Before answering that question, let us do a quick review of what we saw in Chapter 1.

Without a sacrifice there can be no covenant, without a covenant there can be no relationship, every marriage relationship not based upon this is not really a marriage

The World has the wrong concept of marriage. Marriage is a relationship that is supposed to be ordained by God. God brings the wife to the husband. Biblical marriage is based upon a covenant. All relationships designed by God are based upon a covenant. Marriage was designed as a covenant relationship. Marriage covenants are blood covenants, and without death by both parities, blood actually shed by both parties, there is no covenant. When this design is not maintained, deep wounds are caused by the resulting rejection. However, Jesus bore those wounds for you. There is healing for failures.

This is a model for real covenants, that they are only valid through death. "For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives" (Hebrews 9:16,17). If your marriage has not worked out, then perhaps there have not been covenant type deaths!

In the America, many people live in homes that are within what we call a housing subdivision. When one purchases the home, he/she enters into a contract with the seller and buys the house. However after the purchase they must sign Subdivision Covenants. These covenants tell you how to relate to your neighbors, its about relationship. They will only permit certain behavior, which is intended to make the relationship between neighbors compatible. Most ungodly marriages are like contracts rather than covenants.

Take a lesson from various cultures.

To begin with no culture has the right idea about marriage, therefore what I am stating here is without bias or prejudice.

Dr. Mark Rutland spent a good deal of his life in West Africa. He states that marriage in that culture is like a man purchasing a garden. The owner buys it for the fruit it can give to him. He therefore may purchase many wives. The fruit could be children and some sort of slavery and servanthood to get his own selfish needs met.

In polygamy, the children have no intimacy with the father, only the mother. This causes many inner wounds, which later the children medicate with all sort of ungodly lifestyles including drug addictions. The children compete with one another for the father's attention. The woman is totally degraded and treated as a piece of real estate. The husband is a landlord.

Know for sure, that many marriages in Western cultures have the same flavor; they are not limited to West Africa. We have seen many here in America, and yes, even within the church culture. These types of relationships were born of Satan's original idea of taking people into slavery.

Many Western cultures have the marriage concept likened not so much to a contract of purchase but more like a corporate merger. The expectations of each are set out in contract, maybe written but more often verbal. Each party has an obligation to fulfill. While this does not degrade the woman to the same degree as the example given above, it cheapens the marriage and often the woman gets the bad end of the deal. Actually both parties lose. This corporate merger idea is, "It is all about me and how this relationship can benefit me." It consists of selfish motives, there is no laying down of lives and it will make both parties miserable.

In a true Biblical covenant marriage, God's power is unleashed in its resurrection glory; this is if, both parties have died to their own selfish desires. This is the mystery, this is the miracle. This is the two becoming one as in Ephesians chapter 5. How do the two become one? By the resurrection power of Jesus operating on two people who have laid down their lives!!

The following passage is quoted from Derek Prince's book, The Marriage Covenant.

[1] "The nature of covenant is one of the jealously guarded secrets of Scripture. It is a pearl which God will not cast to the careless (see Matthew 7:6). It is something holy which God will not unveil to the impure. In Psalm 25:14 David says, "The secret of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He will make them know His covenant." The secret of covenant must be approached in the reverent fear of God. It is withheld from those who approach with any other attitude.

Furthermore, an understanding of covenant requires careful, thorough study of Scripture. It takes time and concentration. In Proverbs 2:4, Solomon states that those who desire discernment and understand must "seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures." This implies strenuous effort. Just as the earth does not yield up her treasures to the superficial observer, so Scripture yields up the true understanding of covenant only to those who are willing to go below the surface and to devote time and study to their search.

The nature of a covenant.

"Testament is another name for covenant. In Greek it is diatheke. In Hebrew it is b'rith. Bnae b'rith is sons of covenant. The word b'rith means to BIND. Diatheke means to set something out in order or the setting forth of specific terms and conditions. Every permanent relationship with God and man is always based upon covenant.

Covenant can be both horizontal and vertical.

In Scripture, we find two different types of covenant. One is on the horizontal plane, as covenant between two human beings. This more nearly approaches the concept of a contract. For instance, in 1 Kings 5:12, we read about Solomon making a covenant with Hiram, the king of Tyre. By the covenant, Solomon and Hiram committed themselves to mutual friendship and established the conditions upon which Hiram would supply Solomon with material and labor for the building of the Temple.

Although this form of covenant was only on the human level, between two kings, it is interesting to note that later on, when God declared through the prophet Amos that He would bring judgment on the kingdom of Tyre, one reason that He gave was that "they did not remember the covenant of brotherhood," that is, the covenant made between Solomon and Hiram (see Amos 1:9). So we see that, even on the human level, God considers the breaking of a covenant a very serious matter and one that will bring judgment on the guilty party.

On God's level there is a difference. Covenant is the basis of relationship.

