The Old Testament Covenants

Another great topic from last week was that there are five Covenants in the Old Testament.  This post will review each covenant and discuss how it is a type and shadow of what Jesus would do later in redemptive history.  As we have said often, every word of the Old Testament is about Jesus in much the same way that every word or the New Testament is also about Jesus.  The Old Testament presents types and shadows of the New Covenant in Christ.  What does this phrase mean?

 

Let’s look for a moment at cars.  The regrettably named Smart Car is a type of thing in the group that we call cars.  Yes, this is debatable, but that helps make the point.  There are other types of cars that we place in this group that we call cars.  Let us take for example the Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4.  This even sounds like a more impressive car.  Look how impressive the name of the car is.  Now, let’s look at the car itself.   Now that’s a car!  It has a 396 cu. in. V12 engine with 700 horse power.  It goes from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in only 2.9 seconds.  To give you some perspective, the Smart Car comes in blue; the Lamborghini comes in red.  While the Smart Car was a type of car, it was only a shadow of the Lamborghini, and a poor shadow at that.

In much the same way, we can say that Jerusalem is a type and shadow of heaven.  It was meant to give us a vague idea of what heaven might be like.  The Jewish people were a type and shadow of what God’s people would be like.  The Old Testament goes a step farther than this.  It compares a wagon or a skateboard to a Lamborghini.  The type and shadow is so vastly inferior to the real thing that we sometimes do not realize that the skateboard was actually pointing towards the Lamborghini.  And yet, some people mistake chapters and verses and even books of the Old Testament wanting to talk about skateboards instead of Lamborghinis.  Every word of the Old Testament is pointing forward to Jesus Christ and His redeeming work for His people.

Now, let’s move on to the Covenants.  All five of these Old Testament covenants point forward to an aspect of the New Covenant in Christ, but each has a different purpose in redemptive history.  Some of them are still intact and some have been broken.  Let’s start with a table and then fill in some details as we go.

Covenant	Lesser King	Blessings	Curses
Creation	Adam	Remain in Eden	Banishment from Eden; Sin; Death
Noah	Noah	No further cataclismic distruction	More trouble
Abraham	God	People the planet	?
Moses	Jewish people	Land promise	Destruction of Temple; dispersal
David	God	King will come from his line	?

The Creation Covenant, Genesis 2-3 is unlike all other covenants in the Bible in one aspect.  This covenant is not specifically spelled out as such in the text.  The covenant is understood.  We know that it is a covenant because it has the characteristics of a covenant.  There were blessings, curses and conditions.  This conditional covenant had the provision that Adam should never eat of a particular fruit.  He broke this covenant and suffered the consequences of that action.  The curse of this covenant was that sin and death entered the world.  The curses of covenants remain intact, while the blessings are lost.

At this point in redemptive history, God looks at His creation and it is doomed.  His creation is totally incapable now of passing judgment.  Since I am handling the doctrine of original sin elsewhere, I will not belabor the point here.  For our purposes, God needs to create a scheme by which He can save some of His creatures for the Age to Come.  We are not told why He chose progressive revelation or why He didn’t just wipe us out and start over.  We are given a series of covenants that point to the New Covenant in Christ.

When we come to Noah, the situation is that God was angry again and had just wiped the slate nearly clean.  Notice Genesis 6:5.  I would ask what is different now.  Paul’s answer is that nothing has changed.  It is interesting that man sort of receives a second punishment for the creation covenant here.  God saves Noah and then he makes a new covenant with Noah.  In Genesis 6:9, Noah is accounted as righteous, blameless in his Age.  By what means was Noah accounted as righteous?  Was Noah accounted righteous based upon his works?  Noah was still in Adam.  We are given his genealogy in chapter 5 to prove this.  His condition was still of sin.  He was included in the statement of God in Genesis 6:5.  Why was he accounted as righteous by God?  Noah believed in the promise of God.  He believed in the flood and the promise of God to deliver him from this peril.  Noah was accounted righteous based upon his faith in the promise of God.  In Genesis 8, we see that while God had decided not to punish the whole earth again on account of man, the condition of man has not changed.  The intension of man’s heart is evil from his youth.  We still have a sin problem.

Let’s examine the actual covenant in Genesis 9.  First, what are the conditions?  There are two.  Don’t eat live animals.  Don’t murder.  What are the blessings?  God promises never again to use a flood to wipe the earth clean.  The issue and imagery of water both here, in the Exodus and with Jonah makes for an interesting issue, but I will return to that later.  Remember that everything here is a type and shadow.  What are the curses?  If you violate this covenant, you will die by the hand of man.  One can also argue that the curses came first in the form of the flood, but that line of thinking is fairly thin in my view.  With whom is this covenant made?  Noah’s offspring and all living creatures are included in the covenant.  The sign of the covenant is the rainbow.  Now, for the tough question: is this covenant still intact?  Of course it is.  We have empirical evidence of this in the sky.  Has man violated this covenant?  Absolutely.  But as we have said before, God never breaks covenants.  Man is the one who breaks covenants.

At the end of the first two covenants, here is the situation.  God has cursed man through Adam and his sin.  This curse is the remnant of that covenant and it is intact.  God has not flooded the whole earth again and we still have rainbows, but man commits murder with alarming regularity.  Both the blessings and the curses are intact for this covenant, although man continues to violate it.  God is indeed merciful.  But man still has a problem: man is still evil in his heart and not worthy to stand before God in judgment and receive a verdict of righteousness.  With Abraham, God will get the ball rolling in the righteous direction.

