In the Hebrew Scriptures, God’s covenant transformed from a bilateral covenant (“You do that and I’ll do this”) as in the covenants with Moses and Noah to a totally unilateral covenant (with Abraham and David), when it was evident that we humans will never keep our side of an agreement yet Yahweh always has and always will.
Jesus had deep personal trust in the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants. The covenant rooted in “restorative justice.” Most Christian history, however, was oriented around the very limited notion of retributive justice.
God’s unique love for the “anawim,” the humble and poor ones, runs throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. “Whoever is a little one, let him come to me” (Proverbs 9:4.) Jesus presented this same idea and went even further in saying “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Luke 18:17).
What God does in biblical history and wants to do in our own lives is to lead us beyond the idea of us needing to earn, deserve, and merit, to an experience of pure, unearned grace from an Infinite Love Source.
Only the central theme of grace can move people beyond a bad and tired storyline of reward and punishment. A personal experience of unearned love can move us into a religion beyond mere “requirements” to a religion of actual transformation. An experience of moving from a God-view of scarcity and limitation to a God-view of infinite abundance.
Romans 5:15-16 “But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ… God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins.”
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