Why setup the Covenant knowing what it would lead to?

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nickybr38

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When I was Protestant the salvation message was generally: Jesus died for you!

We were taught this was the Gospel and even told that if we repeated this message to non believers that it might touch their heart and allow the Spirit to speak to them.

In my experience the unbelievers response to this message was very rarely gratitude or understanding.

Now, as a Catholic, I find myself running into non-Christians who have heard the ‘salvation message’ and have some legitimate criticisms of it. I really am not sure how to address these concerns.

I did do a search but while I found some threads that skirted around this issue I haven’t found any that actually answer these two main objections;
  1. ) For those who don’t understand the Covenant aspect they’ll often ask; Well, why did Jesus HAVE to die? Why couldn’t God just open the gates of heaven without all that blood being spilled? Why institute this complicated system when He’s God and He could just snap His fingers.
  2. ) And if the Covenant is explained to them they follow up with; so Jesus died to fulfill the Old Testament covenant (which could only be ended when one party to the Covenant died). But why would God enter into the covenant in the FIRST PLACE if He knew this would be the outcome? Is it really such a sacrifice when the Covenant was entered into with one party knowing it would have to end as it did?
What’s the point of all this Covenant stuff and the like?

Anyone care to tackle this? Explain as if you were explaining to a non-Christian though.
 
The short answer to both questions is because God is Infinite Love.

The first question is one that theologians have pondered for many centuries. Did Jesus have to die or was it simply fitting? I don’t know that the Church has come down explicitly one way or the other.

I would leave aside the question of whether or not Jesus had to die and focus on how fitting it is, because I think it helps people make sense of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery, which usually makes the first question less interesting.

Yes, God can just “snap his fingers” and do lots of things, but He also respects our free will. If He just snapped his finger to remove the consequences from our sinful choices, then how would we ever appreciate it? If a parent rears their kids in such a way that they never experience the consequences of their decisions, the kid is going to grow up to be an ungrateful, spoiled brat. So it is with all of us.

The Catechism does a good job of summarizing the four-fold purpose of the Incarnation in CCC 456-460:


  1. *]to reconcile us with God
    *]to show us God’s love
    *]to be our model of holiness
    *]to make us partakers of divine nature

    If the Incarnation was only about point #1, then I can see how a person might think it all to be a bit arbitrary. But that’s not the only reason He came.

    In regards to the second question, I would make a distinction between a covenant and a contract. God didn’t simply enter into some legally-binding contract with us where dying was the only way He could get out of it. No, He established a covenant. More than just a contract, a covenant establishes a family relationship. God doesn’t just want to save us from bad things so we don’t have to experience pain. He wants to have a profoundly intimate relationship with us. You don’t get that by just snapping your fingers. You have to put in work and make sacrifices. And He made the Ultimate Sacrifice.
 
Having Jesus die instead of the finger-snap shows humans how serious their offense is; and that forgiveness isn’t free.
 
  1. God could have chosen any means of salvation. He was not constrained at all. Nevertheless, He chose that salvation should come through the death of the Son. We will be pondering “why” He chose that particulat path until the Second Coming. There is much that we have learned about His love for us and about the life we should live by meditating on the Son’s sacrifice, however.
One great thing we come back to is what Jesus told His apostles:
Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13 KJV)

That is: Jesus died to show His great love for us. There is more, however.

His death was also an example for how we should live. When we set aside our own desires in life in favor of serving others, we live His life in the world today.
  1. The point of a covenant is that it has no excape clause. When we set up a contract today, there is always some term by which it can be terminated, either unilaterally or by mutual agreement, as a kind of protection against what might go wrong. Any person who thinks an agreement will go sour, however, would not enter it in the first place. This would be to spare the pain later. God entered a covenant with a people He knew would hurt Him.
It should be noted that the Old Covenant is not terminated. It is fulfilled. That is why there is a New Covenant.
 
This is an unfamiliar explanation and likely false reason for the death of Jesus being the necessity to end a covenant (presumably the Old Testament covenant with Israel).

Rather out of my depth I hunted within the works of a known expert that I trust, Scott Hahn.

