How to Live in a Contractual Relationship with God

How to Live in a Contractual Relationship with God
Genesis 28:16-29: 14a

I was trying to explain to a group of Christians the difference between a covenant and a contract in order to suggest that God’s relationship with us is more like the former than the latter. I have a contract with the phone company and with the publishers of this book. I pay my phone bill; the phone company makes my phone work. I produce a manuscript; the publisher pays me a royalty. No payment; no phone connection; no phone connection; no payment. No manuscript; I have to return the advance. But I have a covenantal relationship with my wife. I am committed to her no matter what happens, whether or not she can “deliver” what one might expect from a wife. When you marry someone, you don’t say, “I will commit myself to you on condition that you commit yourself to me.” “Oh yes you do,” said one of the people in the group. I was a bit thrown by that—so thrown that I didn’t ask whether he was married. All I could say was that I thought he had an odd idea of marriage. Of course marriage is a two-sided commitment, but it seems to me that describing it in terms of contract and conditions obscures the nature of the relationship...