However, beyond that, the main use of covenant in Scripture is not as a contract between two human beings on the horizontal plane, but as a relationship sovereignty initiated by God Himself, with man, in which the two parties are not on the same level. Essentially, a covenant expresses a relationship that God Himself sovereignty initiates out of His own choice and decision. He defines the terms on which He is prepared to enter into that relationship with man. We need to emphasize that the initiative is wholly with God and the terms are set exclusively by God. Man's part is simply to respond to God's offer of a covenant and to accept the relationship which that covenant brings with it. Man does not set the terms nor does he ever initiate the relationship." [2]

Covenant on God's level is much more profound. Ancient tribes have endeavored to copy God's type of covenant with one another. God's type of covenant actually changes and exchanges His nature with the very nature of mere man.

God's view.

"A psalm of Asaph. The Mighty One, God, the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to the place where it sets. From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth. Our God comes and will not be silent; a fire devours before him, and around him a tempest rages. He summons the heavens above, and the earth, that he may judge his people: 'Gather to me my consecrated ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice'" (Psalms 50:1-5, NIV).

Here in the passage of Scripture the word "consecrated ones" is translated hasid. It is the word that gives us Hasidic Judaism, which is the most intense and dedicated form of Orthodox Judaism. A Hasid is a person whose life is totally wrapped up in God. He is a person who exists only for God. Those totally consecrated ones referred to here are those who have made a covenant with Me by sacrifice. There is it again; no sacrifice, no covenant!

Please recall in Chapter 1, we quoted Jerimiah 34:18-20 which indicated that covenant breakers would be left to the hands of their enemies.

You can't give something you have not received

So many people are so wounded and in such bondage before they enter into marriage they cannot possibly love the other person. Often they do not even have a healthy love for themselves. Perhaps they have never received love from another, especially their parents, and maybe they have not really had a revelation of the love of God.

The Scriptures tell us, in 1 John chapter 3, that when we see Him, we will become like Him. Until we see Him we are blinded. 2 Corinthians 4:4 says, "whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them." And if we are blinded we cannot see Him.

So which comes first?

"But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns [repents] to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord " (2 Corinthians 3:15-18).

Simply turning to the Lord, or repenting from your independence will allow you to see with spiritual eyes, the love of God for you. Then as verse 3:18 says, in that seeing you will be changed, from glory to glory, or in other words, in progressive steps of more seeing and more changing.

As you are changed, you will become more like Jesus and His agape love will begin to spill out of you.

Paul prayed in Ephesians chapter 3 that the Ephesians would realize the love of God by experience, beyond mere cognitive knowledge.

Ephesians 3:16-18 says, "May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the [Holy] Spirit [Himself indwelling your innermost being and personality]. May Christ through your faith [actually] dwell (settle down, abide, make His permanent home) in your hearts! May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love, That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints [God's devoted people, the experience of that love] what is the breadth and length and height and depth [of it];

[That you may really come] to know [practically, through experience for yourselves] the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge [without experience]; that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!"

The Cross of Jesus is really the ultimate love of God!

"In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him" (1 John 4:9).

The Cross is what gave to us the potential of going back to what normal mankind was meant to be, a clay vessel filled with the Spirit of God.

You might say, "How does that demonstrate love?" Ephesians 5:25 says that Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it. The Church is His bride, and you are an integral part of Her.

God looked at you and at me and knew that our nature had to be swapped for a clean and holy nature in order for the Holy Spirit to again reside in us as it did in the first man Adam. As rotten as mankind had become, God expressed His love by allowing that rotten nature to be put on Him. He suffered, through Jesus the Creator, not only the horrible sin nature of all mankind, but also its consequences, Hell itself, so that we would not have to experience those things. That is love my brothers and sisters!

The picture that I would like to use for this covenant is the blood covenant that was expressed to Abram.

"that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (Galatians 3:14).

What was the blessing of Abraham?

As promised, it was the Holy Spirit going back into mankind, and mankind's sinful spirit going into Jesus; a blood covenant exchange!!

Look at this in Genesis 15:

12 Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him.

13 Then He said to Abram: "Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.

14 "And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

15 "Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age.

16 "But in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete."

17 And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.

Here is what most likely happened in those days in the blood covenant ditch.

Each party would walk the ditch towards the other, each proclaiming the blessings if the covenant conditions were kept and the curses if the conditions were not kept. As they reached each other they would often even press an open wound to the other's open wound, often in their wrists. They would exchange coats, weapons and pledges. Sometimes they would exchange rings and signets. They would exchange weaknesses and strengths and they would become more closely related than their "milk" brothers.

Why did God put Abram to sleep?

If Abram had walked through this blood covenant ditch to exchange his curses for God's blessings, it would not have worked. Why? It was because Abram was unable to keep his end of the bargain. He would have failed in the promise, or at least his children would have failed, and for sure, you and I, as his spiritual children have failed.

How did God deal with this? How did God, in His mercy and passion to bless Abram and you and me, pull this off?

I submit that the two persons who walked the blood covenant ditch were the Holy Spirit representing the Father, and Jesus, representing Abram and you and me! Notice, the two people were a " smoking oven and a burning torch." Abram saw this entire ceremony while in a deep sleep; he had little to do with it.

