25. A Deeper Look into God’s Eternal Covenant
God’s dealings with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses, Joshua, Caleb and the second Exodus generation of Israel…and everyone else…manifest the perfection of God’s nature and eternal Blood Covenant ways. The Eternal Covenant is the basis for all of God’s interactions with us. Genesis gives this foundational revelation. If we understand this and realize that God will never change, no matter how long mankind’s temporal life on Earth may last, we can accurately understand the books of the Bible that follow Genesis and know what to expect from God until the end of time.
With that in mind, let’s consider some examples where God’s Word, speaks to Abraham’s Covenant descendants. God deals with every generation out of the same Covenant faithfulness He pledged (and sealed with the Blood of His eternal Lamb) to Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So for all time, their descendants in the faith will also be personally included and required to honor and abide by the responsibilities of the covenant, for God’s sake, and for the good of their respective generations:
“Then Moses called to Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, ‘Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land which the LORD has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall give it to them as an inheritance. The LORD is the one who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.’” (Deuteronomy 31:7-8 Emphasis added.)
“From the wilderness and this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and as far as the Great Sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory. No man will be able to stand before you (Joshua) all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers (Abraham, Isaac & Jacob) to give them.” (Joshua 1:4-6 Emphasis added.)
“When he (God’s Covenant friend) falls, he will not be hurled headlong, because the LORD is the One who holds his hand. I have been young and now I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread. All day long he is gracious and lends, and his descendants are a blessing.” (Psalm 37:24-26 Emphasis and amplification added.)
If Adam’s descendants allow God to graft them into the Blood Covenant Root He established with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and they abide by its terms, and remain properly aligned under the eternal Headship of His Word, their Eternal Covenant Representative, God will transmit His Heavenly Covenant blessings to them on Earth, as needed. He will do this despite their temporary Sin-corrupted, mortal condition. The Covenant cancels and overrides the penalties and damage of the fall, even that of Death itself! If their hearts are truly one with His living Word, they will share in the perfect, Resurrection Life of The Son of Man, the Last Adam who represents them in the Eternal Covenant.
But if they reject or ignore their Representative (God’s Word), and put their faith and trust in created substitutes, they separate (decapitate) themselves from the Covenant union with God and are thus disconnected dead branches…unable to partake of the life of their Covenant Vine.
God continually gives this warning throughout the Bible. And through the history of His faithful obedient Chosen People, He continues to reveal Himself and His ways to the Serpent-dominated world. This Pattern applies to all descendants of the fallen First Adam. We must all allow God to uproot us from Adam’s violated part of the Covenant, and transplant us into His Word’s perfect Eternal Covenant Ground – the Ground where God’s living Word, The Last Adam, reigns supreme and is free to do everything to perfection, in our name. This is the Covenant Ground into which God’s Word engrafted Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And that bond God made with them is the Salvation Root into which those who will be saved must also be engrafted:
“Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain, saying, ‘Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.’
“So Moses came and called the elders of the people, and set before them all these words which the LORD had commanded him. All the people answered together and said, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do!’ And Moses brought back the words of the people to the LORD. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Behold, (now that this generation has agreed to join Me in the Covenant) I will come to you in a thick cloud, so that the people may hear when I speak with you and may also believe in you forever.’ Then Moses told the words of the people to the LORD.” (Exodus 19:3-9 Emphasis and amplification added.)
Can you see the Covenant mentality and changeless dynamic revealed in these texts? Once you are aware of the Covenant, you’ll see it working throughout all of Scripture. God’s living Word will be operating throughout, not only as God’s Covenant Representative, but also as ours. The Word reveals the Father who speaks Him forth; and the Father reveals His Word as He intervenes and acts on our behalf. This is how God reveals His changeless Covenant plan and His never-changing Covenant loyalty and faithful intentions to each succeeding generation. It will never change.
Two Human Races
The working out of God’s plan gives rise to two different human races – the one that remains joined in Covenant to its rightful Head, God’s living Word, and the one that rejects the Word and remains decapitated, enslaved and doomed to share the eternal desolation of the Serpent.
