Please understand: If God failed to comply with any promise to us, he vowed to carry out justice against Himself and be as the dead animals over which He walked. Therefore, God bet the Universe/Everything, even His own continued existence, on His willingness and ability to comply with His promises to you and me (Abraham and His Seed)!
This assurance of His Promises is called in Hebrews 6: “the ANCHOR OF THE SOUL.” This is very, very heavy stuff. The result of our having the ANCHOR OF THE SOUL is that we no longer view our senses or our natural reason as a reliable compass for living or as indicators of Truth. We choose not to live by what our senses or what the World or the Enemy tell us. We reject the mind of the World and all the doubt, anxiety and worry that goes with it.
Instead we realize that, because of the death oath God has made to ensure His Promises, we should choose to live solely on the much more reliable basis of what God has voluntarily established as His legal obligation to us. In doing so, we see the promises realized in our lives, as with Abraham, who is the Father of all who believe (Rom. 4:11)
In other words, the secret to Abraham’s faith is simply this: if we can understand that God cursed Himself with a death oath should He ever violate His covenant promises to us, it becomes a very small step to actually bet our own lives on the truth of these same promises – just as David, Gideon, Samuel and so many others did…
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The Everlasting Blood Covenant between God and Man
Now let’s examine exactly what a blood covenant is and then see how the Gospel itself, the sending of His Son, is actually the Father’s faithful fulfillment of His blood covenant obligations to Abram and Abraham’s spiritual offspring – you and me.
All of the elements of a blood covenant are present in spades in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 
A series of events are set into motion when two people decide they want to “cut the covenant.” It is a most serious and solemn ceremony, comprising more or less the following elements (significant portions of the following are taken verbatim from http://hopefaithprayer.com/books/TheBloodCovenant-Kenyon.pdf):
- An animal is sacrificed: Usually a bull, a goat, or a lamb is killed and cut in half down the center. The two halves are separated with a pool of blood between them. The dead animals and the blood dramatically symbolize the life and death nature of the covenant and the certain fate of a covenant partner who violates the covenant. In Genesis 15:16, God said to Abraham: ‘Take for ME a heifer of three years, and a she-goat of three years, and a ram of three years, and a turtle-dove, and a young bird’. In other words, God is indicating here that these animals were to represent not only what should happen to Abraham should he violate the covenant, but they also represented what God vowed to do to Himself should He ever violate His covenant obligations to Abraham. Just let that roll around in your mind for a while…
Of course, Abraham and his offspring did violate the covenant obligation to be God’s friend and ally against God’s enemies – the giving of the Law on Mt Sinai served, in fact, to increase the transgression (Rom. 5:20) and the Israelites’ increasing apostasy only confirmed this. Therefore Abraham’s offspring deserved to die as covenant-breakers. But at just the right time (Rom. 5:6), God Himself provided a substitute human being to die in the place of Abraham’s offspring. That substitute was the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ would die so that we do not have to for violating the blood covenant. In effect, we are all Barabbas, the murderous rebel who received his life in exchange for Christ’s death before Pilate, the Judge.
That Passover vignette in Matthew is a clear picture of the great exchange where we received the freedom due Christ and He received the condemnation due us. (Mat. 27:16-26)
- Identities are exchanged: Various other exchanges may take place depending on the formality of the ceremony. For example, the covenant parties may exchange coats, weapons, or gifts. These are all symbols of a person’s or a tribe’s identity or authority. By doing so, each is saying, “Everything I am, everything I represent, now belongs to you. All my strength now belongs to you. My enemies are now your enemies.” The exchange was to communicate that when an enemy attacked, the blood covenant brother had a responsibility to defend the other the same as he would himself.
The purpose of these exchanges again was to ally the two separate parties into one. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. 4 Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt. 1 Sam. 18:3-4. The Father gave Abraham and us the life of Christ, the Creator God, and the glory that goes with it. In exchange we gave him our Adamic life, and the shame that goes with it. He gave us the Word – the Sword of the Spirit, His weapon with which to wage battle against our oppressors and enemies. We have no weapons to share. As a result, He took on our defenselessness.
