant. It’s here that we see God created humanity for relationship with Him and to image Him as they acted as partners with Him in ordering and creating flourishing in the world.
While there is no usage of the word “covenant” in the story of creation in Genesis 1-3, it’s got all the important parts that describe one.
Adam and Eve were to live as image-bearers on God’s behalf, being fruitful and multiplying over the earth as they lived out God’s righteousness. As they did this, they would enjoy the blessing of eternal life and communion with God.
There was one thing they were to abstain from, though. They weren’t to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they did, it would bring the power of sin and death over humanity.
Seems simple enough, right?
Fallen Relationship
It might be a bit of a spoiler warning, but humanity didn’t live up to their end of the deal. Rather, Adam and Eve chose to turn from God and trust in what seemed best in their own eyes. They wanted to define what was right and wrong (Good and Evil) in their own wisdom.
By doing this and trusting in their own wisdom they sinned and fractured the perfect relationship they had with God, leading to humanity suffering the realities of sin, death, and brokenness.
Throughout the entirety of the Old Testament, we see God continually desiring to enter into a covenantal relationship with humanity, but humanity can never live up to its end of the bargain.
This is a story that leaves us with a big problem… We are covenant-breakers. And each breach in the covenant brings in greater sin and brokenness that we can’t fix in our own power.
Humanity needs a solution to fix this sin problem.
In marriages all over the world, this same story is played over and over and over. We enter into a covenant with one another but fail to live up to our end of the deal. We each sin and are imperfect, and this introduces brokenness and death into our relationship.
We may try to forgive each other and move forward, but that doesn’t solve the problem as much as it paints over it.
Every marriage needs a true solution that can fix this sin and brokenness problem. For without it, we will never be able to fully live out the type of covenantal relationship that will lead us into oneness together.
Redeemed In Covenant Through Jesus
Thankfully, there is Jesus. And He is good news for your marriage and all of humanity.
Through Jesus, humanity has been welcomed into a new covenant relationship with God. In this new covenant, God promises everlasting relationship with his people in which he will write his law on their hearts, bring complete forgiveness of sin, put his Spirit in them to empower them to love and obey his commands, and cause them to be a blessing to the nations.
This is what God has promised to do as part of this new covenant and Jesus has gone ahead and accomplished all that was needed for humanity’s part. He lived the life we could not do, He accomplished all the stipulations, and met every prophecy.
In fact, in Hebrews 7:22 and 9:15 Jesus is called the guarantor and mediator of this new covenant. He has done all that is needed to conquer the power of sin and for us to experience the covenantal promises of cleansing, eternal relationship, and empowerment.
And He has accomplished this for all people from every tongue, tribe, and nation. All that we must do is join ourselves to Jesus in faith so that we may be welcomed into God’s covenantal family and experience the blessings and promises of God’s new covenant.
We are welcomed into this new covenant for the sake of Jesus, not ourselves.
Consummated Covenant Forever
One day those who are joined with Jesus in faith will experience the final victory over sin and death when Jesus comes again. Once He comes and wins the final victory we will experience eternal perfection with God as it was intended in the beginning.
He will be our God and we will be His people. We will be one with Him and will live in the blessings and bounds of an eternal covenant where we will flourish in joy, peace, and fullness with our God.
The Gospel And Your Marriage Covenant
What Jesus has done changes everything about how we are called to operate in marriage. The vows we make to one another on our wedding day are more than a simple ritual, they are the entrance into a life-long covenant with each other.
Our vows are simply that, they are vows… Promises. They are the announcement of how we are promising to relate towards one another as we are in relationship.
But here’s the thing. None of us can live up to those vows. We are all imperfect and will in some way break the bounds of the covenant we’ve entered into. We will choose to do what seems best in our own eyes and welcome brokenness and sin into our relationship.
Here’s how the gospel changes everything, though. Who is the guarantor of your covenant? Is it your spouse or is it Christ? Whose actions dictate whether the covenant stands?
Because when we are joined with Christ we believe that He has put to death the power of death and has washed us clean from our sins. A marriage that sees the gospel as the foundation of their covenant and Jesus as the guarantor and mediator will be empowered to move forward in unity rather than brokenness.
We choose to love our spouse not because of what they have done, but simply because of what Christ has done. In Him, everything that is required for me to live out my covenantal promises has been accomplished. And in Him, I can rest knowing that all has been accomplished on my behalf as well.
Now that is good news.