“Thus says the LORD, ‘Cursed is the (decapitated) man who trusts in mankind and makes flesh his strength, and whose heart turns away from the LORD. For he will be like a bush in the desert and will not see when prosperity comes, but will live in stony wastes in the wilderness, a land of salt without inhabitant.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD and whose trust IS the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.” (Jeremiah 17:5-8 Emphasis and amplification added.)
Originally, God created Adam and Eve to be the image and likeness of His Word. According to God, that is true humanity. Anything that deviates is sub-human. So God’s living Word is the eternal source and the authentic pattern for true, God-approved humanity. So by essence and nature, mankind is created to see, think, act, react and interact in union with the Word of the living God. That’s why our Sin-corrupted living death nature must be forsaken and exchanged for the Life of God’s Word. To be restored to true humanity, we must learn to abide as one with God’s Word…as His image and likeness. We must once again draw everything from Him so that we can embody what He is and rely only on what He has already done in our name. When we are one with the Word, we are one with the Father who sent Him. This is how the Covenant saves us.
God made the first Adam to be one with God through His Word and Holy Spirit. And from him, He created the first woman. Both of the first two humans derived their being and essence from and according to, God’s living Word. Eve derived her being and essence from Adam who was made to be the image and likeness of the Word. As we said, this is true humanity. And it is to this image and likeness of God level that God intends to restore any sinful child of Adam who will repent of being part of the First Adam’s broken Covenant and ask to be included in the Second Adam’s perfect fulfillment of the Covenant. The Spirit of God will empower those who repent to cross over the infinite chasm of Death that divides God’s Word from fallen Sinful human flesh. Then He will graft them into the living Root of the Last Adam’s perfect, eternal Covenant Bond with God.
Notice that although the first man and woman were unique individual persons from their very creation, they were also made to think and operate as one corporate unity, one flesh, with one essence and purpose. They were to embody the self-less Love which is the nature of the Father and His living Word and Holy Spirit – the living, personal God who is one. This Covenant Love is what the image and likeness life and interaction of disciples is all about. Every human is made to be as one with God’s Word, and therefore, a disciple of the Word. That makes them one with God. To protect that oneness from future conflict and disintegration, God grafted and included Adam and Eve into the eternal Blood Covenant He had made with Himself. That made them one with God, through His living Word.
Covenant Oneness – Vertical and Horizontal
After we see that Adam and Eve were one with God, we will be able to see another aspect of this blood covenant mentality and dynamic come into play. The covenant united them to God. But that Covenant also requires all those who are one with God, to be one with each other! With God, it’s all about oneness (Cf. John 17). The Covenant makes the many, into one. Vertically, it makes us one with God. And horizontally, it makes us one with each other. Because Adam and Eve are both covenant partners with God, they must also be covenant partners with and for each other…for God’s sake.
The covenant bond that unites us to each other is called ‘marriage’ and ‘family.’ These bonds are the image of the covenant Bond we have with God’s living Word (our Representative and God’s). Thus humanity is intended to interact with itself, in ways that embody its Covenant oneness with God’s Word. Our relationship with God is to be revealed and reflected in our interactions with all other men and women. The Covenant creates ‘God’s Covenant Family’ which is to be the nurturing ‘Covenant Matrix’ in which all of Adam’s children, from generation to generation, are to be protected, taught, formed and prepared to fulfill their own ‘image and likeness of God’ nature and purpose. All mankind is designed and created to be one with God…through oneness with their Eternal Covenant Representative, the Word of God Himself. The Word unites God with mankind…and by His absolute Covenant Authority, all the particles of the universe He created remain bonded and hold together (See Matthew 19:3-9; 22:35-40; John 15; 2 Corinthians 4; Colossians 1:15-20).
