Mission in the Context of Covenant: Implications for the Environment

Howard A. Snyder is International Representative of the Manchester Research Centre and former professor of the history and theology of mission, Asbury Theological Seminary.

WCIU Journal: Environmental Studies Topic

October 18, 2019

by Howard A. Snyder

Introduction

In contemporary theology, mission and covenant are not often paired in any practical or profound way. In Scripture, however, mission and covenant are intimately, ecologically, linked.

I will attempt to show this, looking at the central role of covenant in the Bible, and how this shapes the theology and practice of mission.

We are dealing here with fundamental theology.

I. Three Foundational Truths 

What are the most fundamental, essential truths of the Bible? Salvation through Jesus Christ by the Spirit? Yes, but underlying and preceding this central biblical message are three essential biblical revelations.

First: The existence and character of the Lord God, Yahweh.

The Bible begins with the acts of God in creation. This of course affirms God’s existence and power, and begins to reveal his character.

Second: Humankind created in God’s image.

“God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). This is foundational, of course, for all that follows. God created man and woman as “capable of God,” as John and Charles Wesley said—that is, with capacity to relate personally with God, and also in ecological relationship with the rest of creation.

Third: Covenant.

Covenant is the third most basic revelation in Scripture. Why? Because covenant is the connection between God and humankind. This is the central theme and thesis I will elaborate in this article.

These then are the three most foundational revealed truths of Scripture: The Lord God, human creation in God’s image, and covenant as the link between God and God-imaged humans.

II. The Character of God  

Before we can really understand the importance of creation in God’s image and the dynamic of covenant, we must pay attention to the character of God. The central biblical revelation about God is not his existence or power, but his character. A main function of the entire Old Testament is to reveal God’s character. Yahweh is revealed to be above all a God of lovingkindness and covenant faithfulness. These terms describe the essential character of Yahweh, the Lord God.

The two key Hebrew terms here are hesed (occurring 239 times in the Old Testament) and emunah (found 49 times).

First, hesed. The best English translation of hesed is the compound word “loving-kindness” (found 33 times in the KJV), though modern versions prefer terms such as “steadfast love,” “unfailing love,” or simply “love” or “mercy.”

Second, emunah. This can be translated as faithfulness. Throughout the Old Testament, however, emunah consistently has the sense of covenant-faithfulness. It is based on the Hebrew word for truth (emet, 125 times in the Hebrew Bible) . Yahweh faithfully keeps covenant, always and ever; he is always true to himself and his Word. Further, God’s covenant-faithfulness is closely related to his lovingkindness.

Psalm 92:1-3 combines these two accents: “It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love [hesed, lovingkindness] in the morning, and your faithfulness [emunah covenant-faithfulness] by night, to the music of the lute and the harp, to the melody of the lyre.” Or again: “Your steadfast love [hesed], O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness [emunah] to the clouds” (Ps 36:5).

To understand the gospel and mission, we must understand God’s essential character as lovingkindness and covenant-faithfulness. All that Jesus Christ was and said and did is based on this reality of the revealed character of God.

III. Covenant: God in Relationship

When we consider mission, we often speak of the kingdom of God—as we should. (See my books Community of the King, Models of the Kingdom, Kingdom, Church, and World, and Decoding the Church.) In Scripture, however, the kingdom of God is preceded by emphasis on God’s covenant and his covenant fidelity.

Although the Bible speaks much of God as king, it speaks even more of God as covenant-maker. Already in Genesis 6:18 God says to Noah, “I will establish my covenant with you.” This is a key event in the story of God’s redemptive plan.

So also of Abraham. When God calls Abram and makes covenant with him, God says: “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. . . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:2-3).

This is a thousand years before the emergence of the kingdom of Israel.

In the Bible, covenant precedes kingdom. This is important to note. God’s covenant loyalty is the larger sphere within which kingdom language, and thus the kingdom of God itself, unfolds. God is king and sovereign. But his covenant mercy and lovingkindness reveal the nature and essential character of God as King.

