Covenant of the Coming One

In The Greatest Gift, the devotional I am using for Advent, I read about God giving the Ten Commandments....His covenant of love.  God entreating His people to love Him and be in relationship with Him.  The reading helped me see the Commandments in a new way.  This was God giving His love, as a bride and groom covenant their love to each other.  This is God saying, "I made you for Me and I know you are only complete when you are Mine and I am yours.  This is what it would look like for us to be in a relationship of unbroken love."

Here is my paraphrase of the covenant commandments, inspired by Ann Voskamp.  Some of these are taken almost word-for-word from the book; others were imagined by me.  If you like, read Deuteronomy 5:5-22, and then see how this paraphrase fits in.  Hear God's heart.

"I rescued you from slavery.  From a debt you could not pay.  From death.  From the price of unfaithfulness.  I Am your God.  You are Mine.  My treasured possession."

"Have no other lovers that woo you, that take your attention or affection, but Me."

"I created you in My image.  I am the Image-maker.  You are the image-bearer.  Don't make an image of yourself or anything else that usurps what I have made and called good."

"I give you My name, My very name to make you Mine.  It is your new identity.  Do not use it in vain.  As mere lip service.  Do not shame My name or be ashamed of it.  My name defines you."

I long to spend time with you, holy time for you and Me....set apart space in your life, in your days, as holy time just for us."

"I love you, Bride.  Be one, as you and I are one.  Not coveting or lying or stealing or dishonoring or murdering or cheating one another, but honoring and loving and living out of our love.  Yours and Mine."

God didn't just give us the commitment of love at the top of Mount Sinai.  He staggeringly kept our commitment, the one we could never keep, at the top of Calvary.  Jesus didn't just die the death we deserved to die; He lives the love we've desired to live.

This is the hope of Advent.  He came to give us Himself, to make us know His love, and to fulfill the love to God that we have broken.

What is He whispering to us now?  "I came to make you Mine.  Am I yours?"