This Covenant union and cohesiveness are what the Serpent intended to destroy when he lied to Eve and lured her and Adam to cut themselves away from God’s Word. But before the fall and after it, God remained the same. He is always utterly consistent with His nature, and with the image and likeness nature He designed us humans to have. The marital union between men and women is meant to reflect and embody the eternal Covenant union that exists between God and the redeemed human race (Ephesians 5:22-33). This is the way God made it to be from the beginning. And, despite the evil intent and actions of the Serpent and those who serve him, God’s Word is in the process of repairing all the damage and restoring all things. He will bring Creation into perfect alignment with God’s nature and plan by the end of humanity’s earthly history. If we are ignorant of this, the Serpent will keep us trapped in his web of deception. We will live and navigate by his false self-centered, individualistic, destructive coordinates. But God’s authentic, original, corporate unifying Truth will coordinate and harmonize us and will ensure our ultimate salvation and restoration. So pay attention to what Genesis reveals:
“…the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the (image and likeness) man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh…” (Genesis 2:21-24 Emphasis added.)
Everything God reveals and does, comes to us through His living Word. God ordained it to be this way from eternity past. And this is what His Word will fulfill with those who are His, in eternity future. The living Word is the eternal, ultimate, perfect Blood Covenant Representative, not only for God, but also for mankind and all of Creation. And because He is eternally perfect in Himself, the Covenant He is here to execute and fulfill will be eternally perfect too (God’s image and likeness).
This is the heart of the Covenant dynamic that unfolds between God and the Sin-damaged, spiritually dead human race. We are not to be radically independent toward God, or toward one another. We are all bonded together, as one. All of Scripture documents and explains this.
As a result of God’s rescue mission, two human races emerge in every generation. God’s Salvation process separates the redeemed God-connected race from the race that chooses to remain decapitated and spiritually Head-less. The two continually act out and fulfill the promise God made to the rebellious Serpent in the Garden:
“…I will put enmity between you and the woman (Israel), and between your seed and her seed; He (The Last Adam) shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.” (Genesis 3:15 Emphasis and amplification added.)
“…there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.” (1 Timothy 2:5 Emphasis added.)
Abel was the first child of Adam who chose to come back under the Headship of God’s living Word. To do that, he had to forsake the natural Sin-induced pull to trusting in his own perceptions and understanding. That leads to radical independent living. But he denied himself in that area and chose instead to receive and obey what God’s Word had taught to, and done for, Adam and Eve when He covered their nakedness and re-established fellowship with them. But Cain chose to remain in the demonic radical independence from God into which he had been born. He rejected the Word that came to redeem and reconnect him to God and he kept doing as he thought best. So the Serpent continued to manipulate Cain and through him, was able to vent his deadly animosity against God’s Word, and anyone who obeys Him. The Serpent was Cain’s spiritual head. And through him he attacked and murdered Cain’s Word-obedient brother, Abel.
“…it came about when they were in the field, that (the Serpent in) Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.” (Genesis 4:8b)
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.” (Matthew 23:33-36)
This deadly warfare that the Serpent and his powers of Darkness wage against God’s Word and His people will continue to the end. Satan will not stop trying to usurp what belongs to God. And if he can’t possess it, he will try to destroy it. Because God’s Word is the Covenant Representative that unites God and Man, the Serpent continually tries to separate men and women from their Covenant Head. He will keep as many people as possible in their original decapitated state by tricking them into mistrusting and disbelieving the Word’s revelation and disobeying His commands. The Serpent failed to win Abel over to his ways; but he succeeded in killing him through Cain. And through those like Cain, he will always continue to try to inflict lethal damage upon God’s beloved humans…to twist them, more and more, into his own self-destructive image and likeness.
