Tag Archives: promise

IT’S ALL GRACE!

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IT’S ALL GRACE!

“It was not through the law that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. For if those who depend on the law are heirs, faith means nothing and the promise is worthless, because the law brings wrath. And where there is no law, there is no transgression.” Romans 4:13-15.

Paul was dealing with two mutually exclusive principles: law and works versus faith and righteousness. Works brings wrath because it is impossible for fallen humans to obey the law perfectly; faith brings righteousness because it comes through God’s promise and is a gift of God apart from the law. The one cancels out the other. Since Abraham received God’s gift of righteousness before the law was given, he could not have been declared righteousness through his obedience to the law.

Paul concludes with a declaration of victory – if faith that brings righteousness cancels out the law, then there is no longer any wrath because it is the law that brings wrath. No one can break a law that isn’t there! It’s all God!

“Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring – not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. As it is written: “I have made you the father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God in whom he believed – the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.” Romans 4:16, 17.

It is faith that levels the ground for both Jew and Gentile. Since possession of the law, though it is holy in itself, becomes the reason for condemnation, Jews have no advantage over Gentiles. What should have been a blessing for them only brought them under God’s judgment because it brought their sinfulness into sharp focus.

Since the forefather they so revered was accepted by God because he trusted in His promise, and not on an effort on his part to satisfy God’s holy demands, all those who follow his example are his spiritual offspring – and equally acceptable to God, be they Jew of Gentile.

What was the promise that Abraham believed?

“And Abram said, ‘You have given me no children; so a servant in my household will be my heir.’ Then the word of the Lord came to him: ‘This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.’ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the sky and count the stars – if indeed you can count them.’ Then He said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’

“Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.” Genesis 15:3-6.

It was Abraham’s confidence in the trustworthiness of God’s promise that activated God’s power to make it happen. That’s how God works. Apart from natural circumstances, possible or impossible, He had a plan in place, but it could only become effective in the earthly realm when Abraham spoke the amen to God’s promise.

“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so, through Him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.” 2 Corinthians 1:20.

What is God’s promise to us that we must activate by faith, upon which all His other promises are based? “For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile – the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on Him, for, ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'” Romans 10:13.

It’s as simple as that. Paul has stripped away all the small print inserted by uncomprehending humans. It’s all God and all grace, and we can add nothing to what He has done. It’s up to us to accept it and become heirs of all the blessings He has promised.

Hallelujah!

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

The Mystery Of Christ Revealed

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THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST REVEALED

For this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles – Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that, through the gospel, the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus  (Eph. 3: 1-5).

The secret is out! The Gentiles, who thought they were excluded, are in on God’s master plan to bless the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike, with the spiritual blessings Paul declared in the opening paragraphs of his letter. The children of Israel were the initial recipients of God’s magnificent array of benefits – if they had only understood and co-operated with God to receive the favour He promised them. However, they were only the prototype of what God had planned for the whole world.

Israel was the nation God chose to coach to walk in His ways as a visual aid for the rest of the world, so that all the nations would understand what God had for them and what He wanted from them.

God entrusted to Paul and to his fellow apostles His plan to open the door of faith to the whole world. He placed in Paul’s spirit, through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, the understanding of this “mystery” – not something too difficult to understand but something hidden from human beings until the moment He made the truth known to His apostles. He entrusted to them the task of administering His grace to the previously excluded peoples so that they would have an equal share in everything He has promised to the Jews.

However, the Jews would have none of it. They believed that the covenant and the promises belonged to them, and to them alone. They hated and despised the Gentiles, believing that God’s prohibition to mix with them had to do with their worth as human beings. They failed to understand that the evil influence the pagan beliefs and practices had on His people was what God hated. After all they had suffered as a people because of their idolatry, they wanted nothing to do with Gentiles. They treated them as scum and called them “dogs”.

Paul and his fellow apostles suffered greatly at the hands of the Jews because they refused to participate in their prejudice. Jesus had given them a commission to take His message to the whole world. They were committed to go to the ends of the earth regardless of the way they were treated. The gospel of God’s grace was the dividing line which cut across all the divisions of race, colour, language and culture and created a new culture and a new race of people whose citizenship was not primarily in this world.

It was Paul’s task to administer this message and the grace which God offered to those who received it, regardless of their human condition. It was a sacred commission from the throne room of heaven. Paul accepted and carried out the commission with integrity and commitment to his dying day, not counting his life worth anything unless he obeyed his Master.

Imagine the joy of those who had previously believed that they were excluded from the benefits of the bond that God had created between Himself and His chosen people. The Jews were the privileged ones, and everyone else was regarded as trash – until Paul came to them with the good news that they, too, had equal shares with the Jews in the favour of God. God’s mysterious ways had become clear. He was not mad with the Gentiles, consigning them to hell, as they once believed. It was His plan, all along, to pour out His grace on them through the Jews who were the recipients and custodians of His covenant.

There are many references to God’s plan for the Gentiles in the Old Testament which His people could have understood, had they chosen to believe the prophecies. God did not hate them. Yes, He hated their practices but, through the cross, He also forgave their sin and gave them an opportunity to turn from their wickedness and put their trust in the Son of God.