I copied the following from
salvationhistory.com/documents/scripture/CBR%20Covenant%20Research-2005.pdf
Parts of pages 272 and 273.
Unlike other surveys reviewed here, John H. Walton’s Covenant: God’s
Purpose, God’s Plan (1994) is written from and for a conservative Protestant
setting. Walton, who teaches at the Moody Bible Institute, sets out to
propose a new model for understanding biblical covenants that will overcome
the limitations of traditional covenant theology, classical dispensationalism
and progressive dispensationalism. Walton calls his proposed
model the ‘Revelatory’ view. Its essential insight is that, according to the
biblical account of salvation history, God wishes to reveal himself to
humankind in order to enter into relationship with them, and the covenant(
s) with Israel are the means to that end. Covenant is oriented to relationship
and particularly to God’s self-revelation. Walton employs this
model in analyzing all the major covenants of both the Old and New
Testaments, especially those passages employing phrases such as ‘For my
name’s sake’ and ‘So that they will know that I am the Lord’. Walton
concludes that covenant is the mechanism for maintaining the relationship
and imparting the revelation of God, and Israel is the instrument of God by
which he lets himself be known by all the nations.
One of his most intriguing contributions to the analysis of biblical
covenants is his notion of ‘covenant jeopardy’ (pp. 94-107). ‘Covenant
jeopardy’ describes the development of a situation in which one of the
covenant parties fails to fulfill the obligations. There may be either a real
or apparent failure on the part of Israel or God. Walton’s own theological
explanation of how situations of ‘covenant jeopardy’ are resolved is not
entirely satisfactory, but he is certainly correct that ‘covenant jeopardy’ is
a major biblical motif and one worthy of further research.
…
the authors of all four monographs share a
common opposition to Christian supersessionism, which they regard as an
unwarranted misreading of the relationship of the old and new covenants.
These authors stress that the fulfillment of the old in the new is neither
abrogation nor termination; hence there is no point in speaking of ‘replacement’.
Instead, the relationship between the new covenant and the old is
precisely one of renewal that is both restorative and transformative.
Click to expand...
This is the rap-up to a section where he is summarizing the Research that had been done before he wrote this book. Saying that none had thought of “abrogation nor termination” of the covenant the correct concept of covenant connected with Jesus coming, death, and resurrection.
 
In my experience, many evangelicals believe or at least give the impression that they believe that Christ had to die in order to satisfy some internal need of justice within God’s character.

I always found that to be obnoxious, and moreso since I became a father myself. Even good, but fallen human fathers are capable of more than robotic approaches to justice (crime was committed, punishment must be meted out - solution achieved: punish myself instead!). I suspect that Christ had to die not to satisfy God’s own need for vengeance, but because humans were otherwise incapable of comprehending and accepting how badly fallen and in need of a Savior we are. Pride is so pernicious, that it took the shock of realizing that the consequences of our sin is that we inevitably wind up murdering God himself if He gives us the chance. That’s how badly we’ve fallen. Until you confront that fact, accept it, repent of it, you’re still enslaved by your sins.

We really never did stop being the stiff-necked people God observed us to be thousands of years ago. It’s a wonder He loves us anyways!
 
manualman said:
In my experience, many evangelicals believe or at least give the impression that they believe that Christ had to die in order to satisfy some internal need of justice within God’s character.

I always found that to be obnoxious, and moreso since I became a father myself. Even good, but fallen human fathers are capable of more than robotic approaches to justice (crime was committed, punishment must be meted out - solution achieved: punish myself instead!). I suspect that Christ had to die not to satisfy God’s own need for vengeance, but because humans were otherwise incapable of comprehending and accepting how badly fallen and in need of a Savior we are. Pride is so pernicious, that it took the shock of realizing that the consequences of our sin is that we inevitably wind up murdering God himself if He gives us the chance. That’s how badly we’ve fallen. Until you confront that fact, accept it, repent of it, you’re still enslaved by your sins.

We really never did stop being the stiff-necked people God observed us to be thousands of years ago. It’s a wonder He loves us anyways!
Click to expand...
It’s not original to Evangelicals. St. Anselm developed the Satisfaction Theory of Atonement centuries before the Reformation and it has been prominent in Western Catholicism ever since (though it is no longer the strongest advanced theory on Atonement in the West).