“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 5:6-11)
God’s written Word warns of the ceaseless conflict that naturally exists between the two races. The decapitated ones are spiritually blinded slaves of the Serpent that unwittingly serve his purposes. The Word-obedient ones have received their spiritual sight by submitting to the authority of God’s living Word, even though they could not understand or comprehend it. Then He restored their spiritual sight and now they are equipped to continually forsake that original decapitated way of thinking, reacting and living. Now they can follow God’s Word as He lights their way through this world that is enshrouded by the serpent’s darkness and follow Him into God’s eternal Kingdom of Light. They freely choose to be His love slaves, knowing the extent to which He was willing to endure for their sake, as their Redeemer and Shepherd. Now it’s their joy and honor and glory to embody the living Word of God, mirroring Him and all He is and does, through their co-crucified lives.
Radical Independence Must Yield to Covenant Faithfulness
The Truth that God’s Word brings will uproot men’s minds and hearts from the ground of radical independence if it can pierce and penetrate and impregnate them with His Resurrection Life. His Life working in them equips and qualifies them to be transplanted into God’s Kingdom. The Word teaches His disciples to follow Him always, in all things. And so they become one with their Master in His ongoing rescue mission on behalf of all the decapitated humans who still need to hear and obey Him when He summons them to follow. This separation process gives rise to the warfare the two kingdoms wage for the minds and hearts of men. Satan will always resist God’s Salvation because it represents the total impending destruction of his deadly, hate-filled world system.
God’s Salvation Exodus Pattern is like a two-edged sword of Truth that separates God’s race from that of the Serpent. It uproots disciples from the original life, identity and world system of the First Adam into which we are all born. God’s Word then spiritually regenerates and equips them to serve as His image and likeness, as Blood Covenant friends, sons and daughters of God. Actually, it is not our fight. It is the Lord’s fight. The war is between the two competing Heads (Commanders) of the two human races. God’s Word (the risen Messiah) and the Serpent (Satan) are the ones who are at war with each other. They direct their respective races like generals leading their warring armies. Each race wears the uniform of its Commander and obeys his orders the way bodies serve and obey their heads. Each body acts out the nature, character and life of its head. Each body carries out the agenda and serves the kingdom and shares the destiny of its head. And the enemies of each head are enemies of his body as well:
“So also it is written: ‘The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL.’ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.” (1 Corinthians 15: 45-49 Emphasis added.)
The Exodus pattern God revealed to Abraham automatically subjects Abraham’s Heavenly Covenant Family to the ceaseless traps and attacks of those who keep serving the Serpent. They are at enmity with God’s Word. Therefore they despise anyone who obeys and represents God’s Word. And naturally, God won’t stand for the Serpent’s hatred and opposition to His Word, and the Serpent won’t stand for anything that contradicts and opposes his lies. So this is why God’s Word has to teach, train and prepare each of His disciples for the deadly combat that is inevitable for each one who obeys His ‘Follow Me’ summons. This is what He had to begin to teach Abraham and his household.
Death and Resurrection, not ‘Adjustment and Self-Improvement’
When it comes to obeying the summons God’s Word gives His disciples, don’t think in terms of ‘self-improvement’ or ‘adopting better rules’ or ‘practicing a better way of living’ while you remain part of this fallen world and its system. The Lord doesn’t get us to try to change our original lives. It’s not about trying to enhance or improve or better our original state of being. He commands us to forsake and crucify those lives. Instead of changing them, He orders us to exchange them for a share in His eternal Resurrection Life. We can’t have both. The one we choose causes the other to die. We can’t ‘straddle two conflicting canoes.’ This requires the utter death of our natural first life in a total exchange for the Word’s Life. He must be the life which abides, rules and operates from within us from now on. Real Life comes only from the risen Word of God. We must be completely free of what we inherited from the First Adam first. Only then we can be free to share in the newness of the Last Adam’s Resurrection Life.
No matter how much confusion-inducing ‘smoke’ the Serpent and his demonic powers generate to deceive us, God’s Spirit of Truth relentlessly invades and dispels that smoke to set us free and lead us into eternal Life and Freedom. He keeps bringing this revelation and fulfillment forward to each new generation and era. What God ordained from the beginning, He will perfectly fulfill by the end of the story. Creation will end up to be perfectly aligned with God’s perfect nature. In the beginning, God surveyed the creative handiwork of His Word and judged it to be ‘Very Good!’ And by the end, He will be able to judge His Word’s finished redemptive Work and say once more: “VERY GOOD!”
