The Bible is full of many words and many ideas. We are familiar with many; and with others—not so much.
One of the major ideas of the Bible is “covenant.” We do hear this word as we listen to sermons and read the Bible. We sometimes use the word “covenant” in our everyday speech. But the Scriptures convey that “covenant” is very important for us to understand. It is so major that the Bible itself is divided into “two covenants”! A synonym for “covenant” is “testament.” So we are very familiar with the Bible’s two “covenants” or two “testaments”: the Old Testament and the New Testament. This is about as “basic” as one can be when talking about the Bible!
In the Bible, “covenant” has been said to be “the major metaphor used to describe the relation between God and Israel (the people of God).[i] This is a big deal! How God relates with humans—Israel (in the Old Testament) and believers in Christ, the church (in the New Testament), is through the relation of a “covenant.”
In Protestant theology—and especially in the sixteenth-century Reformed theology that emerged from the work of John Calvin, Huldrych Zwingli, Heinrich Bullinger, and others—“covenant” usually refers to “God’s gracious promise to Abraham and his spiritual descendants that God will be a God and father to them and that they, enabled by God’s grace, will live before God in faith and loving obedience.”[ii] In the Old Testament, the covenant began with the call of Abraham (Gen. 12; 13; 15; 17:1-7) . It is often mentioned in the Psalms (Ps. 89; 105) and the Prophets (Jer. 31:31-34).
In the New Testament, the “new covenant” is given in the person of Jesus Christ who brings salvation and new life to God’s people (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). Implications of the new covenant in Jesus Christ for the church, the people of God, are explored in the New Testament epistles (2 Cor. 3:6; Heb. 8-10; 12:24; 13:20).
We find that the “teaching of the covenant that God established with the people of God and sealed with the blood of Jesus Christ is a major NT theme, just as its fundamental idea was at the center of Israel’s religious life. It runs throughout the two Testaments as a golden chain holding them together, with Jesus Christ the connecting link.”[iii] Covenant is central—and crucial! God’s covenants with God’s people, culminating in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ unites the whole Bible. God’s covenant in Jesus Christ binds Christian believers to Christ himself, by faith. God’s covenant in Jesus Christ binds Christian believers to each other in bonds of love and fellowship.
Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant
One of the important theologians who explored the importance of God’s covenant for Christian faith was Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575).[iv] Bullinger was the successor to Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Church of Zürich and a pastor at the Grossmünster church. He was a major Protestant theologian whose teachings—especially on the covenant—were very significant in the development of what became known as “Covenant theology.”[v]
Bullinger’s theological treatise on the covenant, De Testamento (1534) has been seen as especially important.[vi] For Bullinger, the covenant (or testament) was “the scopus [goal, target] of all Scriptures.”[vii] The main story of the Bible is the story of God’s unfolding covenants with God’s people. Covenant is central and “from 1525 onward the covenant served not only as a central dogma but as a unifying locus that shaped Bullinger’s exegesis as well as his systematic thinking.”[viii] As Bullinger interpreted Scripture and as he formulated his theological viewpoints, God’s “covenant” was what unified his understandings of the whole Bible and of Christian theology itself. More specifically, “the covenant is ultimately identified with union with Christ.”[ix]
Bullinger set forth his understanding of biblical terms relating to “covenant.” He saw the Latin term testimonium as the basic term for “covenant” (Lat. foedus) in his work, rendering the Hebrew term berith and the Greek term diathēke.[x] God entered into a covenant with Abraham (Gen. 17: 1-14) “according to human custom.” Here God promises to make an “everlasting covenant” with Abraham. God promised to be “your God and the God of your seed after you.” The land of Canaan will be given to them as “as everlasting possession” and “I will be their God.” Then: “And you on your part, will keep my covenant, you and your seed in their generations.” This is the covenant between God and Abraham and “your seed after you” (17:5b). The sign of this covenant is “circumcision.”[xi]
Bullinger says that here we find: 1) “who bound themselves together, namely, God and the descendants of Abraham;” 2) “the text states the conditions under which they bound themselves together, specifically that God wished to be the God of the descendants of Abraham and that the descendants of Abraham ought to walk uprightly before God.” 3) “It is explained that the covenant is made between them forever.” 4) “The entire covenant is confirmed with a specific ceremony (6a) in blood.”[xii]
The tremendous importance of this covenant is that here “the ineffable mercy and divine grace of the eternal God are proven” in that “God offers this covenant not in any way because of the merits of humans but rather out of the sheer goodness which is God’s nature.”[xiii] Bullinger went on to say:
I do not know whether humans are capable either of conceiving this mystery fully or conveying how praiseworthy it is. For what greater deed than this has ever been heard of in the world, that the eternal power and majesty, the immortal (6b) all-knowing God, the creator of the universe in whom all things subsist, by whom all things exist, and through whom all things are preserved, joined himself in covenant with miserable mortals corrupted by sin. This indisputably is the origin of our religion and its primary point: we are saved solely through the goodness and mercy of God.[xiv]
This is the amazing God who has established Abraham “and his seed”!
