Just because the Bible is first and foremost about God doesn’t mean it isn’t about us at all. What we need to understand, however, is that the Bible teaches us who we are, what we should believe, and how we should live in relation to our God. From its first pages, the Bible shows us that God relates to humanity through covenants. In simplest terms, a covenant is an agreement between two or more parties and has terms or stipulations. To put it another way: in a covenant relationship, there are expectations placed on each person or party involved. Typically, there are rewards for meeting those expectations and punishments for failing to do what was pledged. Understanding what a covenant is, being able to recognize one, and understanding the conditions in a covenant are helpful skills for reading the Bible. This is true, because—while the Bible has many major themes (such as creation, fall, and redemption)—covenant is the framework on which all the Bible’s main themes are built. Theologian Michael Horton says,
What unites [the themes of the Bible] is not itself a central dogma but an architectonic structure, a matrix of beams and pillars that hold together the structure of biblical faith and practice. That particular architectural structure . . . is the covenant.1
In other words, the story and message of the Bible is unified thematically through covenant. The Bible reveals a God who enters into personal and legal relationships with his creatures. Even more, the Bible reveals that every single human being relates to God in a covenantal manner. The pages of Scripture teach us that there are only two ways fundamentally in which a human can relate to God: through the law or through the gospel.