We Are All ‘Blood Brothers’
God’s Covenant creates a corporate union between God and each human being. But in a blood covenant, anyone else who is a friend to your covenant friend, must also be your friend. For your covenant friend’s sake, you both must bond to each other.
“…I will make you a great nation. I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 12:2-3 Emphasis added.)
‘When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:33-34 Emphasis added.)
Covenant Blood makes you one. That requires you to consider anyone who is your Covenant friend’s enemy, to also be your enemy. Whoever comes against your ‘blood brother’ comes against you. So you are obligated to come to the defense of your blood brother, no matter what the cost may be. Blood Covenant loyalty (chesed or, agape) requires this. That Covenant union is what the Serpent destroyed in Adam and Eve and he keeps trying to blind us too so that he can keep us trapped in his coils. And he keeps trying to warp, disfigure, undermine and destroy this understanding in those who are disciples so that he can destroy their union with the Last Adam once more. God’s Covenant Word always unites, integrates and imparts life to His Covenant friends. But the Serpent’s lies and malicious ploys are always meant to divide, disintegrate and destroy God’s beautiful created universe.
God’s Word gives us spiritual ‘eyes’ with which to see what is going on. He enlightens us so we can be realigned, restored and reunited with our Creator. If we bond with Him, we automatically bond with God. And if we bond with God, we bond with the Original Blessing and all of God’s other Blood brothers and sisters. Then the original unity and integrity of God’s Creation comes full circle, back to what God intended. This is why God commissioned His Word to represent us all as the Son of Man, so that He could come after us to bring the fragmented human race back together. In our Anointed Human Redeemer and Eternal Representative, all things will hold together. When we understand this, we will see that God is never intent on destroying His fallen Creation or replacing His damaged human friends with something else that will be better. If He did that, He would violate His own Word and the Covenant promises He gave through His Word! Deceived individuals may sever themselves from God’s Word and thus destroy themselves. But God is intent on fulfilling His eternal Blood Covenant Promises to and for His human Covenant friends, no matter what shape they’re in…for Jacob’s sake…for Isaac’s sake…for Abraham’s sake…for Adam’s sake and for His own Word and Name’s sake!
God, through His Word, cut an eternal Covenant that makes Him one with us all. That’s why His Word had to come to our side, to cover and defend us to the death. But because God never takes back the free will He gave us, we can deliberately choose to remain decapitated and stop Him from saving us. But His intent toward us will never, in any way, be some kind of vengeful replacement process. Everything He does is meant to totally restore every one of His Covenant friends. What He started with the First Adam, He will finish through the Last Adam. The Last Adam will save the First Adam and Eve, Abel, Noah, Abraham and the Covenant Family that comes from Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and Israel. Genesis is always being brought forward…to its ultimate perfect restoration and fulfillment. By the time the events prophesied in the Book of Revelation run their course, we will see that everything that was first revealed in Genesis, will be fully restored back to its original pristine perfection. The living Word of God tells us:
“‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the Tree of Life, and may enter by the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.’” (Revelation 22:13-15 Emphasis added.)
“Therefore be imitators of God, as (His) beloved (image and likeness) children; and walk in (God’s Covenant) love, just as Christ (His living Word and Second Adam) also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” (Ephesians 5:1-2 Amplification added.)
“But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the (original Hebrew) sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus (the living Word of God). All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness (as first revealed in Genesis); so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:13-17 Emphasis and amplification added.)
God’s Human Family is made to Mirror His Covenant Faithfulness
God’s Word came to restore our original human union with God, as well as the original marital and corporate union that result from being God’s image and likeness. So through the human family unit, He can provide the nurturing, gardening atmosphere and matrix each child needs in order to be reconnected to God’s wisdom and spiritual salvation. If that happens, the physical and emotional and spiritual security God wants for each person and family and society can be restored, maintained and passed on. If each child receives this, each marriage, family and society will have it. Ponder that as you read Paul’s words:
“Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord (who restored your Blood Covenant oneness). For the (image and likeness) husband is the head of the (image and likeness) wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church (Body) is subject to Christ (her Head), so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. (living as one in Blood Covenant union and harmony).