What Paul had to share with the people of Asia Minor and Europe, regardless of their nationality and religious affiliation, was truly good news. God had given them the opportunity to turn away from the sins that tore their lives apart, to start again with a new life which He created within them, to bring them back from spiritual death to life and to set their feet on a path of obedience to God and His Word.

Through Christ, God had made a new race out of Jew and Gentile, belonging to His kingdom, under His authority and participators in His nature. All God’s promises were theirs as well. They had the hope of eternal life with those of the Jewish people who believed in and received Jesus as their Messiah.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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An Unbreakable Promise

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AN UNBREAKABLE PROMISE 

When God made His promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for Him to swear by, He swore by Himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’ And so, after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised. People swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, He confirmed it with an oath (Heb. 6: 13-17).

We need to back up a bit to get the gist of what this writer was saying. His readers were suffering persecution at the hands of both Jews and Romans because of their allegiance to Jesus. To the Jews, Jesus was a blasphemer who had been executed by the Romans for treason because the charge of blasphemy was not on their list of crimes. To the Romans, Jesus’s claim to be the Son of God and Lord put Him at odds with Caesar. His followers, therefore, were to be exterminated.

To avoid persecution, they were tempted to go back to Judaism since the Roman government still tolerated the Jewish religion. The writer’s persuasive argument was that Jesus was greater than everything they held dear in Judaism because He was the fulfilment of the types and shadows of their religion. To go back would be to forfeit all the blessings and promises Jesus fulfilled.

God’s promises are backed by His unchangeable nature and are therefore unbreakable. Although Abraham was an old man and his wife both barren and beyond childbearing, God promised that he would be the father of a great nation and have many descendants. Abraham looked beyond the circumstances to the promise of God which had to be fulfilled or God was a liar.

Abraham received what God promised after many years of waiting because he believed God. What was his secret? Faith and patience! If God said it, He would do it, no matter how long it took to keep His promise. It was not about trustworthiness but about timing. God is always painting on a bigger canvas and writing a bigger story than we can see or understand. What He was doing in Abraham’s life had to fit in with every other circumstance around him.

God’s promise to Abraham was so crucial to His salvation plan that He confirmed it with an oath – not because His word was untrustworthy but because He wanted Abraham to know how important this promise was. In the natural it seemed an impossibility for him and Sarah to conceive a child. Abraham’s faith had to rise above human possibilities to take hold of the divine promise and to fix his faith on God’s word and not on his reason.

Intervening years were not an issue to God. The deadness of Abraham and Sarah’s reproductive organs were not a problem. God’s power to intervene overshadowed these natural obstacles. Abraham’s confidence in the trustworthiness of God’s promise was the crux of the matter. Was he prepared to take God at His word and see it through to fulfilment no matter what?

Abraham had to walk a long road of learning to trust God before he was willing to stake everything on God’s promise. He left his homeland on God’s instruction, a God he did not know, and went to a land he did not know because God had told him to go. He settled among strangers, sometimes hostile to him, as a nomad, because God said so. He had no idea what God was doing with him but he trusted Him anyway.

God gave him a son when his heart was ready to receive the child and to raise him to believe in God. He even went to the point of sacrificing his son because God told him to do it. So confident had Abraham become in the promises of God that he was in perfect harmony with Him no matter what He told him to do.

It was this kind of faith that God needed and that He honoured in a man who was tried and tested. The way was open for Him to keep His word because His promise, backed by His oath was Abraham’s anchor.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about a hundred years old – and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He had promised. That is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Rom. 4: 18-22).

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

The Promise Of Rest

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THE PROMISE OF REST

Therefore, since the promise of rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed.

Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God said, ‘So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’

For somewhere He has spoken about the seventh day in these words, ‘On the seventh day God rested from all His works.’

And again in the passage above He says, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ (Heb. 4: 1-5)

What exactly is this writer on about?

He seems to be using the words ‘faith’, ‘obedience’ and ‘rest’ interchangeably. The Israelites who disobeyed Him never reached the Promised Land. They perished on the journey because they did not believe that there was ‘rest’ for them in the land of Canaan. They refused to ‘rest;’ in God’s word which would have taken them to their destination had they done what He instructed them to do.

God’s rest was a cessation of His creative work on the seventh day, not because He was tired but because His work was complete. He had done everything He had to do, and it was up to what He had created to continue by carrying out His instructions.

Israel’s journey through the wilderness is a picture, a visual aid, of our journey through life. They had left the land of slavery through the miraculous intervention of God. He destroyed the enemy and set them free from their old lives of bondage to their slave drivers to follow God’s ‘way’ to the land He had prepared for them. All they were to do was to trust Him, do what He said, and stay on His ‘way’. If they left the ‘path’ they would get lost and perish in the desert.

His word was their road map, and obedience to His instructions guaranteed that they would keep going in the right direction. He gave them ‘landmarks’ to keep them on track, teaching them how to relate to Him as their God, and to one another as members of His ‘family’, His people who were to resemble Him in the way they lived together.

