Covenant Love

I am currently teaching with Darla Loy among our Life Groups about Covenant. We just moved to a new group last week so last night was my first time with the group. At the end we discussed a few comments on my teaching and ended up having a great discussion on covenant love. Looking at 1 John 3:16 which says, "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." This is the love we should have for our brothers and sisters in Christ. We futher discussed that even if you meet another Christian on the street, once you find this out there is a certain level of love that is shared that is not/can not be shared with someone that is not a Christian but is instead of the world. All of this is based on the New Covenant that God has made with us, and because of this covenant we can now live in covenant with our brothers and sisters. It's important to remember this covenant is not for our personal benefit, although it is an added blessing when we come into the family of God. As the Body of Christ we are protraying God to the World. The Godhead is the perfect example of a covenant relationship as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit live in perfect unity. As the Body of Christ grasps this we will reveal to the World who God trully is. We will be seen as a united people who have the same vision and purpose in mind. We will not be seen as a stiff group of people who simply don't know how to have relationships with each other, as sadly so many churches have today. I pray that the Church will continue to recieve revelation about the Covenant of God with His people and that we would begin to walk out a covenant relationship by attaining the same purpose of advancing the Kingdom of God.

To finish off, a quote from Erling Thu's Covenant Friendship: "There is a perfect harmony between the persons of the Godhead and God wants that peace to be expressed in the covenant community of His people. Peace is the result of God’s activity in covenant, and is expressed in completeness, wholeness, harmony, and fulfillment in a relationship."