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body. FOR THIS REASON A MAN SHALL LEAVE HIS FATHER AND MOTHER AND SHALL BE JOINED TO HIS WIFE, AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH. This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.” (Ephesians 5:25-33 Emphasis added.)
In the texts above, God brings Genesis forward…reconfirming what it revealed and gave from the beginning. He restores everything back to the way He first created it. His dealings with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob continue this restoration process. He is nullifying and reversing the Serpent’s damage and destruction and destroying his grip on His humans. As it was in the beginning, before the fall, so will it be at the end (Cf. Isaiah 55:1-11; Matthew 5:17-20; John 5:19; 30; 39-47; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Ephesians 1:3-14: 2 Timothy 3:12-17).
The Two Adams
The First Adam prophetically revealed the Perfect Adam who would appear later. The First Adam was a ‘type’ of the Last Adam (Romans 5:14). He was only a highly limited created being that began as a pile of dust! It was easy for the Serpent to beguile him. It was inevitable that it would happen sooner or later. And since the First Adam was our first natural connecting link with God, he was also our first blood covenant representative. When he fell into Sin and the death it inflicted, he took us with him. When our original father and Covenant Representative fell and failed, we all fell and failed IN him.
Since covenants work through representatives, and we are IN our Representative, whatever is true of him is true of us. Members of a Covenant cannot take matters into their own hands. They can’t exercise independent initiatives apart from the Covenant Reality. Adam’s fall into Sin killed the human race. In God’s sight we were all dead from that moment! And when He said ‘dead,’ He really meant it! From that moment, there was nothing any of us could ever do to make our own ‘personal deal’ with God on the side. We were locked into Covenant Reality. So none of us can cleanse, redeem or justify ourselves by any personal initiative or effort. We are part of a Blood Covenant people, a family. We are all one…through our Representative. Everything comes to us from Him. Nothing else will be accepted. So the state of our current Representative, whether he is the First Adam, or the Last Adam, is our state too. When it comes to saving ourselves, we’re dead.
This helps us see the preeminence of God’s living Word in whatever concerns us. Since our perfect God has cut a Covenant with us…even though we have grossly violated it, God has already done everything necessary to make our part of the Covenant as good and perfect as His He has made His part good and perfect. We are being restored to His image and likeness! He is doing that through His Word (The Last Adam). The Word is fulfilling the Covenant to perfection, both on God’s part, and on our part. That is why God’s agenda throughout human history is to reveal His beloved Son, the living Word, in the midst of men. The Word is the Restoration and Perfecting of everything God instituted in the beginning. For Adam’s sake, God saw to it that everything would be restored and made right. Now we know that God never goes back on His promises. They stand, as revealed and promised, forever. Even though we have been damaged by Sin and were derailed and made incapable of doing anything to honor our Covenant, God never gave us up as a lost cause. He never resorted to some alternate ‘Plan B.’ Whatever He started, He is finishing. All will be done to perfection… no matter what it takes. This is the nature of our Perfect God and His Covenant ways! And that’s why we can trust Him with an airtight, eternal faith.
Since God’s Word represents Him in the Covenant, whatever we do in response to Him, we do to God! So…we have fair warning. Beware of your attitude toward God’s Word. Beware of how you respond to what He reveals and commands. Your response to Him is your response to God. It was this way in the beginning, when Adam rejected and disobeyed God’s Word…and it will be that way to the end of time, with the Last Adam.