Bullinger continued to show that
lest anyone think this saying applies only to people of the Old Testament but not also to those of the New Testament, let him listen to Paul speaking in Galatians: ‘Those who are Christ’s are the offspring of Abraham’ (Gal. 3:29). Again,‘those who are heirs are the descendants of Abraham’ [Gal. 3:7]. Yet again, ‘Those who are holy are the seed of Abraham’ [cf. Gal. 3:9]. If you connect these statements—they are children of Christ, they are heirs, they are holy—it follows automatically that the children are the seed of Abraham and they are in the covenant.[xv]
Believers in Christ receive the promise of God in the covenant with Abraham, united by Christ and through Christ with the covenant-making God. God reached out to establish an everlasting covenant with Abraham and his offspring who receive God’s covenant promises.
From all these promises, said Bullinger,
we are able to gain a full understanding that this God is the highest good, that he is our God, that he is all-sufficient, that he has made a covenant with us, and that the promises and conditions offered in that covenant are not only material but also spiritual. Most important, as explained to the Galatians [3:16] by the apostle, Abraham was promised the Lord Jesus, in whom is all fullness, righteousness, sanctification, (14a), redemption, and salvation (1 Cor. 1 [30]), of whose fullness we have all received, grace for grace (John 1 [16]), because it pleased the Father that all fullness dwell in him, and through his blood on the cross he has made peace with everything that is in heaven and one earth (Col. 1 [19-20]. And this same Jesus is the inheritance itself which has been bequeathed to those who trust in the one and eternal covenant of God.[xvi]
The covenant-making God has given those who believe in Jesus Christ all the promises made to Abraham which culminate in God’s ultimate promise: Jesus Christ. For “Christ Jesus, the bless of Abraham [comes] to the Gentile, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith,” says Paul (Gal. 3:14).
Bullinger summarized:
The God of heaven, that highest and eternal power and majesty, through whom all things exist, in whom all things consist and are moved, wishes to be the God of Abraham and of his descendants. That is, God offers himself for their benefit, seeing that he is sufficient for all those things necessary for humans, so that now he might promise to them power and every kind of strength. Namely, (14b) God will be their protector, confederate, and savior, who is going to strengthen the otherwise weak human race in spirit and in flesh, and who through Christ the Lord is going to liberate the human race from sin and from eternal death and give eternal life.[xvii]
This is the great and gracious God who does for humans what we cannot do for ourselves: promising them power and “every kind of strength,” being our “savior,” strengthening weak humans and then liberating us from “sin and eternal death” through Jesus Christ and giving us “eternal life”!
The Greatest Mystery in the Entire World
Bullinger went on to discuss “the duties of humans and what they owe to God,” the “conditions of the Covenant” with “the promises of God and His offer of Himself in the Covenant,” how the covenant is the subject or “target” (Lat. scopus) at which “all Scripture aims,” and then “Christ, the Seal and Living Confirmation of the Covenant.”[xviii]
Bullinger praised Jesus Christ. He wrote:
What am I to say about Christ, who, not only in every teaching but also in his most astounding incarnation, explained and confirmed in a marvelous and living way that eternal covenant of God made with the human race? For when the true God assumed true humanity, then he no longer acted with words or arguments.[xix]
Then Bullinger made a comment that should take our breath away!