Upon looking up the Hebrew word implication of the words "smoking oven and a burning torch" it seems to indicate the fire of God's wrath. We know that God's entire wrath was put upon Jesus at the Cross, in order to allow God to offer us His blessing. That is what happened in a pre-figure, or as a shadow of the future work of Jesus, in that bloody trench.

I don't think that it is a stretch to say that God appeared unto Abram as recorded in Genesis chapters 12-15 as the incarnated Jesus, the crucified and resurrected One. James 1:17 tells us that God never changes, as do many other Scriptures. We also know that Jesus was crucified before the foundation of the world, Revelation 13:8. Also in John 8:56 Jesus said that Abraham saw His incarnation.

Paraphrasing the unsaid message may be like this: "Okay son, I want to bless you with children so that I may have my purpose done on this earth, which is to purchase mankind back from Satan. It is going to take the life of My Son to accomplish this because He is the only perfect One with whom I can make covenant. If you were to walk this ditch, you would fail, you would be without child and My Messiah could not come to redeem you and your descendents. But if My Son, Jesus, were to walk this ditch on your behalf, then when you and your descendents do indeed fail, then My Son will die on their behalf." Now that is Good News! That is love!

God has a deep-seated longing to love you that He is aching to satisfy. Ephesians 2:4 Amplified says it, "But God, so rich is He in His mercy! Because of and in order to satisfy the great and wonderful and intense love with which he loves us." The next verse states that even while we were dead in our sins He made us alive in Him, and we were saved by grace, etc. This aching love will become your aching love for your spouse when Jesus changes you.

The end purpose of a blood covenant is union, or common union, sometimes called communion.

The sacrifice upon which the covenant of Christian marriage is based is the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf. He is the sacrifice through which by faith a man and a woman can pass into the relationship of marriage as God Himself ordained. Just as the Lord passed through the pieces in the ditch so a man and woman pass through the death of Jesus on their behalf into a totally new life and a totally new relationship, which is impossible without the Cross.

Here are the three successful phases in the outworking of this relationship.

1.      A life is laid down. Each lays down his/her life for the other. Each looks back at the Cross and says that death was my death. I am no longer living for myself. Everything each party has is 100% for the other, no holding back.

2.       Out of death comes new life. Each now lives out that new life in and through the other. Each says to the other "I live my life through you. You are the expression of what I am."

3.       Covenant is consummated by physical union. The word used is know. Adam knew Eve and she bore children. Where there is an illicit relationship one which God did not approve, it says he lay with her. It is possible to have sexual intercourse and never know someone at a deep covenant level.

This brings forth fruit. Without union there can be no fruit. Covenant leads to shared life and fruitfulness. Life that is not shared remains sterile and fruitless.

The result of union is unity, which in Psalm 133 states that God commands a blessing and allows us to live in Zion, His presence, when unity exists. Everything is blessed, not just the marriage, but vocations, ministry, children, finances and health; everything!

"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious oil upon the head, Running down on the beard, The beard of Aaron, Running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of Hermon, Descending upon the mountains of Zion; For there the LORD commanded the blessing--Life forevermore" (Psalms 133:1-3).

Here is where we are going with this.

If you have been or are in a marriage that was not based upon covenant relationship where each party did not die to serve the other, you have wounds. Perhaps rejection is the most common. You should forgive the other and ask to be forgiven for your part. This forgiveness, two-way forgiveness, needs to be first with God and then with the other party. If you have a strained relationship with a former spouse, perhaps a letter would be better than personal contact.

Healing comes by recognizing your sin, two ways, and recognizing that Jesus bore the sin instead of you, your victim or your perpetrator. By two ways I mean, that the sin perpetrated against you and the sin that you perpetrated against another, both of these, have been borne by Jesus.

If your current marriage is not like this blueprint, don't be so surprised. No one is perfect. The main thing is for you to make up your mind that you will strive for a covenant marriage.

You need to humble yourself and not attempt to look so perfect and without fault. This will do more to change your spouse than trying to blame him/her. Then you actually need to confess before God and your spouse your shortcomings and tell them both that you are willing to change. Remember, God can change you if you repent, because repentance allows you to see Him, and seeing Him will change you. God is not able to work with a proud person who is always defending himself or herself and blaming the other.

If you hope to marry some day, make sure that both you and your potential spouse signs on to the covenant pattern for marriage before you perform your vows!

If you find yourself unable, emotionally dead, or unwilling to carry out your end of the marriage covenant, you need to go through the ISOB Bondage Breakers series or another good inner healing discipline first.

The next lesson address more about the contributions both the husband and wife can make towards each other.

[1] Quoted from: Prince, Derek. The Marriage Covenant, Whitaker House Publishers, New Kennsington, PA, 1978 &endash; Pages 27-32

[2] Quoted from: Prince, Derek. The Marriage Covenant, Whitaker House Publishers, New Kennsington, PA, 1978 &endash; Pages 27-28