This is a sample chapter from my Systematic Theology project "Theology for Thriving". 📎MORE TO THE STORY notes are not part of the main text of the book, but additional resources, charts, or other materials from Biblical Theology class resources.
Genesis 17.1-7, 17-20 [1] When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. [2] And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” [3] Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, [4] “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. [5] No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. [6] I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. [7] I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you... [17] Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” [18] And Abraham said to God, “O that Ishmael might live in your sight!” [19] God said, “No, but your wife Sarah shall bear you a son, and you shall name him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. [20] As for Ishmael, I have heard you; I will bless him and make him fruitful and exceedingly numerous; he shall be the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.
🗝️ Key Concept: Covenants
It’s common to hear people say that Christianity is “a relationship, not a religion.” While the sentiment is understandable— it emphasizes a living connection with God over empty rituals— it creates a false choice. Every meaningful relationship has a definite shape, a set of expectations, and even its own rituals. Think about a marriage, a deep friendship, or the bond between a parent and child: They all have unwritten rules and shared practices that define them.
Religion is the word we use to describe the shape of our relationship with God, and Covenant is the ancient concept that helps us understand why that relationship has the shape it does. It might seem like an irrelevant, “churchy” word, but understanding covenants is key to mapping the entire story of the Bible. They help us understand the Divine relationship IN our religion.
A covenant is a relationship with duties and promises for all, sealed with sacred signs. While the original word could simply mean “contract,” its meaning in the Bible evolved into something much deeper and more personal. Unlike a modern contract, which is often transactional and focused on self-interest, a covenant is relational and based on mutual trust and faithfulness. Let’s break it down using examples from our own lives:
A business contract is an agreement. It has duties (I do this work, you pay me this amount) and promises (the work will be done to a certain standard, the payment will be on time). It is often sealed with a sign (a signature).
A marriage is a covenant. The duties and promises are the vows to love, honor, and cherish one another in all of life’s circumstances. The sacred sign is the exchange of rings. This is a commitment that goes far beyond a simple contract.
Parenthood is a covenant. A parent has a duty to protect, provide for, and nurture their child. In return, they receive the promise of love and the continuation of their family line. The sacred sign is the child themselves, a living symbol of the bond.
In the Bible, covenants refer to a number of relationships: The partnership between king and people (2Samuel 5:3); Peace treaties between peoples and nations (Joshua 9:1; 1Kings 5:12; Jeremiah 34:8); Business and trade agreements (Genesis 21:22-32; 31:44-54); Marriages (Proverbs 2:17; Malachi 2:14); And even friendships (1Samuel 18:3). But the most important covenants are the ones that define the relationship between God and humanity. They are the structures through which God invites us to partner with him in the great project of healing the world and bringing all creation to a state of thriving.
🔎 How do Covenants shape the Story of the Bible?
The story of God’s relationship with humanity unfolds through a series of covenants, each designed for a specific people, in a specific culture, in a specific period of history. The Bible uses a special vocabulary to talk about these different periods. The Hebrew word is olam and the Greek is aion. Both can be translated as “age,” “culture,” or “world.”
When we talk about “the Roman World” or “the Western World,” we are speaking in biblical terms. We mean a specific cultural system in a particular space and time. In this sense, some worlds are always coming to an end, while other worlds are always being born. This is important because when the Bible talks about the “end of the world,” it is often referring to the end of a particular olam or aion, not the destruction of the entire cosmos.
God relates to each aion through its own covenant, giving a distinct shape, or “economy” (oikonomia), to the relationship between the divine and the human. This means the same God can have different covenants with different groups of people at the same time. While most covenants in Scripture are for a specific people, a few are universal. The clearest example is the covenant God makes with Noah, called the "Noachide Covenant":
Scriptures: Genesis 8-9
Promises: God promises to never again destroy the earth with a flood and to preserve the regular rhythm of the seasons. This is a promise made to all of humanity and to every living creature.
Duties: In return, humanity is given a basic moral framework for living. Jewish tradition codified these duties into the "Seven Laws of Noah". They include prohibitions against idolatry, blasphemy, murder, theft, and sexual immorality, and the positive commands to establish courts of justice and to not eat the flesh of a still-living animal. These "Noahide Laws" were seen as the basic requirements for any non-Jew to be considered a “Righteous Gentile.”
Sacred Sign(s): The rainbow. Every time anyone sees a rainbow, it is a visible, physical reminder of God's promise to preserve and sustain the world.
🔎 What Covenants shaped the Israelite Community?
