The Covenants: Part I - Introduction and Background

Introduction: 

Growing up in Seventh-day Adventism, I was taught what is often referred to as the “proof-texting” method of Biblical interpretation.  Because I used the Bible in a very fragmented way to support my own preconceived notions, I never had any real feel for the flow of scripture and how it all fit together.

 

All this changed when I began to read and study whole books of the Bible in context and then began to read through the entire Bible.  What instantly leaped out at me from the pages of scripture was the way in which the entire narrative was structured and defined by covenants.  It suddenly dawned on me that redemptive history could not be fully understood without understanding the covenants that God had made with His people.

 

Understanding the Biblical covenants opened the scriptures up to me in a way I had never experienced.  Suddenly, I could see a beautiful arc across all of scripture.  No longer were the scriptures a bunch of fragmented texts used for proving a doctrine.  Now I could see God at work through the ages with all things pointing to the person and work of Jesus Christ.  The realization that all the scriptures, both Testaments, are all about Jesus revolutionized my understanding of the Word.

 

This Bible study is designed to provide an outline overview of the two major covenants in scripture.  Because the material covers nearly the entire Bible, it is not possible to present an absolutely exhaustive study of every book and chapter dealing with the covenants.  I will be presenting texts and passages that I believe provide the basic facts and structure of the covenants.  However, because of the danger of falling into the “proof-texting” trap, I strongly recommend that readers progress through this study with an open Bible.  It is my hope that readers will not settle for only reading the texts I have quoted, but that they will conduct a much more extensive investigation that includes reading the surrounding chapters for context.  I would especially encourage readers to read through entire books that are extensively quoted, such as Romans and Galatians.  The key to avoiding proof-texting is context, context, context!  I challenge every reader to read beyond the quotes in this study to absolutely assure that all quotes are fully in context.

 

Background: 

The first step to understanding the Bible is to understand its historical context.  In the case of covenants it is vital to understand that covenants were common in the near east during biblical times.  Covenants were frequently used to establish lordship.  A suzerain would make a covenant with his vassals that normally contained three parts:

 

• Promise
• Condition
• Sign

The promise might be something like the suzerain promising not to kill the conquered vassals.  Although some covenants might be unconditional, i.e. the suzerain would do what he would do regardless, most held some sort of condition for fulfilling the promise.  So the suzerain might promise not to kill the conquered vassals if they provided him with a yearly tribute of grain and wine.  The covenant was usually ratified with blood and a sign was setup as a way of showing that the vassals were in the covenant with the suzerain.  The sign was often arbitrary and could be just about anything such as an earring in the left ear, an ankle bracelet, or almost any other external sign.

So, with this background in mind, let’s see if we can find the major elements in a couple of Biblical covenants.  Let’s start with a couple of easy ones.  We’ll begin with the Noahic Covenant.  The Noahic Covenant was an unconditional covenant.  It did not depend on the vassals (men).  The suzerain (God) sovereignly said what He would do without any condition applied.  So we only need to look for a promise and a sign.  Read through this passage and see if you can identify a promise and sign before reaching the end of the passage.

Genesis 9:9-17 (NASB)
⁹ "Now behold, I Myself do establish My covenant with you, and with your descendants after you; ¹⁰ and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes out of the ark, even every beast of the earth. ¹¹ "I establish My covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth." ¹² God said, "This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; ¹³ I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. ¹⁴ "It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, ¹⁵ and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh. ¹⁶ "When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth." ¹⁷ And God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth."

So how did you do?  You should have discovered the following:

• Sign: the rainbow.

• Promise: all flesh would never again be destroyed by flood. 

Let’s move on to another unconditional covenant.  The Abrahamic Covenant is an important covenant as it foreshadows a covenant to come.  I believe you will be able to find a two part promise and a sign.  Give it a try.

Genesis 15:5-7 (NASB)
⁵ And He took him outside and said, "Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be." ⁶ Then he believed in the LORD; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness. ⁷ And He said to him, "I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it."

Genesis 17:10-11 (NASB)
¹⁰ "This is My covenant, which you shall keep, between Me and you and your descendants after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. ¹¹ "And you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be the sign of the covenant between Me and you.

So, were you able to find each part of the covenant?  Here’s what I have:

·         Promise: a) Many descendants b) possess the land.

