Today we focus on the Davidic (named for David) covenant. In Paul's Letter to the Romans, Paul notes that Abraham is the ancestor of the circumcised and non-circumcised followers of God. Non-circumcised followers of God can be Abraham's spiritual ancestors if they have faith in God. Paul notes that this faith is more important than being a physical or genetic ancestor of Abraham. Anyone who trusts in God is Abraham's spiritual descendant and is an heir to the original covenant with God.
Christianity arose out of Judaism as some Jews began to question their religion. So we read beyond the Tanakh into the New Testament. In the Book of Deuteronomy (especially Ch. 28), we find a new element to the Abrahamic covenant. Specifically, we learn that God has the power to revoke the covenant with humans.
Hereafter, the Davidic covenant is established. David is king at the greatest time of the Israelite empire. David decides to build a temple for God. In II Samuel 7:8-16, God seems to ally himself closely with David and his heir. God pledges that his faithful love will always be with David's heir. God identifies himself as a father. This language implies a more parental kind of covenant that can never be broken. A further implication is that God is allying himself more closely with David's heir than with other Israelites. The original Christian claim is that Jesus is this heir of David--the messiah and christ.
Jesus's followers argue that Jesus is this heir by finding references in the Bible that express a hope for a new start. For example, Jeremiah 31:31-34 is one place where God promises a new covenant to come that will be irrevocable and will include God's forgiveness of the guilt and sin of his people. Additionally, this new covenant is supposed to raise up Christians out of oppression by foreign powers.
This new covenant served as a solution for the oppression of Christians because it allows that those who are not genetic or physical descendants of Abraham can enter into the covenant with God. Initially, the Romans did not accept the offer to enter into this covenant. Jesus was, indeed, murdered by the Romans. But the Davidic covenant had something to offer people that was not present in the traditional Roman religion that was based on Greek religion. In other religions, there was no promise of an afterlife filled with rewards. The Judeo-Christian God, however, promises heaven in the afterlife for those who follow God. The promise of eternal afterlife certainly helps to soothe the sting of constant oppression in one's actual life. A promise of reward in the afterlife can be linked to the kind of advice we find in Luke 6, where Christians are told to be mild and to love their enemies.
On his last night living, Jesus and his disciples drink wine as a sign of this new covenant between God and these Jesus-loving Jews. By entering into this new covenant, Christians were able to secure that they themselves could also be resurrected and enjoy eternal life. Early Christians think that Jesus himself was proof of the covenant, since Jesus is just God made flesh (John 8:56-59). Early Christians thus preach that one can enter into this new covenant by 1) repenting sins, 2) recognizing Jesus as the Messiah and as God made flesh, 3) believe that Jesus came back to life and 4) waiting in faith for their own resurrection.
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