Ponder what Yeshua says below to His first century disciple, Thomas. The Lord was God’s Representative to Adam and Eve and all their offspring from the beginning. He is the eternal Representative for all of us before God. That’s why He is so pre-eminent. He must increase and everything else, every other perceived source of salvation or well being must decrease and disappear entirely. There is only one God, one Covenant and one Way back to His original Perfection. This was what the Word was introducing when He appeared to Abraham and brought him into God’s eternal Covenant. And it was the same, centuries later, when He appeared to Moses and all of Israel on Mt. Sinai. And it was the same later on when He became flesh and appeared as Israel’s Messiah and the Lamb of God:
“Thomas said to Him, ‘Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” (John 14:5-7 Emphasis added.)
Can you see the Blood Covenant dynamic in this text? The Lord is always bringing it forward and confirming and fulfilling what He first instituted and revealed in Genesis. As The Son of God, He is God’s eternal Blood Covenant Representative. And, as The Son of Man, He is our redeeming Covenant Representative. He makes us one with God and does everything that needs to be done by us…in our name. So everything is about Him! We can’t know God directly because His nature is utterly transcendent and beyond us. But God brought us into His eternal Blood Covenant by making us one with His Word (our Representative). And in this way, through the Word and His various manifestations throughout history, we can all be as one with God! So from first to last, we see this truth working itself out:
Whatever we do with God’s living Word, we do with God who sent Him to us, for they are one. And whatever God does with and for His Word, He does with and for us, because we are IN God’s Word…and because we are IN God’s Word, we are IN God! (See John 15; 2 Corinthians 4; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:15-20; 3:1-4)
Adam was created to be God’s image and likeness. Because he was the first man, he was also God’s first human Blood Covenant Friend (our first Representative). God, through His eternal Word, included Adam and his offspring in the Eternal Blood Covenant. That means that by Blood Covenant oath, God swore to be everything Adam and his descendants, and all of Creation would ever need Him to be. That’s what the Original Blessing in Genesis 1:27-31 contained and bestowed on Adam and his human family. In this way, God revealed His perfect nature, character, disposition and infinite Self-less Covenant Love.
But because Adam was the father of the entire race, he was also the primary link between us and our Creator. So he had another role to fill – our first human Covenant representative before God. In that sense he was a counterpart to God’s living Word. Both are Covenant Representatives. Thus the first man was the ‘First Adam,’ and God’s living Word (out of loyalty to fallen Adam and his family) was commissioned to come to our rescue, as ‘The Last Adam.’ God’s living Word was, and always will be, God’s Covenant Representative. The First Adam was humanity’s original Covenant Representative…two distinct Covenant Representatives for the human race. The First Adam represented us and failed. So the Last Adam came to be the Redeemer of Adam and the human race before God. That is how God honored His original Covenant promises to the human race after they fell.
So whatever God’s Word says or does in the covenant, God does. And whatever Adam said or did – we did – even those of us who had not yet been born! The blood covenant pattern causes two or more persons to become one legal entity. Covenant eyes view the many as being IN their representatives. So we can view a representative as the head of a body, and those he represents as ‘members of one body.’ This is how the covenant mind sees and does things. It is a corporate family world. So despite what the humanistic, self-centered Western culture mentality has taught us – in our dealings with our Creator, it’s not about each of us operating as separate individuals. It’s not about what each of us decides to do. Nor is it about how well or how badly we operate, or how we do it. It’s about our current official Blood Covenant Representative…and what He has already done! We can’t control or change this law of Creation. So the important determining question for us is:
Does the First Adam still represent us, or did we die to his covenant performance and living death, so we could share in the perfect covenant performance and eternal Life of the Last Adam? Is our original fallen, Adamic life still operating in us? Or is the Resurrection Life of the Last Adam operating within us? Whichever Representative and life is in us, determines whether or not we are spiritually connected to God. So, we are either ‘offspring of the Serpent,’ or, ‘regenerated sons and daughters of God.’
This is a major ‘first button’ consideration as we begin ‘buttoning’ our understanding of the ‘Biblical revelation shirt.’