·         Sign: Circumcision

There is no condition to this covenant in the sense of Abraham having to do something.  He simply believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. The Abrahamic Covenant is an "unconditional" covenant because God simply says what He will sovereignly do. Faith, not works, is the basis of this covenant. Next time we will compare and contrast this with the first of the two most prominent Biblical covenants.

There is No God: Part IV

In this post I'll finish up my reply to my friends theory that because there is evil, then there is no God. I just don't think the existence of evil makes a very strong argument against the existence of God. Consider this: If there is no creator, if everything that is, is merely the product of time plus chance via natural selection, then there is no evil......or good for that matter. There is only that which is. There is no objective basis upon which anything could be considered "good" or "evil". In evolutionary terms, those are meaningless concepts. Viewing behaviors in terms of the survival of the fittest does not lead to the conclusion that something is right or wrong. Who's to say? It may very well be that rape helps to further the genetic line of the strongest, fittest, males. It may be that murder helps to weed out the weak and prevent them from passing on their genes. Taking something that belongs to someone else, like their property or their wife, may just show that one person is more fit than the other (at least if they are smart enough and strong enough to get away with it). If something benefits one to the detriment of another, who's to say that's wrong? It's just natural selection at work.

The most you might be able to say from an atheistic perspective is that something is likely or unlikely to propagate fit progeny, but even then your progeny have no particular right to live and may or may not represent the absolute fittest of the species. In a Darwinian sense, there is nothing to say that humans should survive over some other species, but if I were Darwinian interested in pushing humanity to evolve to a higher level I might start by putting the weak, infirm, and mentally deficient in concentration camps then exterminating them, or at least forcefully sterilizing them. There is absolutely no basis to say this is wrong from a purely evolutionary perspective.

To be sure, some who deny there is a God discuss morality and ethics, but those that are honest admit they have no hard, fast, objective basis for ethics. They would say that morality and ethics are merely what a majority of the population in a given time and place agree upon. That consensus can change at any time and no one can say the new ethics are "good" or "bad", they just are what they are. However, it could be argued that the majority has no objective basis by which to enforce any moral standard whatsoever on any individual. Ted Bundy said this well. Here is what Bundy claimed to have said to one of his victims. It's actually quite lucid from a purely atheistic point of view: 

"Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself–what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself–that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring–the strength of character–to throw off its shackles…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure that I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me–after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited self." - Ted Bundy (quoted by Louis P. Pojman in Ethics: Discovering Right & Wrong)

Interestingly, with perhaps a few aberrant exceptions, nearly all people in all times and all places would naturally want to dispute Bundy's conclusions and would call what he did "evil". Nearly everyone agrees that certain things are just "wrong". Even the most died-in-the-wool relativist will protest that it's wrong if you steal his wallet, cheat with his wife, punch him in the face, lie about him, or try to kill him. If you do some of these things in masse, such as murder, even staunch atheists will label your actions as "evil". But, upon what basis can a thing be called "wrong" or "evil" if there is no objective source of morality, only a constant fight for survival of the fittest?

There is no evolutionary way to explain the universal perception that some things are "wrong" or "evil". However, Christianity has no problem explaining the existence of evil. The world is not as it should be. It is a world in rebellion, laden with sin, pain, and suffering. Much of the suffering is produced through evil behavior. We perceive this behavior to be right and wrong, good and evil, because we are created in the image of God. This means we reflect God's communicable attributes (although imperfectly and to a lesser degree). When we see the murder or sexual abuse of a child we do not think in evolutionary terms. When we read accounts of genocide we do not think about natural selection. When someone wrongs us we do not shrug it off as survival of the fittest. Rather we feel wrath against evil and all that is wrong with this world and we long for justice. Our anger against evil and our longing for justice is a reflection of the holy and just God who created us to reflect His attributes. We can't explain our perception of evil in evolutionary terms, but we can explain it as creatures who possess the imago dei.

God has an ultimate solution for the problem of evil, it will one day be quarantined. It's nearly unimaginable to think of being part of that quarantine. Imagine being separated from all love, all purpose, all meaning, all light, all life, all mercy, all comfort, all truth, and all peace eternally. The Good News is that we need not be part of the quarantine of evil. God loves you and me so much that rather than pour out His natural wrath and justice on us for our sin, He has instead chosen to turn it back upon Himself and bear it fully in the person of Jesus. When we agree with God that the problem of evil is real, it is deeply rooted in us, and we desire to turn away from it and towards Jesus, then His payment settles our debt and His righteousness is credited to our account as if it were our own. That's love and justice in perfect balance. Through Jesus' perfect life and atoning sacrifice we may be declared legally right with God and spend eternity with Him in the earth made new where no evil exists. 