While the Noahide covenant was for all humanity, God also entered into a series of specific covenants with the ancestors of the Jewish people. These covenants progressively revealed God’s character and plan, shaping the identity of Israel. In them, we find God working through the lives of individuals, families, tribes, and ultimately a nation, to become a source of blessing to the world. These Israelite covenants include:
The Abrahamic Covenant: This covenant was made first with a person, then his family, which became a tribe, and then became a nation. It was so foundational that the Israelites identified their God as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Scriptures: Genesis 12, 15, 17
Promises: God promises to make Abraham the father of a multitude of nations, to give his descendants a land to dwell in, and to bless the entire world through him.
Duties: Abraham’s primary duty was to “walk before me, and be blameless,” a call to a life of faith and trust in God's promises.
Sacred Signs: Circumcision. This physical mark on the origin site of male "seed" was a permanent sign that the "seed" of Abraham would belong to the covenant community.
The Mosaic Covenant: This is a covenant that was made when the children of Abraham formed a society of tribes, and it centers around the Laws and norms for how to function as a society.
Source Scriptures: Exodus 19-24; Deuteronomy
Promises: God promises to make Israel his “treasured possession,” a “priestly kingdom and a holy nation,” who would represent him to the rest of the world.
Duties: Israel, in turn, agreed to live by the Law (Torah) that God gave them through Moses. This included the Ten Commandments and hundreds of other laws governing their worship, ethics, and community life.
Sacred Sign: The Sabbath. The weekly day of rest was a sign of Israel's unique relationship with God, a reminder that their life and security came from God, not their own constant labor.
The Davidic Covenant: This is the covenant that codified the ruling class of the nation of Israel, providing structural stability for an often chaotic confederation of tribes.
Source Scriptures: 2 Samuel 7; Psalm 89
Promises: After Israel became a kingdom, God made a covenant with King David, promising that his son would build a temple and that his royal line would endure forever.
Duties: David and his successors were expected to rule with justice and righteousness, according to the Mosaic Law.
Sacred Sign: The Temple in Jerusalem. It was the physical sign of God's presence with his people and the focal point of their worship.
It is crucial to understand that God's unique covenant relationship with the children of Israel continues to this day with the Jewish People. They are the direct inheritors of these Covenants because they are the only remnants of the Israelite kingdoms of 2500 years ago. Although Christians believe God has opened a New Covenant for all people, this does not replace or nullify God’s enduring promises to the Jewish people. As we will see below, the Living God is big enough to have covenant relationships with people of every tribe and tongue across the ages and stages of human evolution.
📎MORE TO THE STORY: See a chart on three historical ways that Judaism and Christianity have related to each other.
📖 Scriptural Reflection: Genesis 17:1-7, 17-20
The establishment of the Abrahamic covenant is one of the pivotal moments in the Bible. It shows the deeply personal, hopeful, and sometimes even bewildering nature of God's relationship with humanity. This passage is the basis for God’s specific covenant with the Jewish people, traced to Abraham through Isaac. The sheer impossibility of the promise— that a 100-year-old man and a 90-year-old woman would have a child— provokes a very human reaction from Abraham and Sarah: They laugh. It is a laugh of disbelief and doubt. Yet God does not rebuke him. Instead, he reaffirms the promise with specificity and even names the future child Isaac, a name that means “he laughs.”
God’s plan is firm. At the same time, the text shows God's graciousness. Abraham, in his doubt, tries to bargain for his other son as well: “O that Ishmael might live in your sight!” And God responds with a powerful blessing for Ishmael, promising to make him a great nation as well. This story reveals that from its very inception, the covenant contains the seed of a universal promise.
Abraham is not just promised to be the father of one nation, but a multitude of nations. This ancient story has been fulfilled in a way its authors could have never imagined. Today, Muslims trace their spiritual lineage to Abraham through Ishmael, while Jews and Christians trace their lineage to Abraham through Isaac. Together, they are “Abrahamic religions”, and they account for 1 out of every 2 people on planet Earth, from every Nation and culture. Abraham's Covenant promise has been literally fulfilled in these three "sibling religions".
🔎 Does God have Covenants with other peoples?
The special blessing given to Ishmael is a powerful hint that God’s covenantal love is not limited to a single nation. The prophets of Israel consistently looked forward to a day when all nations would be drawn to the light of God. The Bible even claims that the "Living God" has been actively working in the histories of other nations all along, drawing all peoples into a saving relationship (Romans 9.24-26, Acts 14.15, 1 Timothy 4.10).
In a shocking statement, God speaks through the prophet Amos: "Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel? Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?" (Amos 9:7). Here, God compares Israel's Exodus story to the migrations of their traditional enemies, implying God's providential care over them as well. Similarly, in Isaiah 19 God calls Egypt "my people", Assyria "the work of my hands", and Israel "my heritage". They will all worship the LORD together at the altar in the center of Egypt. Finally, Psalm 87 contains a startling vision where people from Egypt, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia are all spoken of as being "born in Zion," counted by God as his own beloved people.