The Old Testament never describes God as king until Numbers 23. With a few exceptions, the many pagan kings mentioned earlier in Scripture were unjust—the opposite of Yahweh. The first time the Bible mentions God as king seems to be when the pagan prophet Balaam, called by King Balak to curse the Israelites, says, “The Lord their God is with them, acclaimed as a king among them” (Num. 23:21).

Later when Israel demands that the prophet Samuel give them a king, God tells Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Sam. 8:7). Eventually however God makes a key chess move, raising up David as Israel’s king. With him and then with King Solomon, kingdom of God language emerges in the Old Testament, flowering in Psalms.

Certainly God is sovereign King. But in the Bible he first reveals himself not as King but as Creator and faithful Covenant Partner—thus revealing his character and relational faithfulness. Abraham and his descendants were familiar with the kings of the nations around them. But God comes to Abraham and his family not first as king but as loving covenant maker.

In the biblical narrative, then, covenant comes first. Then kingship. This reflects the fact that in Scripture family precedes monarchy and every other established political form. Family of course traces back to the beginning (Gen. 1–2).

In the Bible, the kingdom of God exists and functions within the larger sphere of God’s covenant—his covenant provisions, faithfulness, and promises. God the King is first of all covenant maker and faithful covenant partner.

As Messiah, Jesus is “the Messenger of the Covenant.” Malachi 3:1 reads, “The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in” (KJV).

Jesus Messiah comes to restore and renew God’s covenant with his people and with the earth (Gen. 9:13). When John the Baptist is born, his father Zechariah exclaims, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. … he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham” (Luke 1:68, 72-73).

Later Jesus uses covenant language in speaking of his unique work. “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood,” he says at the Last Supper (Luke 22:20). Hebrews 12:24 assures us that Jesus is “the mediator of a new covenant” who has come in fulfillment of the promise that God would “make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jer. 31:31; see Heb. 8:8-13).

These covenant references signal a major biblical theme. At the very heart of Israel’s faith, and thus of the gospel story, is a covenant—a pledge and a promise, not an idol or graven image! At the heart of the story is the Lord God who makes and keeps covenant.

The English word covenant occurs 323 times in the NRSV Bible. All the covenants in the Bible have in view God’s larger purpose and plan for the world’s redemption.

When Jesus speaks of a “new covenant,” he is invoking the central Old Testament covenant theme and the many biblical covenant references. Particularly he is referring to the Sinai covenant under Moses and the new covenant promises in Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

This conceptual framework of covenant was the common Jewish understanding on the night when Jesus gathered the Twelve in the upper room for the last meal before his suffering and death. The Jews were expecting a Messiah. Jesus shows his apostles what it means for him to actually be Messiah.

Jesus said at the Last Supper, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). Jesus came and by his death and resurrection established the New Covenant, as prophesied in Jeremiah 31 (Heb. 9:14-15; cf. Ezek. 34:23-31). Paul reminds us of Jesus’ words, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25).

In sum: the many biblical covenant references show that covenant is a central concept and truth in Scripture. In terms of salvation and mission, it is the most basic revealed truth after the truth of who the Lord God is and the creation of man and woman in the image of God. I say this because covenant defines the relationship between Yahweh and humankind. What binds God and humans together is covenant—implicit in the Garden of Eden and explicit later, after the Fall. Covenant is also what binds man and woman together in marriage and believers together in the church.

IV. The Covenants of Salvation 

Given this prominence of covenant in Scripture, we should not be surprised that the whole story of salvation is woven together with the theme of covenant.

Yahweh relates to his creation first of all as Creator, then as Sustainer and Judge. But in salvation history, the Lord God establishes relationships of covenant in order to have ongoing communion with his creatures—most especially humans, in-breathed by the divine image. This is the path toward fulfilling God's larger purposes.