The Israelites didn’t get it. When God tested them to check on their trust, they turned on Moses and they turned on Him, accusing Him of bringing them into the desert to destroy them because He hated them. What a terrible accusation in the face of God’s evident love for them! He had proposed to them at Mount Sinai, calling them into a relationship with Him as intimate as marriage and giving them the promise that He had a place for them where they could rest in His love.

Had they believed His word and trusted His motives and His power, their journey to Canaan, as tough as it was, would have been over in a matter of weeks. They would have taken possession of their very own country and settled down to live in the houses and on the bounty that was already there, prepared for them by the inhabitants they were to drive out. It would have all happened smoothly and without stress because God was with them and for them.

What an amazing picture of our journey through life! God has already done everything to rescue us from our enemy, the devil, through the intervention of His Son. He has given us His instructions for navigating the journey of life. He has revealed His love and faithfulness to us by the miracle of new life in Jesus. He has forgiven our sin, reinstated us as His sons and daughters, promised us everything we need for the journey and, best of all, given us His presence in us by His Holy Spirit.

All we have to do now is to rest in what He has done and what He has said, do what He tells us and trust In His love and power to take us home. Every test is not, as the Israelites accused Him, His way of destroying us. It is His intention to reveal His glory by showing us His love through His power. He calls for trust, not complaint, and obedience, not resistance.

Faith, obedience, rest! This is the way home. The alternative is unthinkable – get lost and die in the wilderness, never entering His rest and never seeing the Promised Land.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Torah!

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TORAH!

“Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. A mediator implies more than one party; but God is one.

“Is the law opposed to the promises of God? Absolutely not! For if a law was given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law. But Scripture has locked up everything under the control of sin, so that what was promised, being given through faith in Christ Jesus, might be given to those who believe.” Galatians 3:19-22.

Wow! This is a mouthful! What was Paul getting at? Let’s unpick this passage bit by bit and try to understand what he was explaining.

Why did God give His people the Law? We must understand the word torah, which is translated law, from God’s point of view. It does not mean law in the same way as we understand it from a western point of view. Torah means teaching, rather than a rigid set of rules. Through the Torah, God was teaching them how to live the right way in line with who He is.

We must remember that, for 430 years, the descendants of Jacob lived in Egypt under Egyptian rule. When they finally left Egypt, they were an undisciplined bunch of slaves who had lived under the whip of Egyptian taskmasters. Once they were free from their cruelty, they had to learn how to live with one another under a different set of rules. It was not okay to do to one another what the Egyptians had done to them. But who was going to set the standards and tell them how to live?

Firstly, then, the Torah defined for them what was right and wrong and how to put right what they did wrong. Paul said it was because of transgressions. Sin is sin, but we don’t know what sin is until we are told what it is. That’s what the law does. For example, how do we know it is wrong to steal unless we are told that it is wrong and what to do about it when we do steal?

Secondly, God’s people had to learn that they could never reach His perfect standard by obeying His teaching. There was always a pull towards doing wrong and, just like little children, as soon as they were told not to do this or not to do that, they did it because of their natural bent towards rebellion. No amount of rules would keep them on the right way. They needed a change on the inside and no law could do that.

Thirdly, the Torah was intended to develop a culture that would prepare them for the coming of the Messiah. The sacrificial system with its different kinds of sacrifices, many reasons for offering sacrifices, and rituals they had to observe, were all intended as visual aids to show them and prepare them for the coming of God’s perfect sacrifice, the Lord Jesus Christ.

They had to understand what sin was, a falling short of God’s holy standards, and what it did, making the sinner unclean; hence the need for the death of an animal and the offering of its blood, not only as a substitute for the sinner but also to cleanse the offerer from the pollution of sin.

The priestly system taught them that they could not bounce into the presence of a holy God because sin separated them from Him. He was unapproachable except through His appointed mediator, the high priest and the offering of the prescribed sacrifices. When Abraham’s “seed”, Jesus, came, He fulfilled all the pictures the law painted of the right way to approach God.

So, the Torah was not opposed to the revelation of God’s grace through His Son; it was a preparation for His coming. Without the Law, who He was and what He did would have made no sense to His people. But when He came, and when He died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for all the sin of all the people for all time, there was no need for anyone to obey the law as a way of approaching God any more. The priesthood and the sacrificial system were fulfilled and done away with in Christ.

God does not need human mediators to stand between Him and His people. Jesus is the perfect Mediator because He is both God and man. God does not need animal sacrifices to teach us how terrible sin is – that it demands the shedding of blood to be forgiven. His own Son shed His blood, a once-for-all sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, not just for Jews but for the whole world.

Why would Gentiles need to be circumcised, then? They do not need a physical sign to set them apart as God’s children. The Holy Spirit in them is the sign of God’s ownership. Doing all the things that the law demands and that are only pictures of what Jesus came to do is a foolish backward step. God did away with all that by sending His Messiah and now all we have to do is receive Him by faith and He takes us right into the presence of the Father, forgiven, clean and acceptable to God.

And He changes our nature and puts His Spirit in us so that we live according to His torah, not because we have to but because we can.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.