“To say, ‘To you I give the land of Canaan;

It is your allotted possession.”

(Psalm 105:11)

One of the essential elements of the Covenant that God made with Abraham was the Land. To Abraham, God gave the land from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in modern Iraq to the east (Genesis 15:18-20). It is a wide swath of land that Israel never fully took possession of due to their persistent idolatry and sin. Yes, folks, God often restricts the blessings He gives to us due to our sins! The land was seen as Israel’s eternal inheritance — it was unalienable to them, in other words, it could not be given away, sold, or taken away. It was their hereditary property as a gift from God and the perpetual nature of that property was meant as a picture of the eternal home they had with God after this life was complete.

Yet, this opens up several questions. The most important of these questions has to do with how the Christians fit into the covenant. We certainly do not have an inheritance in the land, nor can we lay claim to such an allotment. So if we are the children of Abraham as noted before, and God gave that property to Abraham, where do we fit into the equation?

The Apostle Peter makes an essential contribution to the answer when he speaks of Christians as “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). Paul writes that there has been a change in the priesthood (Hebrews 7:11-14) and that the imperfect priesthood of Levi was replaced by the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:15-10:18). In Christ, we become members of this greater priesthood — a royal priesthood because Jesus descended from the tribe of Judah. Why is this significant? It is significant because the priests did not receive an inheritance in the land; instead, God was their inheritance (Deuteronomy 18:1-2). Likewise, as priests of the greater priesthood, we, too, do not receive an inheritance in the land (Philippians 3:20).

Are we then without an inheritance in the covenant? Not at all. For the priests, their inheritance was not in the land itself, but it was in God Himself (again, Deuteronomy 18:1-2). Similarly, Peter states that our inheritance is being preserved by God in heaven for us (1 Peter 1:3-5). The earthly inheritance given to the Jews only ever symbolized the greater inheritance promised to God’s people in Christ — an inheritance in the new creation, in the New Jerusalem, in the eternal presence of God, serving and ministering to Him as His rightful priests (see Revelation 21:1-22:5). This is our allotted possession. As God’s elect in Christ, it is our unalienable inheritance that can neither be taken away nor given away. It cannot be squandered or sold. It was bought at a price by Jesus and given to us as a gift of eternal grace. It is not of our doing; it is God’s doing. It is our place in God’s covenant of which we sing and give Him glory.