As we noted above, covenant precedes kingdom. The Lord God who is King is first of all faithful Covenant Partner. After the Fall, God initiated a series of covenants in order to bring redemption—full liberation and healing from all the effects of sin.

To grasp the full dimensions of salvation, we must observe the sequence of the four main covenants that prepare the way for New Covenant in Jesus Christ.

Covenant at Creation 

We begin in Genesis 1. Although the word covenant is not found in Genesis 1–2, God does in fact establish a covenant relationship with Adam and Eve and the whole creation. In fact God later speaks of “my covenant with day and night and the ordinances of heaven and earth” (Jer 33:25).

Covenant is pictured in narrative form in the interactions between Yahweh and Adam and Eve and in their relationship with the trees of the garden. Genesis 2:15-17 reads, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.’” Further, Adam’s naming of the animals (Gen. 2:19-20) may be seen as Adam’s affirming or asserting humankind’s implicit covenant relationship with the rest of creation, corresponding to God’s naming in creation (Gen. 1) and naming of humankind (Gen. 5:2).

Thus in the creation narrative, we see a covenant relationship established between God, humankind, and the rest of creation, embodied in the garden of Eden and Adam and Eve’s place in it. This initial relationship, with God—People—Earth, becomes the foundation for all the biblical covenants.

Genesis 3 tells how Adam and Eve broke covenant with Yahweh and thus with each other and with the earth. This brought judgment and the sequence of covenants that largely structure the whole Bible story.

Covenant with Noah and the Earth 

After the judgment of the Flood, God says to Noah: “I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you” (Gen. 9:9-10). Genesis 9 thus marks a new beginning. (The story of redemption begins here (Prefigured already in Gen 3:9 and 3:15), not with Abraham’s call. Crucially, this covenant specifies the ongoing post-Fall relationship between God and all humanity.

Genesis 9 tells the story:

God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. … This is the sign of the covenant that I make … for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. … When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (Gen. 9:8-9, 12-13, 16).

Note especially the phrase, “the covenant between me and the earth” (verse 13). The Genesis 9 covenant is a three-way covenant, not a narrow contract between God and humans only. It is a covenant between God, all people, and all the earth, with all its creatures.

This Noahic covenant involves not only God and Noah’s family, as we might expect, but “every living creature . . . that is on the earth” (Gen. 9:16). Some might argue that the earth cannot be a covenant partner because it has no conscious will, but this contradicts the biblical text and worldview. Also, some argue that Genesis 9 describes a unilateral, unconditional covenant, unlike the later Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants. But stewardship implications (conditions) are already implicit in the creation account (Gen. 1–2) and become the foundation for the explicit importance of land in the later biblical covenants. Yahweh is the primary covenant partner: this is “my covenant,” God says (Gen. 9:9). The second covenant partner is Noah and his family—that is humankind, all the human family that descends from Noah: “your descendants after you, . . . for all future generations” (Gen. 9:9, 12).

Earth, including all its creatures, is the third covenant partner. This is surprisingly specific and comprehensive, and is given sevenfold emphasis:

“every living creature that is with you” (verses 10, 12)

“every animal of the earth with you” (verse 10)

“every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (verse 16)

“all flesh that is on the earth” (verse 17)

The references grow increasingly broad and inclusive, God saying in verse 13, “the covenant between me and the earth.”

Why this stress on “every living creature”? This echoes the full variety of creatures formed at creation—a rich biodiversity. It also recalls God’s words to Noah to take “every kind” of creature into the ark (Gen. 7:2). The “every creature” emphasis is also practical and ecological, a matter of human sustenance. Robust human health requires an abundance of creatures in wide biodiversity, all in relative ecological balance.

The “every creature” emphasis signals God’s concern for all the creatures he has made. God himself has a covenant with every creature of every species. We think of Jesus’ words: “not one [sparrow] is forgotten in God’s sight” (Luke 12:16).

