Contractual Love?

So, reading in my one book for class, the author states that the understanding of the salvation promise through ancient contractual terms is helpful, but fails to fully grasp the understanding of promise.

Having never really thought of the promise of Christ after the fall as anything more than a covenant relationship, this made me stop, jot some notes in the margin and exclaim, "Hey! I have something to blog about today!" Since then I have spun my chair 90-degrees east and started typing.

Seriously, I have infrequently really considered the depth of grace in terms of the gift of salvation. Often I (and I assume many others) have thought of it as, "Well, I believe in the gift, I accept it and I follow Christ, so contractually I am owed salvation." But aren't contracts typically based on some means of mutual benefit? And what does humanity have to offer God that would necessitate a contract between the two?

OK, the obvious answer to what humanity has to offer God is love. That is what he is after, but can you contract love from someone? Is it really something that is given "in exchange for?" So, conceptualizing salvation as a contract is woefully inadequate if consider solely in this dimension.

But, then I think, "What about the OT covenants? How do they fare in the covenant comparison?" Well, there is help in understanding the responsibility of the two parties in a contract and understanding exactly what God provides to humanity through them (since he is unwilling to break his word), but, again, what would God gain from the human fulfillment of the terms? Did he really need a people to call his own when he could call the whole universe his own? No. God sought voluntary following (i.e. love) through a guiding framework of the law. However, his promise was much greater than his covenant since he knew that he would send the Christ b/c man could never fulfill there end of the bargain.

Conclusion: Grace trumps law/covenant.

And thus concludes my "Aha" moment of the day.