Durkheim showed how religion solves the great challenge of human social life: forging a community from individuals that are not biologically related; but that the thing to keep your eye on about religion is not the beliefs. It's the rituals; the doing things together physically, the binding together around the sacred. That's what creates communities.

Jonathan Haidt

"Worldly wisdom thinks that love is a relationship between man and man. Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between: man-God-man.

Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (1847)

The biblical idea of covenant is not merely a theme among others, but serves as the fundamental biblical theme and "shape of reality" throughout the scriptures. Covenant is a relational agreement initiated by God, establishing a special relationship that involves mutual commitments: God promises loyalty, love and blessing while the people are called to love, obedience and the shaping of their community identity and way of life in this relationship. It is the backbone of Judao-Christian faith and a “skeleton key” to unlock the meaning of the whole Bible. The covenants provide the structure for understanding Israel's history, identity, and relationship with God.  Rather than presenting reality as a set of impersonal laws or as merely autonomous creation, the Bible depicts all existence in terms of covenantal relationship. 

At the heart of the biblical covenant is the Creator’s relationship with creation—a commitment expressed through loyal love (hesed) and an infinite willingness to forgive, restore and renew relationship after breaches occur. The repeated emphasis on God "remembering" (ויזכר) the covenant with humanity highlights this faithfulness. God's relationship with humanity is represented as defining ideal human relationships, as it shapes the structure of every kind of meaningful relationship. Its essence is gratitude, mutual commitment, and triadic relationship (you-God-people). It doesn't operate as either an equal contract or impersonal decree, but as an interpersonal relational structure initiated by God.

This also represents the deepest source of biblical morality: loving God (vertical) and loving neighbor (horizontal) are inseparable mandates (Mark 12:28-34; Micah 6:8), and its relational foundation and for moral behavior and triadic structure for social responsibility addresses many personal and ethical concerns of the postmodern age. Covenantal thinking shaped Reformation theology, American democratic institutions, and contemporary ethics as a counterweight to individualist contract models based in self-interested 1:1 bargain.

Biblical history unfolds as a series of covenants (with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Israel and Jesus) through which God establishes, forgives, heals, and renews relationship with humanity and creation. Even after humanity’s repeated failures, the prophets foretell a new covenant characterized by inner transformation, forgiveness, and relationship with God. 

Jesus tells us explicitly what his sacrificial death means: the ratification and renewal of this covenant. It is the New Exodus event that forms the new people of God. This is why Jesus calls his crucifixion “the new covenant in my blood” during the Lord's Supper (Matt. 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20) – which was originally the Jewish Passover meal celebrating liberation from slavery in Egypt. Just as the blood of the Passover lamb was spread on the doorposts in Exodus 12 to protect Israelite homes from the final plague and the angel of Death, so his own blood, shed on the cross, would enacts this reality and serve as both sign and participation in the covenantal relationship. It is one not only of membership by faith but by transformed participation in the life- and love-giving reality of God. The Eastern church more than the Western calls this theosis: a co-creative, co-redemptive participation in the life of God where we become more Christlike (a movement up) just as God is redeemed into the creation (a movement down) – a unification of divine opposites in our own lives.