The 80 or so difficult years we spend in this life are nothing in comparison to the joy and peace we will experience for countless eons. And yet this life is so eternally significant. It is in this life that we are able to receive the gifts of forgiveness and eternal life. It is in this life that we are adopted eternally into the family of God. It is in this life that our outrage against all the pain and evil seen in a fallen world drives us to our Savior, the only real solution. 

There is No God: Part III

In Part II I discussed why it is a logical absurdity for God to create free will beings which have no volitional choice. Wherever volitional will exists, the potential for evil exists. So given that, you might ask, “Then why doesn’t God just somehow negate the consequences of those choices? Couldn’t He allow people to make evil choices, but then dismiss or counteract the results?” Such a question would bring us to assumption 1c in the theorem presented in Part I, an all loving God (omnibenevolence).

The human race is in rebellion against God. Evil flows from both individual and collective human choices. There are real consequences to evil within this fallen world. A truly loving God would not shield us from every consequence. Consider this, when you were a child your parents probably told you a hundred times not to touch the stove. At some point in time, most of us disobeyed and touched it.  We got burnt and we learned the lesson quickly. Without pain we would not draw back from things that our injurious to us. Without consequences we would learn nothing and have no motivation to change. The evil we experience in this world has much the same effect. By experiencing the consequences of a world in rebellion we long for something better and are driven to God. Experiencing temporal pain and suffering in this life is not the greatest tragedy. Experiencing eternal separation from God is. The ability to experience pain is a blessing of sorts that redirects us to that which is eternal, causes us to learn, and often moderates sinful behavior. God would no more protect us from the consequence of every wrong choice than a truly loving and wise parent would protect their child from every consequence they might face in life.

In discussing omnibenevolence, it is also very important to understand what the Bible really teaches about this attribute of God. Omnibenevolence does not mean that God is loving to the exclusion of all His other attributes. God is perfectly loving, perfectly merciful, and full of grace. He is also perfectly righteous, perfectly holy, perfectly just, and experiences holy wrath against sin. Because God is perfectly righteous and just, He cannot simply wink at sin and say, “No big deal. Don’t worry about it. I’ll just sweep it under the carpet”. That would be like a judge saying, “Don’t worry about that rape/murder you committed. No big deal. We’ll just forget about it”. That’s not justice and it’s not right.

So how does a simple essential being (i.e. one who is what He is and can be nothing else) who is both perfectly loving and perfectly just deal with sin? Obviously, He cannot simply brush the consequences aside. He does allow us to experience many of the temporal consequences in this life for the reasons I mentioned above. But the really Good News is that He has provided a way that we need not bare the eternal consequences. Jesus came and lived a perfect life in every respect. His perfect holiness and righteousness is credited to the account of every single person who believes in Him. His perfection replaces our imperfection. It’s a foreign righteousness that’s not of us. It’s simply deposited in our account and credited to us so that we stand before God legally declared “not guilty – holy – righteous”. But it doesn’t end there.

As a perfectly holy God, God cannot help but experience wrath against sin. As a perfectly just God, God cannot help but require justice against sin. God cannot act as if sin does not matter. But God, in His infinite Grace, has chosen to take all his wrath and justice back upon Himself and bear it all Himself in the person of the Son. Jesus, as God in the flesh, experienced the full wrath of God for every sin ever committed by every human throughout time. God bore it all upon Himself. As the eternal infinite God, He paid an infinite price and bore the justice and wrath for our sins for all eternity. He paid in full eternally. There is nothing left to pay, unless we choose to reject His work on our behalf and bear our sins on our own eternally – and He does allow us that choice. Jesus also rose again and ascended to Heaven guaranteeing that all those who are in Him have eternal life right now and forever. Now that’s good news! It’s love in perfect harmony with justice while allowing humans real volitional choice.

In Part IV I would like to talk a bit about why the existence of evil supports the belief that there is a real creator God.     