Here is a recent thread discussing St. Anselm’s theory on atonement:
Is Christus Victor equally accepted by the Church with Anselm’s teaching?
 
nickybr38 said:
  1. ) For those who don’t understand the Covenant aspect they’ll often ask; Well, why did Jesus HAVE to die? Why couldn’t God just open the gates of heaven without all that blood being spilled? Why institute this complicated system when He’s God and He could just snap His fingers.
  2. ) And if the Covenant is explained to them they follow up with; so Jesus died to fulfill the Old Testament covenant (which could only be ended when one party to the Covenant died). But why would God enter into the covenant in the FIRST PLACE if He knew this would be the outcome? Is it really such a sacrifice when the Covenant was entered into with one party knowing it would have to end as it did?
Click to expand...
God did not create death. Death was made by Satan (Wisdom 1:12-15). When man first sinned he entered into an ‘agreement’ with Satan. It was like a contract of sorts, and it basically enslaved Adam and Eve and all their offspring; as if they owed a debt and each person who was born was then a slave and became property of Satan upon death. God did not create Man to die…he was created to live in the flesh for eternity. But the wage of sin is death (Romans 6), and all must pay the price; even the innocent. Since sin separates us from God (Rom. 3:23), we could not go to God after death, because the price is so great we could never do enough to get out of debt, and so we were in bondage; only God could redeem us. The debt had to be paid for us, and God foresaw all this. So He made His first covenant with man to prepare the world for his coming, so that there might be righteous men and women in the world, so that all would not be lost. Because he foresaw all this happening, he made a man and woman to be joined in marriage, so that they could still be righteous since he made man and woman to always be virgins. This is why after the fall of man, God commands man to “go forth and multiply.”

So through the Blessed Virgin, God came to us in the person of His only Son, and made a new, and everlasting covenant, sealed with His own blood. He emptied Himself and became a man (Philippians 2), and paid the wage for us by dying. His death freed us from original sin (Galatians 4:7). Now we can each choose if we want to accumulate more debt (continue in sin), and we can work off the debt that we acquired (confession, works of charity, penance) in this life time before we die, so that we might be found justified and righteous; worthy to be in God’s Kingdom.
 
nickybr38 said:
  1. ) For those who don’t understand the Covenant aspect they’ll often ask; Well, why did Jesus HAVE to die? Why couldn’t God just open the gates of heaven without all that blood being spilled? Why institute this complicated system when He’s God and He could just snap His fingers.
Click to expand...
It’s really very reasonable to ask, Why all the drama?

It deserves a good answer to a good question. Problem is, it’s hard to answer in a quick sentence or two.

Definitions and comparisons need to be identified.

For example: one might ask

what’s the difference between a covenant and a contract? look at the subjects in the link. This subject is answered in the link (Lesson II A, ) close to the top. Select, and start reading there salvationhistory.com/studies/lesson/covenant_the_master_key_that_unlocks_the_bible#II.

as you scroll down on that link, you’ll see other links to an avalance of materials/topics on salvation history.
n:
  1. ) And if the Covenant is explained to them they follow up with; so Jesus died to fulfill the Old Testament covenant (which could only be ended when one party to the Covenant died). But why would God enter into the covenant in the FIRST PLACE if He knew this would be the outcome? Is it really such a sacrifice when the Covenant was entered into with one party knowing it would have to end as it did?
What’s the point of all this Covenant stuff and the like?

Anyone care to tackle this? Explain as if you were explaining to a non-Christian though.
Click to expand...
The subject of covenant is huge. I’ve tried in my own mind to try and summarize it, but I can’t seem to do it justice. To answer one of your questions, The Meaning of Covenant

if you’re so inclined to read further, pick a subject from the following link.
salvationhistory.com/library/scripture/historical/oldtestament/lawcov.cfm

Here’s my lame attempt to summarize this question. Jesus died once, He can’t die again. Therefore His new covenant that He makes is forever. It won’t end. He won’t /can’t break it on His part. There won’t be any new covenants to look forward to, no new programs, offers, promises etc etc to come. The plan in place now is for all eternity. The promises are for all eternity. There is only plan A. No plan B, C D E…etc etc etc. If a person wants to spend all eternity with Jesus, they need to be part of His covenant that He established.
 
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