So Genesis 9 reveals a three-dimensional covenant, not a contract solely between God and humans. It is a covenant between God, all people, and the whole earth. This covenant  may be pictured this way: 

This covenant promises that God will “never again” destroy the earth by flood. But its meaning is far broader. This is a covenant of preservation. “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22). God promises to preserve the earth, working out his saving plan through subsequent covenants he will make, culminating in the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus.

God’s covenant with the earth is thus also a covenant of preparation. God intends not merely to preserve but to create something greater. This first covenant with people and the land prepares the way for God’s plan of salvation and New Creation through Jesus Christ. We see here a coherent, consistent trajectory.

God says this is an everlasting, ongoing covenant. It is not temporary, not interim, not transitory. Rather, it’s a covenant “for all future generations” (Gen. 9:12). Significantly, the phrase “everlasting covenant” here (Gen. 9:15) is the same phrase Scripture uses to describe all the key biblical covenants. Throughout the Old Testament, in fact, when God promises restoration and the messianic kingdom, land (the earth) is included (consistent with Gen. 9). (See for example Isa. 1:14, 4:2, 6:3, 6:11-12, 11:1-9, 14:20, 15:6, 24:1-23, 30:23-26, 35:1-10, 40:3-5, 41:17-20, 42:5, 43:18-21, 44:23-24, 49:6, 52:10, 55:9-13, 62:4; Jer. 2:6-7, 3:15-20, 7:20, 18:15-16, 22:26-29, 30:1-3, 31:11-14, 50:33-34; Ezek. 11:17, 34:25-29, 36:16-36, 37:14; Hos. 2:18-23 [especially pointed]; Zech. 7:14. And there are many, many more. Some are promises of restoration; others are promises of judgment—reflecting the two ways: fidelity or infidelity to God’s covenant.). Every covenant involves responsibilities and expectations, and that is true here. As the first step on the way to New Covenant, the Genesis 9 covenant begins the restoration of what was lost in the Fall. In Genesis 1 and 2 God gave man and woman a stewardship “dominion over” all earth’s creatures (Gen. 1:26), placing Adam and Eve in the garden “to till it and to keep it” (Gen. 2:15)—words that clearly suggest stewardship. The Genesis 9 covenant is a key first step in re-establishing humans as God’s stewards, his vice-regents on earth, his intermediaries between Creator and the rest of creation, with God-given stewardship responsibilities.

Does God really have an eternal covenant with the earth and all its creatures? A covenant that is still in effect? Yes! Already in Genesis 9 God signals that the promised new heaven and new earth means the renewal, not the extinction, of God’s creatures—the continuity of his redemption plan.

In the Noahic Earth Covenant, then, God acts to preserve the earth, limiting his judgment (the flood) so he can fulfill his larger purposes. We begin to see that God’s plan is to save people with their environment, not out of their environment.

Covenant with Abraham and Descendants  

Abram—later, Abraham—first appears in Genesis 11, two chapters after God announces his covenant with the earth. Abram’s father, Terah, moves the family from Ur of the Chaldeans to Haran. From there God calls Abram and his wife Sarai to journey “to the land that I will show you.” Yahweh says, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:1-3).

This is the next key step in God’s redemptive plan for the whole human family and the whole earth.

Later, in the land of Canaan, the Lord God appeared and “made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates’” (Gen. 15:18). Like all salvation covenants, this is a covenant involving both people and land. In Genesis 17 God expands and clarifies the covenant: “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. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous” (Gen. 17:1-2). God reveals to Abram the ethical, relational dimensions of this key covenant: “walk before me, and be blameless.” Yahweh changes Abram’s name to Abraham, saying, “for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 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” (Gen. 17:5-7).

Here, in language similar to Genesis 9, Yahweh establishes the next key covenant in salvation history. This covenant teaches us much about faith and obedience, as later Scriptures make clear.

Covenant with Moses and Israel 

The rest of Genesis tells of Abraham’s expanding family over three generations, the continuation of God’s covenant with Abraham’s son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob, and their descendants, and the family’s journey to Egypt.

