Hello Readers!  Welcome to a new week and a new post on Renaissance Woman.  This week’s post is another installment in my study of the Whole Armor of God.  I am looking at Ephesians 6:10-18a and I have not progressed any further than “Stand”.  The Apostle Paul says to “stand” three times in this passage and I was certain he meant for us to stand fast or stand firm against the onslaught of the enemy.  There is a word in the Greek which does mean to stand, persevere, hold fast, and it is steko.  That is not the word used in this passage.  The word used in this passage is histemi and it means “to stand, abide, appoint, bring, continue, covenant, establish, hold up, lay, present, set up, staunch, stand (by, forth, still, up). 

These two Greek words are related to each other.  Steko comes from the perfect tense of histemi.  The perfect tense in Greek is used to describe actions already done or completed in the past which produced results still in effect in the present: something to bear in mind when reading the passages that use steko.  Histemi carries more of a meaning of “made to stand” or “cause to stand”.  We see this in verse ten of my study passage: “Finally, by brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.”  We stand because Jesus Christ in us causes us to stand.  We are made to stand because we are in covenant with Him.

Covenant is a weighty word.  I have been meditating on the covenants of the Bible since last year when I completed a course on them.  During this course, the Teacher said the Western Church has very little understanding of what covenant means.  The Western Church defines covenant in the terms of contract: if you do this then I will do that.  Surely not, I thought to myself and I have spent a great deal of time since then listening to what my fellow believers here in the west are saying.  I have found this Teacher is correct in his diagnosis of the Western Church.  It came to a head for me when I was watching a television show on the life of Jesus.  Two characters are running a scam on a landowner and, once the landowner agrees to sell, one character says “we’ll draw up the covenants.”  I heard that and I almost exploded.  For the word covenant to be used when contract was so clearly implied left me utterly discombobulated.  The two words have nothing to do with each other. 

I have heard covenant being used when contract is meant many times since by many of my fellow believers.  It is like my ear has been tuned to it.  And, this lack of understanding is being noticed by others.  Just this week I read this in the Spring 2023 edition of Biblical Archeology Review: “The theme of covenant is central to the Hebrew Bible.  It provides the background to many of its most memorable stories where Yahweh establishes alliances with figures such as Noah (Genesis 9), Abraham (Genesis 12; 15; 17), Moses (Exodus 19; 24), Aaron (Exodus 29; Numbers 18:19), and David (2 Samuel 7). 

“Yet modern biblical scholarship has marginalized the covenantal aspects of the Hebrew Bible in favor of the many individuals and events associated with such arrangements, which are generally reduced to their legal aspects and interpreted as obligations subsumed under the law (Hebrew: torah).  The word torah even serves to designate the first major division of the Hebrew Bible.  Reading the Bible in its wider Near Eastern context, however, rehabilitates the covenant as a crucial factor in diplomacy as well as political and private alliances.”

A contract is indeed an if/then document.  Punishments are usually clearly spelled out should either party fail to comply with the contract’s terms.  Covenants are a matter of life and death.  They were not drawn up: they were typically established in blood.  Animals were split in half and the two parties would walk between the pieces through the blood.  The blood of the parties was also often shed and mingled.  A covenant meant both parties were swearing all they were and had-their very lives-were being given to the other person.

In all fairness to the Western Church, they can’t be blamed for thinking in terms of contract because the Covenant of Moses given at Mount Sinai was given in the language “if you don’t do these things, then these things will come upon you.” (See Exodus Chapters 19-24).  I have heard Bible Teachers say the people of Israel made a terrible mistake when they answered with one voice saying, “All the words which the Lord has said we will do” (Exodus 24:3).  Of course they did not.  They could not.  Their inability to do wasn’t a surprise to God either because the Apostle Paul writes, “Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound.  But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more” (Romans 5:20).

There is a fascinating verse that appears earlier in this same chapter: “For until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law” (Romans 5:13).  I cannot venture into a study on this subject now.  The Apostle Paul beautifully explains himself in Chapters 6 and 7 and I highly recommend you take the time to read through them.  I think the Apostle Paul’s point, and the point I am making about the Mosaic Covenant is summed up in Hebrews 7:18-19: “For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect; on the other hand, there is the bringing in of a better hope, through which we draw near to God.”

The television show about the life of Jesus I mentioned does, in my opinion, do some things brilliantly; one of which is pointing out how the Pharisees especially revered the law.  The laws given by God at Mount Sinai and in the Book of Leviticus were not enough: they developed a system of 613 more laws.  What I find to be tragic is that a great number of believers today choose the same way of living.  Matthew 5:16-20 records Jesus saying, “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets.  I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.  For assuredly, I say to you, til heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.  Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.  For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Strong words indeed and I cannot blame my fellow believers for using them as a basis for their endeavors to keep the law.  Some do try to keep it in their own strength.  They fail of course and the penances and punishments of their denominations are there for them.  There are others that believe that, because the Spirit has been given, we now have the strength that was lacking in the Israelites of the Old Testament to keep the law. This passage is not a warning given to us by Jesus if we don’t keep the law. For one thing, even those who break the least of the commandments and teach others to do so are in the kingdom of heaven.  They are least in the kingdom, certainly, but they are not burning in hell which is interesting but not the most important point I would make. That point is: the New Testament makes it clear Jesus has fulfilled the law.

Again, I would point your attention to Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Paul writes, “I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.  And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death.  For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me” (Romans 7:9-11).  He goes on to write that famous passage that ends in “O wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  He has an answer! 

“I thank God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.  There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.  For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 7:24-8:4).

Our Christian life is not one of extra ability to keep the law.  It is not one of contract.  I have carefully read the New Testament and I do not find our Christian lives are to be lived as if/then but rather because/therefore.  (Malcolm Smith first put our covenant life in these terms and I’ve never heard it better expressed).  We are partakers of a New Covenant and one we had no part in making.  It was established in the blood of Jesus and He is its mediator (See Matthew 26:28, Hebrews 9:15).  He is in us and we abide and rest in Him.  Because this is the truth, we therefore have ceased from our own works as God did from His. We are made to stand in His strength and the power of His might.  We are made to stand in the covenant position with Him: face to face.

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References

Greek Tenses Explained

The Rules of the Pharisees – pursueGOD.org

Pharisaic Laws | Bible.org

Heintz, Jean-Georges, “Covenants in Context”, Biblical Archaeology Review, Volume 49 Number 1, Spring 2023, 61

Strong, James, LL.D., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville Tennessee, 1990

Vine, W.E., Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1997