The Bible includes many stories of non-Israelites who have a genuine relationship with God: The wise Magi from the East who came to worship the infant Jesus; The people of Lystra, to whom Paul said God had “not left himself without a witness” (Acts 14:17); The philosophers in Athens, whose altar to an “unknown god” Paul identified as the God of Israel (Acts 17:23). Truly, as Paul says in Romans 2: "God shows no favoritism", because there will be "glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek". And this Good News is true for all "those who dwell on earth, to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people" (Revelation 14:6).
This inclusion of all people in a relationship with the Living God is summed up by the prophets in the idea of the New Covenant. They spoke of an age when God would establish a Covenant that would not be written on stone tablets, and governed by external requirements. Instead, this New Covenant would be an "Inside out" covenant, written directly on human hearts (Jeremiah 31:31-34). This hope of this universal covenant was embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of the Messiah, Jesus.
Scriptures: Jeremiah 31; Ezekiel 36; Luke 22; Hebrews 8
Promises: The promise of the complete forgiveness of sins through the Messiah, who will bestow the gift of the Holy Spirit to transform our hearts from within. This culminates in the hope of resurrection and eternal life in a New Creation.
Duties: To be faithful to Jesus as Messiah and Lord, and to live by the “law of Christ”. This is the Great Commandment to love God with all our being and to love our neighbors as ourselves, empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Sacred Signs: Baptism, the sign of our death to the old self and rebirth into the covenant community, and the Eucharist, the sacred Communion meal where we are nourished by the life of Christ.
Through our covenant relationship with God in Jesus, we are all invited to find our place in the Great Story. We become partners with God, co-writers of the next chapter of his loving and redemptive work across the ages, so we all can thrive!
📚 Topical Scriptures
Here are some Scripture passages which explore and elaborate on the themes of this chapter. As you look them up and study them, think about how they relate to the Key Concept and Guiding Questions.
Genesis 12:1-9, 15:1-18, & 17:1-8
This collection of passages shows the three-stage unfolding of the Abrahamic Covenant. In chapter 12, God makes the initial promises of land, descendants, and blessing. In chapter 15, the covenant is formally ratified with a dramatic ritual ceremony. Finally, in chapter 17, God establishes circumcision as the permanent sign of the covenant and changes Abram's name to Abraham, "father of a multitude."
Exodus 19:1-8
This is the moment at Mount Sinai when God formally proposes the Mosaic Covenant to the people of Israel. Observe how this covenant is conditional: If they obey God's voice and keep his covenant, then they will be his treasured possession and a priestly kingdom.
2 Samuel 7:8-17
The prophet Nathan delivers the Davidic Covenant to King David. Note that this is a royal grant covenant, an unconditional promise from God that David's house and kingdom will be established forever, forming the basis for messianic hope.
Psalm 87:1-7
This is a radical poem that envisions a future where Israel's traditional enemies— Egypt (Rahab) and Babylon— along with others, are counted by God as native-born citizens of Zion. It points to a universal scope for God's covenant love that transcends national boundaries.
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Amid the crisis of exile, Jeremiah delivers a stunning prophecy of a New Covenant. Look for how this future covenant will be different: it will be internal, written on the heart, and will result in an intimate, universal knowledge of God and the complete forgiveness of sins.
Ezekiel 36:24-28
This is a key prophecy about the internal transformation that will mark the New Covenant. God promises to cleanse his people, remove their "heart of stone," and give them a "new heart" and a "new spirit," enabling them to live in right relationship from the inside out.
Amos 9:7-15
In this startling passage, God challenges Israel's sense of exceptionalism by comparing their Exodus to the migrations of the Philistines and Arameans. It suggests God's sovereign and providential care extends to all nations, not just Israel.
Luke 22:14-23
At the Last Supper, Jesus institutes the New Covenant. He takes the traditional Passover meal, a celebration of the Mosaic Covenant, and reinterprets the bread and wine as his body and blood, the sacred sign of a new relationship with God.
Acts 17:22-31
Paul’s speech to the philosophers in Athens is a masterclass in contextual theology. He argues that the Athenians' "unknown god" is the one true God who created all nations and is not far from any of them, inviting them into a new understanding of their relationship with the divine.
Hebrews 8:6-13
The author explains how Jesus is the mediator of a superior, New Covenant. This passage quotes Jeremiah 31 at length to argue that the New Covenant fulfills and surpasses the Mosaic Covenant, making it the ultimate expression of God's relationship with humanity.
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