There is No God: Part II

In my last post I shared a logical theorem sent to me by an online acquaintance. In short, the theorem was designed to prove step by step that if evil exists then a loving all-powerful God cannot exist. I actually really appreciate this way of thinking through important issues. It allows for meaningful conversations that go beyond just simply stating rote opinions. Such conversations should help all parties involved to be challenged and to really think deeply.  However, it’s important to remember that it is not our role to change hearts and minds. Only the Holy Spirit can do that so I gladly leave that role to Him.  Our role is simply to give a well reasoned answer for the hope that we have, in a humble and respectful way.

I think part of the problem with some of the assumptions in the idea that God cannot exist if evil exist is that many of us have a view of God which is incomplete at best. That causes us to take certain faulty presuppositions into our reasoning process which then results in faulty conclusions. We’re all prone to this so it’s important to spend quality time with the Bible so we can understand how God has truly revealed Himself. With that in mind, let’s attempt to apply a biblical world view to the theorem.

Let’s start with assumption 1b dealing with God being all powerful (omnipotence). It’s important to know that the Bible does not teach that God can do anything. He can’t. God cannot do anything that is contrary to His nature. For instance, God cannot lie, God cannot do evil, God cannot cease to exist, etc. Also God cannot do anything which is a logical or rationale absurdity. For instance, God cannot make a two sided triangle. The biblical teaching of God’s omnipotence is that He has the power to do anything that is within His character to do and that is logically possible.

So how does that apply to the question of evil? I think we could agree that most of the acts in the world that we identify as evil are related in some way to human choice. The only way to prevent all evil acts from occurring in the world would be to populate it with beings that could not make wrong choices. But here’s the problem, it would be a logical absurdity to say that God can create free-will beings without the volitional will to choose or choose otherwise. Another attribute of God is that He is relational and has, in part, bestowed that communicable attribute to humans so that we can have relationship with each other and with Him. It is hard to imagine genuine two-way relationship when the other party is simply programmed and has no volitional will. I could program my screen saver to scroll “I love you” repeatedly, but that would not constitute real two-way relationship. So it seems to be within God’s nature to create relational free-will beings and it would be a logical absurdity to say He could create such beings without volitional choice. That would be roughly the equivalent of creating a two-sided triangle.

In Part III I’ll address assumption 1c, dealing with God being all loving (omnibenevolence). In the final installment I also want to talk a bit about why the existence of evil is not a proof against the existence of God, but actually can be an argument for the reality of a creator.

There is No God: Part I

An online acquaintance recently sent me an e-mail explaining why he believes there is no God. He presented a logical theorem as proof that God does not exist. Here’s the theorem: 

Assumption (1): God exists.

        Assumption (1a): God is all-knowing.

        Assumption (1b): God is all-powerful.

        Assumption (1c): God is perfectly loving.

        Assumption (1d): Any being that did not possess all three of the above properties would not be God.

Premise (2): Evil exists.

Premise (3): An all-knowing being would be aware of the existence of evil.

Premise (4): An all-powerful being would be able to eliminate evil.

Premise (5): A perfectly loving being would desire to eliminate evil.

Conclusion (6): Evil does not exist. (from (1),(3),(4),(5))

Contradiction: But evil does exist. (from (2))

Conclusion (7): There is no being that is all-knowing, all-powerful, and perfectly loving. (from (2),(3),(4),(5))

Conclusion (8): God does not exist. (from (7),(1d)

So what do you think? Does the logic hold water? If so, are the assumptions that lead to the conclusion valid as stated? Feel free to share your thoughts below. I’ll share my response to my friend in my next post.

The Life After

I've started writing a regular back page column for "Proclamation!" magazine. The third installment is now in print and can be read online here: The Life After

My Favorite Quote on Studying Various Eschatological Models

“I think it’s really important that all understand that the emphasis is not on outlining exactly what will happen in what order.  Godly scholars have differed on that topic for hundreds of years and will continue to do so.  That tells us things aren’t that clear.  What is clear is that Jesus is coming back and bringing heaven to earth and we’re to be busy working for the kingdom now.

“In some ways the reorientation needs to be away from the details of eschatology and more focused on the emphasis of the New Testament.   I would not want to go from a high emphasis on one eschatology, and then replace that with a high emphasis on some other eschatology that may or may not be correct.  My point is that isn’t the focus of the New Testament.   As you know well, this is a main point of focus for some traditions, but it does not emerge as a major area of focus in the New Testament and especially not in the epistles.  That may be the hardest change.  Not from one eschatology to another but from that as an area of focus to moving to building for the kingdom now in light of His return.”

-  Pastor Bryan Clark