Another Look at the Covenant Exchange of Gifts
In the last segment we listed the major steps in a Covenant ceremony when two representatives ‘cut’ a covenant. We said the steps dramatize the responsibilities each participant is assuming. The bond God made with us requires creates an eternal granite-solid loyalty foundation upon which God promised to deal with Adam, Eve and their offspring. That is why, as soon as the Serpent deceived and mortally injured and disfigured Adam and Eve, God immediately sent His Word after them to cover and restore them. Even though they rebelled and fell and underwent Sin’s lethal damage, and although their Covenant violation automatically condemned them to death, nevertheless, God was already eternally obligated to stand by their side, no matter what. He was committed to do whatever was necessary to rescue and restore them from their guilt, condemnation and death penalty. Not even their betrayal or their Sin-induced mortality could excuse God from being required to stand by their side as their Eternal Covenant Friend and Champion. Even though it meant God would have to pour Himself out on their behalf to legally regenerate and make brand new creations of them to rescue them…that is what He sent His Word to do for the sake of His ‘Blood brothers.’
God did whatever it took to save us. And that required Him to give His innocent, Sin-less Word’s human life in our place! The fall of Adam and the death penalty that he and the rest of us were under, meant that the human race had to have another Blood Covenant Representative that would be authoritative and powerful enough to swallow up Adam’s failed Covenant performance. The Last Adam would have to render a performance that would be so perfect and authoritative, that it would redeem and rescue every fallen human completely and perfectly, once and for all. All this was included in the Covenant God made with Himself in eternity past, before the Creation of the physical universe took place. And since only God would be able to perform such a perfect feat…God spoke His Word into us and our hopeless situation…and He did it.
So the new Representative for Adam, and the rest of us, was God Himself. He came as The Last Adam. And since God’s living Word is, by nature, both God and Man, He is authoritative and powerful enough to represent God perfectly and also atone for and repair everything in our name, perfectly. He restored for all of us whatever God originally promised to give to His Creation. He fulfilled everything necessary to rescue us from the Serpent and Sin Darkness and Death.
“Therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.” (John 19:30)
Since only God could do this, He sent His perfect living Word. So not only does the Word represent His Father as ‘The Son of God,’ He represents us (even The First Adam), as ‘The Son of Man.’ He is ‘The Last Adam.’ This is what God promised in Genesis 3:15. The Word fulfills all responsibilities for both sides, to make sure Man does everything according to God’s perfect nature and standards, perfectly:
“So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 5:18-21)
Today, we have the advantage of knowing God’s living Word in His most perfect, ultimate revelation, ‘The Word made Flesh.’ He appeared as ‘Yeshua of Nazareth, The Messiah of Israel.’ Now we know that the risen Messiah has always been, and always will be, Lord over all Creation. He is everything to all of us – our Creator, Sustainer, Provider, Redeemer, our Atonement and our new, perfect, Sin-less Resurrection Life. He did everything; first, as God’s Representative – to us. And as our Representative before God, He did everything – for us. Now we see much more of His significance…of His role as the Eternal High Priest who stands between God and mankind in eternal intercession. He is the fulfillment of what He first revealed and planted into Abraham, in Genesis. Then He carried it forward through Isaac and Jacob and beyond. No matter what portion of Scripture He appears in, God’s living Word is restoring, repairing and redeeming everything that God originally ordained and established from the beginning:
“For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, ‘THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.’ THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS.’
“From the standpoint of the gospel they (unbelieving Jews) are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob); for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you (Gentiles) once were disobedient to God, but now have been shown mercy because of their (the Jews’) disobedience, so these also now have been disobedient, that because of the mercy shown to you they also may now be shown mercy. For God has shut up all (children of Adam) in disobedience, so that He may show mercy to all.
“Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For WHO HAS KNOWN THE MIND OF THE LORD, OR WHO BECAME HIS COUNSELOR? Or WHO HAS FIRST GIVEN TO HIM THAT IT MIGHT BE PAID BACK TO HIM AGAIN? For from Him (The Last Adam) and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.” (Romans 11:25-36 Emphasis added.)