A forever promise

This week’s Bible Lesson, titled “Soul,” explores the covenants—agreements between God and humankind—in the Bible. In one of the earliest covenants, God announces to the patriarch Abram, “I am the Almighty God” (Genesis 17:1 , Golden Text ). Then God astonishes the 99-year-old Abram by promising to change his name to Abraham and make him the “father of many nations” (Genesis 17:4), giving him and his aged wife Sarai a son. He’ll be the God of Abraham’s descendants, the children of Israel, forever, giving them the land of Canaan. In exchange for this particular covenant, the Almighty God, or “God all-knowing,” expects nothing (Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary). It’s unconditional.

The Responsive Reading shows how God follows through on this covenant, giving the Israelites rain and productivity, and delivering them from slavery in Egypt (see Leviticus, chap. 26). Section 1 goes on to review the ways God has stood by the children of Israel “to a thousand generations” (Psalms 105:8 , citation 3), even during periods of Exile, when they suffered for their disobedience to God. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy then explains that they’ve overcome their shortcomings because they’re actually “the representatives of Soul, not corporeal sense; the offspring of Spirit, who, having wrestled with error, sin, and sense, are governed by divine Science; some of the ideas of God beheld as men, casting out error and healing the sick; Christ’s offspring” (p. 583 , cit. 3).

Section 2 shows how Christ Jesus brings a new dimension to the divine covenant relationship—embracing not just the Jewish people, but all humanity. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells his disciples, “Ye are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14 , cit. 9). And in his Lord’s Prayer, which Science and Health calls “the prayer of Soul, not of material sense” (p. 14 , cit. 8), he addresses God for the first time in the Bible as “Our Father which art in heaven” (Matthew 6:9 , cit. 10), communicating the sense of a universal family of brothers and sisters, all jointly responsible for each other’s spiritual well-being.

As the following sections point out, Jesus’ lifework of healing—proving “that Soul and its attributes were forever manifested through man” (Science and Health, p. 210 , cit. 11)—illustrates the New Testament law of love replacing the Old Testament legalistic sense of covenant. Despite the Hebrew law against working on the Sabbath, for instance, Jesus not only condones his disciples’ harvesting corn on that day, but also heals a man with what J. B. Phillips describes as a “shrivelled hand” (Matthew, chap. 12, cit. 13, The New Testament in Modern English. [All of the passages in the Bible Lesson itself are taken from the King James Version.]).

The Master’s key disciples see him transfigured with inner light in Section 5, as he converses with Moses (representing the Hebrew Law) and Elias (representing the prophets), a sure sign of new unity between the Old and New Testament covenants, in joyous fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy that God would ultimately bless humanity with “an everlasting covenant” (Jeremiah 32:40 , cit. 21). A spiritual promise that will last forever!