Exodus then is the story of Israel’s slavery in Egypt, and of their deliverance through Moses. We read, “The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exod. 2:23-24). Several chapters recount the power encounters with Pharaoh, and finally Israel’s deliverance through Passover and Exodus.

After delivering the people from Egypt, Moses leads Israel to Sinai. There God establishes a new and decisive covenant, as we read especially in Exodus 19 and 20. Yahweh tells his people: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:4-6).

God is creating a new people, with a new loyalty, a new song, a new culture, a whole new way of life, a new story and history, and with the promise of “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exod. 3:8). This covenant is embodied in the Ten Commandments, the Tabernacle, and the ongoing guidance of Yahweh.

We note that this Mosaic covenant, wonderful as it is, is conditional: “if you obey my voice and keep my covenant.” It involves two ways: The way of fidelity and the way of infidelity. We may call this eschatology contingency (Snyder with Scandrett 2011, 159-63)

Many years later, as Israel is about to enter the promised land, these two ways are laid out dramatically (Deut. 27–28). Blessings and curses are pronounced: Blessings for obedience, and curses for disobedience. God through Moses tells the people plainly: “This very day the Lord your God is commanding you to observe these statutes and ordinances; so observe them diligently with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you have obtained the Lord’s agreement: to be your God; and for you to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, his commandments, and his ordinances, and to obey him” (Deut. 26:16-17).

People are posted on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal to proclaim God’s covenant and to pronounce blessings and curses. This dramatic act drives home the serious meaning of the covenant. God says, “If you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field” (Deut. 28:1-3). They will blessed in all their ways and undertakings. The land will flourish. But God tells them, “if you will not obey the Lord your God by diligently observing all his commandments and decrees, . . . then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you: Cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the field,” and in everything else (Deut. 28:15-16).

Here are the two ways. Both the people and the land depend on Israel’s fidelity to the covenant. Eschatology contingency.

The rest of the Old Testament is the story of Israel’s occasional fidelity, but more often infidelity, leading eventually to destruction and exile, with only a remnant returning. But all through this history, God’s prophets promise a new age in which God will do a new thing for people and the land. God’s messengers begin to speak of a new covenant.

Promise and Fulfillment of New Covenant 

Several Old Testament prophets promise a New Covenant which will far surpass all that God has done in the past. Yet it will build upon the sequence of earlier covenants.

The fullest prophecy comes in Jeremiah 31:

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more (Jer. 31:31-34. See Heb. 8:6-13).

The prophet Ezekiel speaks similarly of a future new covenant. God speaks of a time when he will “save” and “cleanse” his people “from all [their] apostasies.” “Then they shall be my people, and I will be their God. My servant David shall be king over them; and they shall all have one shepherd. . . . They shall live in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, . . . and my servant David shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them; and I will bless them and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary among them forevermore” (Ezek. 37:23-26).

This is fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

After Jesus’ resurrection, his apostles began to understand that he himself was the fulfillment of the New Covenant—in himself, and in the kingdom he announced and inaugurated and the people he formed. Jesus will reign forever—“of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33).

Taken together, this sequence of biblical covenants gives us the entire structure of the biblical narrative:

Here then is the biblical story of salvation, redemption, creation healed: A sequence of covenants leading from Creation to New Creation.

V. The Mission of New Covenant People 

All this has rich meaning for mission. Of the many potential implications for mission, I will focus on the following.

Necessity of Biblical Covenant Theology  

Churches today need a robust covenant theology—not the traditional covenant or “federal” theologies of the past, but covenant in the full biblical sense I have outlined here.

In the 1600s in Europe, covenant or federal theology (from the Latin word for “covenant,” foedus) seemed to offer hope for a more biblically-based view of salvation. Stressing the biblical covenants, federal theology made room for human agency and historical processes in the divine economy. Here was a way around the rigid orthodoxy of Reformed scholasticism.

