Blood covenants include three mechanisms that are both required and necessary to insure the covenant makers adhere to the mandates of the covenant. They are:

1. Curses
2. Blessings
3. Discipline

It may seem strange to find curses in a covenant that is founded in love. However, curses are required precisely because of the great love the covenanting partners possess for each other. The idea is that each is declaring through the curses imposed that the strength of their love is so great that they will gladly endure the most severe curses if they were to break the covenant. On the other hand, severe curses are intended to act as a deterrent against breaking the terms of the covenant.

Just as it is the desire of the covenanting partners that the curses be quite devastating, the blessings are to be equally glorious. The curses and blessings listed in Deuteronomy twenty-seven and twenty-eight are both dire and wonderful.

The blessings are for those who enter and keep the commandments of the covenant. They lead to eternal life. The curses are imposed on all who do not keep the commandments, and make no mistake about it, they are intended to destroy those who disobey the covenant.

Discipline is the third instrument of a covenant’s composition. This is a special case that applies to those who are in the covenant and unintentionally act in a manner which is not in keeping with the commandments or the spirit of the covenant. Should this person be placed in the same category as the one who has rejected the covenant in their heart and thereby continually transgress the covenant? That wouldn’t be fair. Yet there must be some penalty for the errant behavior of those in the covenant. Just as an earthly parent disciplines an unruly child, so our heavenly Father disciplines those who are His by covenant. Discipline differs from curses in that they have different goals. The ultimate end of the curses of the covenant is the death of the law breaker. The goal of discipline is to punish for the purpose of raising the law breaker’s behavior to an acceptable level. Curses lead to death, but discipline leads to life everlasting.

God’s desire is that everyone would enter and keep the covenant He established in, through and by Jesus Christ so they would become partakers of eternal life.

May you be blessed in full measure as you walk with Christ,

Peter Giardina