I’m sure you’ve heard this phrase often.
I used to say it ALL the time. I used to say it so much that I almost put it on a t-shirt!
I know the intentions of it are good—most people say it to encourage and exhort others that understanding who the Most High is, is about personal intimacy and getting to know Him.
And to that I absolutely agree.
But I want to take a moment to really challenge us in this statement, because I believe there is a major piece of this pursuit to know Him that is being left out by Believers who really do have a genuine passion and zeal for Yahuah and our Messiah, yet while they say it’s not about “religion,” it’s actually their “religion” keeping them from the “relationship” they think they are in.
Because the truth is, is that it’s not about relationship at all.
It’s about “covenant.”
Nowhere in Scripture will you find it saying, “I want you to be in a relationship with Me.”
The words that you hear over and over are covenantal, marriage terms.
You see things like, “return to My covenant,” you see husband and wife terminology used frequently when it comes to the Most High and Israel. You see a picture of adultery likened to when they break His covenant.
The prophet Hosea’s entire life was a testimony of spiritual adultery to help Israel get the picture of what they were doing when they turned their back on Yahuah’s covenant.
We are not called to be in a relationship with Yahuah. We are called to be in a covenant with Him. And there is much oversight in the church today of this important truth that is actually keeping people OUT of this covenant.
Look at it this way...
When you are dating someone, you’re not obligated to stay with them, right? When you start having a relationship with another person, the dating period is when you’re trying to figure out if you want to spend the rest of your life with that person. If you decide that you don’t, you are not obligated to stay with this person.
However, when you decide to marry someone, you enter into a covenant obligation to love this person and commit to them for the rest of your life. You say your vows to that person. You are no longer “in a relationship” with them—you are now in covenant.
Now, as husband and wife, you live a life of doing your very best to fulfill this obligation by keeping these vows to your spouse. Why do you do that? Because you love them, right?
You don’t always get it perfect and you make mistakes sometimes. But you’re not “under” this obligation because you feel like these vows are a set of rules that you have to follow—you commit to this obligation because you know that it is how you SHOW your spouse that you LOVE them.
The SAME exact thing applies to our Father’s commandments.
They are instructions that help us to understand how to love Yahuah, love ourselves, and love other people. And we do our best to keep them because if we really love Him, we will naturally desire to show Him that (“If you love me, keep my commandments,” John 14:15).
And by a genuine desire to SHOW Him that, our lives become a testimony and witness to the world around us that it is Yahuah, the God of Israel, that we know, love and serve.
That is our light/our works that we shine before others!
The problem though is that the Church today does not know or teach what this covenant is.
They do an evangelistic-worthy job of “loving your neighbor” by doing good deeds, but they’ve unknowingly tossed the wedding vows out the window completely.
There is a reason Yahusha tells us that the first and greatest commandment of all is to love Yahuah with all of your heart. We MUST know how to love Him first before we can truly love our neighbor. His Word is the only thing that tells us how to do that.
The second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
But the other issue with this is that loving your neighbor aligns more with the moral compass of society rather than how Scripture instructs us to do this.
For example...
People believe stealing, kidnapping, and adultery are sins, but also believe “we don’t have to keep the sabbath anymore.”
People call homosexuality an abomination, but believe “it’s okay to eat bacon and porkchops now.”
All of these things play a role in “loving your neighbor,” but because we don’t let Scripture define our love for Yahuah FIRST, it actually portrays confusion. It’s lukewarm. It’s hypocrisy.
So, because the covenant, wedding vows have been tossed aside and called “being under grace now,” not only do we not know what that means, but the obedience of Believers today has become more aligned with church culture rather than Kingdom standards.
The reason this is important to know is because when it comes to believing in our Messiah, part of our belief in Him is not just believing He came and died for our sins, but it is more so about understanding how He came to restore a broken covenant.
Actually, the majority of the Christian religion believes that the Messiah they follow came to do away with the very thing that outlines the terms and conditions (“vows”) of this covenant.
If we don’t know what this covenant is, how will we understand how it was made new?
After all, we are called to enter into a NEW covenant, one in which “I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts.”
“Behold, the days are coming, says Yahuah, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says Yahuah. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Yahuah: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their Elohim, and they shall be My people.”
Jeremiah 31:31-33
When talking about the new covenant and our new High Priest (Yahusha) in Hebrews 8, the author of Hebrews calls to mind this very prophecy (Hebrews 8:8-12).
Do you see the connection?
Covenant at its core, is about writing the commandments on our hearts.
Learning how to love Yah and love people the way SCRIPTURE says.
A “covenant” is not a “law.” A covenant is an agreement to the terms and conditions set forth by the keeper of the covenant.
If you don’t know what this means, then you can’t understand the true gospel or the ministry of our Messiah.
This is not a call to Judaism, either. This is a call out of Babylon. There is a narrow path that leads to life, and there is a ditch on both sides.
One side of it uses their traditions to teach you that the commandments are done away with, and you are “under grace” now. Christianity has created a lawless Messiah out of these traditions and is keeping people from understanding what true covenant is.
The other side of it (Judaism) uses their traditions to add TO the Father’s commandments, putting unnecessary rabbinical burdens on people, which was never our heavenly Father’s intention. They reject that the Messiah came, so they are also keeping people from understanding what true covenant is.
Our Messiah doesn’t want you to “be in a relationship with Him.”
He came to bring you BACK to covenant with our heavenly Father. He came to restore to Himself a righteous remnant, a covenant people.
He promises to mediate for you, advocate for you, and intercede for you, and freely gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit to convict you to repentance so He can write Yah’s commandments on our heart.
That is the covenant you and I are called to be in.
With Love,
Stephanie Green