Unfortunately however, key covenant theologians such as Johannes Cocceius largely ignored God’s covenant with the earth (Gen. 9:8-17; Jer. 33:20, 25). Earth, as earth, was still virtually invisible. The focus was solely on the covenant between God and humans. American Puritans sometimes linked the biblical promise of land with America as a new promised land. But this idea was based in God’s covenant of grace with his chosen people, not a distinct covenant with the land or earth itself. It missed the biblical point.

A key missional challenge today, therefore, is to explore the biblical meaning of covenant for Christian mission in the earth.

The Church as Covenant Community 

The church is God’s covenant community. It is the community of the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus Christ. This basic New Testament truth is an essential balancing truth to the fact that the church is the community of the Spirit. The church is body of Christ, and not just in a spiritual or eschatological sense.

In my books, I have spoken of the church as the community of the kingdom of God. This remains a key missional truth. But we need to understand that in Scripture and in God's plan, covenant precedes kingdom. Kingdom must never replace or overshadow covenant. That is, our focus must always be on building covenant communities centered in Jesus. Yet these communities must always have a kingdom focus. Both/and!

Kingdom focus without covenant becomes a social program, a cause, not a life. As E. Stanley Jones would say, the Plan without the Person. Kingdom easily becomes ideology, the idolatrous curse of our time.

But covenant community without kingdom becomes ingrown pietism, relationship without global mission, “koinonitis” rather than outreaching kingdom koinonia.

The Missional Relevance of God’s Earth Covenant

God’s everlasting covenant with the earth is a crucial missing piece in contemporary mission and discipleship. Local Christian communities, and we ourselves, must take seriously and live into God’s covenant with the earth. This is foundational in a literal (earthy) and discipleship sense. It should shape all the ways we think and act.

This means a fully earthed discipleship. No spirituality without taking responsibility for the earth as essential to following Jesus. Our discipleship should be as fully biblical as we actually find in Scripture. Mission that does not take God’s covenant with the earth seriously and strategically is not holistic, integral, or really faithful. If it doesn’t include the land, it’s not the whole gospel.

The Jesus Way includes earth stewardship as part of discipleship and mission. Not as an add-on or optional, but as basic and essential. Rarely has such stewardship actually been put into effect.[1] Past failures make it all the more urgent today.

Many Old Testament passages specifically include the earth when they speak of the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises. For example: “I will make with them a covenant of peace and banish wild animals from the land, so that they may live in the wild and sleep in the woods securely. I will make them and the region around my hill a blessing; and I will send down the showers in their season; they shall be showers of blessing. The trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase. They shall be secure on their soil; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I break the bars of their yoke, and save them from the hands of those who enslaved them” (Ezek. 34:25-27). We have no biblical permission to take this figuratively only, and not literally as well.

Faithful mission is of course eschatological. Salvation in fullness is creation healed—the reconciliation of all things through Jesus Christ. This is our future and our goal. But it also shapes our present, and present mission.

God’s covenant with the earth points ahead to creation fully restored. Yahweh promises that those who participate in his salvation “shall possess the land and inherit my holy mountain” (Isa. 57:13). God promises a time when the land itself shall be called not “Desolate” but “Married” (Beulah). For “the Lord delights” in his people, “and your land shall be married,” God says (Isa. 62:4). Here the covenant language of marriage is used. In other words, salvation envisages a flourishing, thriving covenant relationship between God, People, and Land.

Earth-conscious mission has always been an urgent priority. It is even more so now, due to the destructive effects of climate change, the poisoning of the oceans, extinction of species, declining biodiversity, growing pollution from plastics (like plastic bottles and Styrofoam),  lack of support for environmentally-conscious political leaders, and failure of Christians and other humans to recycle in all the ways possible. (See David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.)

God's earth covenant is also highly relevant for public theology, where it should have a prominent place.