- Names are exchanged: This is a further outward sign of the two covenant partners exchanging their identities to merge as one. Each participant takes the other’s name on himself. A person’s name represents his individuality. This exchange of names demonstrates a death to being an “individual.” Remember that covenant is the union of two people. In covenant you are no longer concerned only with yourself. Your concern now includes your blood covenant brother. You are family now – you care for your blood brother the same as you care for yourself because the two of you are now one family and your name reflects this fact.
A name also carries with it the person’s authority. For example, a country’s ambassador speaks in the Name of the country and its rulers, and has their authority standing behind his words.
We took a new Name when we were birthed by Him anew. We are called by His Name (2 Chron. 7:14) – Christians. And He became as us. He took on human flesh and took our name: Son of Man. Recall that God changed the names of Abraham and Sarah to reflect their new covenant identities. And we each will be given a new name when we get to Heaven, that only He knows (Rev. 2:17).
It is the same with us. We are “ambassadors” of heaven sent to speak and act in the Name of our King, who said “I give you authority over all unclean spirits and all diseases…over all snakes and scorpions and all the power of the Enemy, and nothing shall in any way harm you.” (Lke. 10:17-18)
- The walk of blood: Each covenant participant walks a path in the shape of a figure “8” between the halves of the slain animals, then stops in the middle in the midst of the pool of blood to pronounce the blessings and the curses of the covenant. The curses would be brought to bear upon the one who broke the blood covenant. The participants basically said to each other, “the one who breaks this covenant will die just like this animal has died.” A pledge was also made that said, “Just as this animal gave its life so I will give my life for you if necessary.”
As discussed above, in Gen. 15:17-18 we read of a most incredible scene: When the sun had gone
down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these [slaughtered animal sacrifice] pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram… What this verse describes is the walking of the figure 8 by a smoking pot representing the Father (“Our God is a consuming fire” – Ex. 24:17; Deu. 4:24) hovering over the ground and a flaming torch, representing the Son of Man, the Light of the World (Jhn. 1:3), Abraham’s stand-in, who alone “reveals” the Father (Jhn. 1:3,18).
God’s blessings and curses upon Israel were fleshed out by Moses to the children of Israel in his parting speech to them in Deuteronomy 28, and they are extensive and terribly foreboding. As for the curses upon God Himself should He violate His covenant obligation to Abraham, in Gen. 22:16 God says: “By Myself I have sworn…” We can barely contemplate what this really means, but it would have to mean something no less unfathomable than a self- destruction and annihilation of all that exists, visible and invisible. Again, it helps to take a moment to ponder the awesomeness of this scene and all it represented for us, for the Lord of all Creation, and for eternity.
We can take comfort, however, that the Lord is apparently not concerned about His ability to faithfully keep the covenant: 33 “But I will not break off My lovingkindness from him, Nor deal falsely in My faithfulness. 34 “My covenant I will not violate, Nor will I alter the utterance of My lips. 35 “Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David. (Ps. 89:33-35) And, of course, this applies to all believers as we are all in the family of David, the family of believers.
- The cut of the covenant: A knife is used to make an incision in either the palms or the wrists of each participant. This was to allow blood to freely flow. The Bible teaches that life is in the blood. The two participants then engage in a handshake allowing the free flowing blood to intermingle. This symbolized the two bloods, the two lives, being joined into one blood and one life. In some cultures, the blood from each participant is mixed into a cup of wine. Each would drink from the cup demonstrating their union. The actual practice of “cutting the covenant” varies in its methods depending on the culture. When this event was finished, a substance would be rubbed into the wounds so they would never heal cleanly. This was done so that a permanent “mark” would be left. Wherever these men would go, they would be identified as a “covenant man” by the visible mark on their bodies.
The blood of both God and man was intermingled in Christ and shed by Him on the cross! Hebrews 13:20 says that the Father ratified the eternal covenant with Christ’s blood. The marks of the covenant on Him are the holes in His hands, feet, and sides, which clearly He has chosen to retain forever as a covenant reminder, as he showed to Thomas and the other disciples after His resurrection. The Lord is apparently adamant that we do not miss all the confirmations of covenant. And, of course, God’s people take the mark of circumcision, a circumcision of the heart!
