by Jeffery J. Ventrella

If one thing is plain from redemptive history, it is that God is active in fallen creation in drawing a redeemed people to Himself. Time and time again, as history progresses, God divides, God delivers those who are His, and then God destroys His enemies. He does so to serve redemption and the expansion of the Kingdom. This occurs from Genesis to Revelation. A little reflection makes this point plain: Cain and Abel, Noah and the world, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Moses and Pharaoh, David and Goliath, Elijah and Baal, Daniel and Babylon, Jesus and the Pharisees.

Scriptures metaphors likewise depict this continuing antithetical clash in vivid terms: light and darkness (Col. 1:13), sheep and goats (Matt. 25:33), wheat and tares (Matt. 13:30), spirit and flesh (Gal. 5:16), alive and dead (Eph. 2:5), and the wise and the fool (Proverbs passim). Augustine describes this enduring conflictone that serves redemptionas a clash between the City of God, on the one hand, and the City of Man on the other.

When battle lines are drawn in the wrong places

Sadly, what is too often forgotten is that this conflict occurs by design along covenantal linescovenant-keepers battling covenant-breakers. Consequently, when division and factions (sects) predominate the City of God, effective cultural engagementagain, conflict that serves redemptionis quenched, as is the Spirit.

The covenant debates of today often fail to recognize this critical component to the covenant: that the wars battle lines exist between covenant-breakers and covenant-keepersnot between brothers. Covenantmore than conditionality vel non, election, objectivity, justification, works, inclusion, et. al.is about relationship first and foremost: first to God and then among His people. When the covenant debate is factionalized and relationships thereby crumble, the antagonists cease to be covenantal despite the propriety of their propositions.

Todays covenant wars fail to appreciate that any community characterized by biting and devouring one another is a community that has dispensed with the gospel of grace, and hence the covenant. Any methodology that fails to place relational restoration as the predominant goal of the discussionrather than a rush to judicial jihadis manifestly, in a word, antinomian. Note that Jesus description of covenantal ethics is entirely relational:

And [Jesus] said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matt. 22:37-40 ESV, emphasis added)

Paul makes these points quite plain even (especially!) when dealing with the serious covenantal matters facing the churches in Galatia:

If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. (Gal. 5:25-6:3 ESV, emphasis added)

Covenantal debating

Failing to adhere to this ethical mandate produces the biting and devouring Paul previously describes (5:15). The covenants method must match the covenants propositions. Absent this trait, there is no true covenant and no valid covenantal theory. The controlling question is very simple: do we who participate in the covenantal debate seek more to be in the right club, or do we seek to truly win the culture for Christ. The covenant is the conduit for cultural victory because God develops the covenant along the lines of the covenantal antithesis. As a result, those in the covenant togetherin relationship and in communityassail the gates of Hadesnot each other. Any conduct that blunts this God-ordained pathway likewise truncates and retards cultural and hence, redemptive, progress. One cannot truly think covenantally while simultaneously promoting sects in the City of God. Such divisive conduct, no matter how it is labeled, is patently non-covenantal.