Mission, Discipleship, and New Covenant 

Because of Jesus, faithful Christian disciples are now God’s New Covenant people on earth. We live and work in the expectation of the Spirit’s moving, just as New Covenant promises. We live in the present, as best we can, the life now that we believe is our New Creation destiny. Here the role of the church as New Covenant Community is crucial.

God birthed this New Covenant reality through Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Faithful mission today is a New Covenant reality. The church has not always lived up to the New Covenant promise and potential, however. Too often we fall back into old covenant thinking and acting. We ignore or exploit the earth. Whenever the Holy Spirit is poured out anew, God’s people are recreated and the New Covenant made real once again. As Wesley emphasized, this generally happens “from the least to the greatest,” not the other way round.

Paul, Peter, John, and other New Testament writers embody New Covenant thinking in all they say about the church. Paul writes, “You were dead through [your] trespasses and sins. …  But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved. … For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:1, 4-5, 10).

This “walking in good works” happens on a broad scale through the abundant variety of spiritual gifts, as Paul and other New Testament writers make clear (1 Cor. 12–14; 1 Pet. 4:10-11; Heb. 2:3-4). The range of charismata is as broad as God’s covenant.

Note that the New Covenant does not negate or “spiritualize” the key covenants that precede it. In the Old Testament, the reality and promise of covenant and kingdom combine in the marvelous vision of the peaceable kingdom in Isaiah 11. Isaiah 11:9 summarizes the whole vision: “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

These promises are true New Covenant promises. This is “the new covenant in [Jesus’] blood” (Luke 22:20). This means not only resurrection, but the cross. Not only Jesus’ cross, but ours. It means suffering. New Covenant mission means pain, self-denial, often disappointment and failure—incarnation leading to crucifixion before resurrection. But “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Rom. 8:26).

The church today needs to focus on real discipleship in terms of “walking in God’s ways.” This is what the early church did, and what the whole Bible teaches. Churches today can and should embody contemporary functional equivalents of the early Christian catechumenate. In this connection I highly commend Alan Kreider’s remarkably prophetic book, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire (2016).

I would add a word here about music, and especially worship music. Much contemporary worship music is not sufficiently biblical nor missional. Often missing from contemporary Christian music are the accents of covenant and kingdom in the full-orbed biblical sense. I would challenge Christian musicians to stir up gifts of music that move beyond individualized spiritual experience (“Me and Jesus” songs) to embrace God’s full mission in the world, including the truths rooted in covenant.

This could give a big boost to discipleship—stirring up imagination and emotion to the larger dimensions of God’s mission. This should include a range of styles and traditions, a holy blending of new and old. It will be a great loss to church and mission if we forget our historic hymnody. We need riches both old and new.

Conclusion

Many today are noting the glaring discipleship gap in the church—the massive failure of the church, particularly in the West but also elsewhere, to truly incarnate the Good News of Jesus Christ. I believe the perspectives I have outlined here can help.

I noted at the beginning that the two most basic truths about God are his lovingkindness and covenant faithfulness. These qualities in turn define the nature of the New Creation, and of the kingdom of God. What do we look forward to? What is our message? A world filled with lovingkindness and covenant fidelity—two qualities which, conjoined, show what holiness is—what it means to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and all our neighbors as ourselves. This is New Creation, the fulfillment of New Covenant.

“Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make [us] complete in everything good so that [we] may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen” (Heb. 12:20-21).

References

Kreider, Alan. 2016. The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

Snyder, Howard A. with Joel Scandrett. 2011. Salvation Means Creation Healed: The Ecology of Sin and Grace. Eugene, OR: Cascade.

Wallace-Wells, David. 2019. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. New York: Penguin Random House.

Footnote 

[1] Yet sometimes it has. We think of Francis of Assisi, some monastic movements, early Celtic Christian communities, and some Anabaptist intentional communities, for instance. Today a number of ministries and initiatives focus on biblical earth stewardship, including the Evangelical Environmental Network, Care of Creation, Eden Reforestation, the Lausanne/WEA Creation Care Network, and Young Evangelicals for Climate Action.