- The covenant meal: This is usually a meal of bread and wine. Each fed the other signifying that “all that I am is coming into you.” The covenant meal usually ended the blood covenant ceremony.
At this point a new relationship is born. It is a love relationship. This kind of love is called “Hesed” in Hebrew and “Agape'” in the Greek. It is a love that says, “I will never leave you or forsake you. In the upper room during the Last Supper, Christ cemented the Everlasting Blood Covenant between God and man. The ceremonial meal of bread and wine was a covenant meal between God and man and “renewed” the Everlasting Blood Covenant. (Gal. 3:19).
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Christ as God’s Covenant Response
When we understand the blood covenant, we will find our faith rising to where we believe that God will never violate His promises to us. We will therefore always seek to persevere until we see them manifest in our lives, despite the intensity of the battle against Satan. The Covenant did not belong to the ten commandments as modernists put it, but instead the Covenant was the reason for the Law. (Gal.3:19)
Christ is God’s covenant response to our covenant cry for help against our enemies. This is clearly set forth in the first chapter of Luke by Zecharias, John the Baptist’s father, who prophesied about Jesus’s birth as follows: 68 “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, 69 And has raised up a horn of salvation for us In the house of David His servant— 70 As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old— 71 Salvation FROM OUR ENEMIES, And FROM THE HAND OF ALL WHO HATE US; 72 To show mercy toward our fathers, And to remember His holy covenant, 73 The oath which He swore to Abraham our father, 74 To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, 75 In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.
As the Lord told Moses: “I have heard the cry of my people.” The Lord was well aware of His covenant obligation to withhold nothing in his response to such a cry for help, and He was in no way going to violate that obligation. Therefore, He sent God Himself to man…
Did you catch that?
It is stupefying to think about, and when understood, quickly destroys any and all thought of God as holding back or saying “No” when we ask in accordance with His will for freedom from Satan’s oppression.When the father sent the Son He sent the Creator God Himself in human form to rescue us from our enemies! He held nothing back – with Christ came salvation, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption and everything else in the heavenly cupboard (1 Cor. 1:30). He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him over for us all, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things? Rom. 8:31.
Who are our enemies? Satan and his horde who are busy oppressing the sons of Adam with darkness and calamity and sickness and lies in the slavery Adam and Eve willingly submitted to in the Garden of Eden. Rom. 6:16 says: Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
Given the God of Abraham’s self-imposed legal obligation in the blood covenant to provide all assets and resources at His disposal to allay the troubles from our Enemy, it is utterly preposterous to think that cancer or depression or any other thing the Enemy throws at us is not lavishly countered by the appearance of Christ and all that came with Him, including the authority to use His Name against our enemies, as the 12 apostles and the 72 disciples quickly learned to do.
Do you see the import of this for our faith? Certainly, we can see the effect God’s Blood Covenant oath had on Abraham. Even though Abraham was promised innumerable descendants through Isaac, God then ordered Abraham to slay Isaac. Abraham had to ask Himself: “How could this be?” The Scripture in Hebrews 11 reveals, however, the conclusion Abraham came to: By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; 18 it was he to whom it was said, “IN ISAAC YOUR DESCENDANTS SHALL BE CALLED.” 19 He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.
In other words, Abraham concluded that it was easier for the Lord to raise Isaac from the dead than to violate His blood covenant to Abraham. Now that is astonishing evidence of the power of the Blood Covenant in the eyes of ancient peoples to spawn a faith that literally knows no bounds, and it is why we today can have unwavering faith in every promise of the Living God.
As the Scripture says about the royal official who received from Jesus the word that His sick son would live: “Go,” Jesus replied, “your son will live.” The man took Jesus at his word and departed. (Jhn 4:50) We are to do the same. If we do, then we will become as David’s Mighty Men and the heroes of faith recounted in Hebrews 11, who performed acts of righteousness, quenched the power of fire, shut the mouths of lions,… put foreign armies to flight, from weakness were made strong, and became mighty in war…
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