In describing Christ in his incarnation as the true God, Jesus, assuming true humanity, and thereby confirming—in a living way—“that eternal covenant God made with the human race”—in light of this spectacular event, Bullinger said: By the event of Jesus Christ, God “bore witness to the greatest mystery in the entire world, namely, that God admitted humans into the covenant and into partnership, indeed that he bound them to himself with an indissoluble bond by the highest miracle of love, and that he is our God.”[xx]
What is the “greatest mystery in the entire world”? We might think of a number of things. But truly, believed Bullinger: the “greatest mystery in the entire world” is what we celebrate at Christmas—and in every day of our lives as Christian people. The “greatest mystery in the entire world” is that God has reached out! God has reached out to the fallen, sinful human race. God has reached out to sinners such as us: and God has “admitted humans into the covenant and partnership” which God has provided and which he promised Abraham. God has reached out and bound we ourselves to God by the bond of that “miracle of love”—given to us in Jesus Christ. In Christ, God has given us salvation: bound us forever with God through God’s love in Jesus Christ!
God did not “have to” reach out to us sinners with a covenant love that, in Jesus Christ, binds us forever to God. God could have “let us alone”—to “stew in our own juices”—to receive the just results of our sin: being cast away from God’s presence, forever! But “miracle upon miracle,”—in the “greatest mystery in the entire world,” God did reach us to us sinners. In love, God established a covenant, to draw us sinners to God’s own self in love—now and forever—in Jesus Christ! This is the greatest “miracle” of all. This is—indeed!—“the greatest mystery in the entire world”!
This Christmas—and every day of our lives, let us heed Heinrich Bullinger: “Hear that greatest mystery: God was made human, that is, was totally made one of us and has dwelt among us. Hear that his power and glory have brought light into the world, and for no other reason except to draw us by the most beautiful benefits into his love.”[xxi]
Dr. Donald K. McKim is an Honorably Retired minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and lives with his wife, LindaJo, in Knoxville, Tennessee. Some of his publications include: Following in the Way of Jesus: Theological Thoughts for Daily Living (Wipf & Stock, 2023); (with Jim West), Heinrich Bullinger: An Introduction to His Life and Theology (Wipf & Stock, 2022); Everyday Prayer with the Puritans (P&R, 2021); Everyday Prayer with John Calvin (P&R, 2019). Several of his other articles can also be found at The Presbyterian Outlook https://pres-outlook.org/?s=mckim
[i] The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992), s.v. “Covenant,” George Mendenhall, 1:1179.
[ii] Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith, ed. Donald K. McKim (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), s.v. “Covenant,” M. Eugene Osterhaven, 84. Osterhaven wrote that the concept of covenant “has a richer theological meaning and more frequent usage in the Reformed tradition than in any other.”
[iii] Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith, 85-86.
[iv] On Bullinger, see Donald K. McKim and Jim West, Heinrich Bullinger: An Introduction to His Life and Theology. Cascade Companions (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2022).
[v] See Pierrick Hilderbrand, The Zurich Origins of Reformed Covenant Theology, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024), p. 2.
[vi] Hilderbrand, 158-163. See Bullinger, A Brief Exposition of the One and Eternal Covenant of God, trans. Charles S. McCoy and J. Wayne Baker in Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant Tradition (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), 98-138. Cf. https://pdfcoffee.com/heinrich-bullinger-a-brief-exposition-of-the-one-and-eternal-testament-or-covenant-of-god-pdf-free.html. This is a translation of Bullinger’s German title De testamento seu foedere dei unico et aeterna, Heinrychi Bullingeri brevis exposition (Zurich: Christoph Froschauer, 1534).
[vii] Hilderbrand, 158.
[viii] Hilderbrand, 164.
[ix] Hilderbrand, 202.
[x] See A Brief Exposition, 102 n. 7 where Baker writes that Bullinger clearly states “covenant—was the basic meaning of testamentum in this treatise.” Cf. Hilderbrand, 158-164 who speaks of Bullinger’s “integration of covenant and testament,”161.
[xi] A Brief Exposition, 104.
[xii] A Brief Exposition, 104.
[xiii] A Brief Exposition, 104.
[xiv] A Brief Exposition, 105.
[xv] A Brief Exposition, 107.
[xvi] A Brief Exposition, 110.
[xvii]A Brief Exposition, 110.
[xviii] A Brief Exposition, 110-115.
[xix] A Brief Exposition, 115.
[xx] A Brief Exposition, 115.
[xxi] A Brief Exposition, 116.