Covenant

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A covenant is a sort of contract or promise. In the context of Christianity, the most important covenants are those made between God and men. In general, God's covenants are often formalized with a ritual in which both God and man participate, such as the meetings with Moses or Abraham on the mountains, or the death and resurrection of Jesus. God's covenants with men have included certain stipulations ("if man does X, God will do Y, but if man does A, God will do B"). A noteworthy exception to this was the Abrahamic covenant, which although it included a stipulation on Abraham and his descendants (circumcision), God put Abraham into a deep sleep during the instantiation of the covenant, so only God participated in the ritual, and not Abraham (Genesis 15:17 for the incident with Abraham; Jeremiah 34:18 for the same ritual in the context of a different contract, with explanation of its meaning). By performing the ritual alone, God bound himself to the covenant without binding Abraham to it, thereby ensuring that God's end of the deal would be upheld even if Abraham failed to hold up his end. It is understood that the fulfillment of God's end of the covenant with Abraham was the delivery of Jesus, a descendant of Abraham, to be sacrificed for the sins of mankind, and the establishment of Jesus as Righteous King over the whole world forever, a blessing to all mankind with all that it entails.

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