Abram was deemed righteous before God.  The Abrahamic Covenant sort of tumbles out over 7 chapters and has several parts.  I will ask the covenant questions and then go get the answers.  By what means was Abram accounted as righteous?  From Genesis 15:6, we see that it was due to Abram’s belief in the promise of God.  This is an enormously important point.  Abram had already deceived Pharaoh concerning his wife.  This was not exactly righteous behavior.  His righteousness is specifically attributed to his belief in the Promise.  Who guarantees this covenant?  This is the most amazing section of Genesis, and perhaps the most important of the whole Old Testament.   The smoking fire pot representing God passes through the pieces first, as usual.  However, the flaming torch, representing the Son of God passes through second.  They are both fire, of the same substance.  One, the torch, comes from the fire pot, the father.  The guarantor of the covenant, therefore, is God!  The blessings and the curses will therefore fall upon God Himself.  He creates the covenant in Abraham through which Salvation will finally be possible.  He does all it.  He takes all the responsibility on Himself.  He demonstrates infinite Mercy and Grace.  Who benefits?  Clearly, there is a land promise that has to do with Abraham’s offspring.  Read this part of Genesis 13.  Now, it will be Paul who will spiritualize this land promise both in terms of the land itself and the beneficiaries.  That discussion will be in the Progressive Revelation series, part 2.  Who carries the curses if the covenant is violated?  The torch does. 

Now for the confusion, let’s go to Genesis 17. “Walk before me and be blameless.” The grammar of this sentence is a declaration.  There is no work of Abraham involved in this declaration of righteousness.  We already know that Abraham is adjudged righteous based upon his belief in the promise.  What do we make of verse 4?  Do we take this at face value?  Will Abraham be the direct patriarch of a multitude of nations?  Perhaps.  Paul will answer this question.  Now, we move to verse 10 and circumcision.  The male will have the covenant seal on his body.  I will make mention of a modern Jewish commentary on Paul and circumcision in the Part 2 post to which I have referred above.  In the lines of Genesis, the seal of circumcision is required for covenant benefits.  Again, Paul will have much to say on this topic.

Now, let us move on to Moses.  The problem is that God’s chosen people, the Israelites, do not realize that their behavior is an affront to God.  God needs to teach them the meaning of sin.  God needs to spell it out for us.  Moses was deemed righteous before God.  As another aside, I will come back to the Passover when we discuss the water issue of the Red Sea.  God gives Israel the Law through Moses.  The Covenant of Mount Sinai is sealed with the blood of a sacrificial animal.  Notice upon whom the blood is poured in Exodus 24.  Half is poured out on the altar and half is sprinkled upon the Book of Law and the people themselves.  This is not just a random ceremony.  The burden of obedience to the Law is attached to the people of Israel through the blood of the ceremonial sacrifice.  The curses of the Covenant will fall upon them if they break the Covenant.  The blessings of the Covenant were deliverance from captivity in Egypt and a new homeland.

Notice at this point something vastly important.  Circumcision is associated, not with Moses, but with Abraham.  Many Jewish scholars throughout time have viewed the Mosaic Covenant as the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant, and that the Mosaic Covenant supersedes or replaces the Abrahamic Covenant, but this cannot be the case for two very important reasons.  First, a Covenant that involves different parties than the original cannot supersede the original.  It wouldn’t make any sense.  Secondly, the terms of the Mosaic Covenant have clearly and obviously been broken by Israel, bringing about the curse portion of the covenant, while the Abrahamic Covenant is still completely in force at this point, unbroken by either party.  The purpose of the Covenant of Law is to demonstrate to Israel that they cannot possibly keep the Law, and they should therefore be repenting and begging God for Mercy.  Unfortunately, man doesn’t see things as they are intended.  Israel actually believes that they can keep the Law.  They create more and more rules to protect the actual Law from being in danger.  They do not see or understand the spirit of the Law, much less the letter of the Law.  But this was the purpose of the Law: to teach man of his sinful nature.

David’s Covenant was similar to that of Abraham.  David, whose highlights include arranging the death of Uriah and taking Bathsheba as his own although after the covenant is made, is reckoned righteous.  Look at the actual Covenant blessing in 2 Samuel 7.  The key word is the word “offspring.” In many places, this is read as meaning a collective noun implying family.  It is often translated as such.  But the Hebrew is in the singular number, not plural.  There is one seed, one offspring.  Notice the language of the rest of the passage.  I will establish the throne of His Kingdom forever.  I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son.  This is all singular.  We are talking about one man in this passage, one king, one messiah.  It is clear that David believes that Israel is ethnic Israel over whom he is king.  But Paul will, again, take this in another direction, spiritualizing this Covenant as well.

In summary, we have looked at the five Covenants of the Old Testament.  I have hinted at some of the types and shadows that we will find in the Old Testament.  In order to fully understand what it is that Christ did for us, in His life, in His death and in His resurrection, we must fully understand what it was that God did in redemptive history in the Old Testament.  Although we are in Covenant with God through Christ and His blood, we are still the wild vines, grafted into a Jewish family by adoption.  It behooves us to learn about our adoptive family.

--Troll--

Romans 5:1-5

Last week, I was questioned on this key passage in the book of Romans.  My answers in person, as usual, were not quite up to par.  I did remember to qualify my remarks with the right to extend and amend, the right I will exercise now.

Romans 5:1-5  Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

This section of Paul’s epistle is, in essence, the conclusion of the section on justification that started in the second half of chapter 3.  It is important to remember in Paul’s letters, particularly Romans, that he is delivering a long and carefully constructed argument.  By virtue of the fact that the first word of this section is “therefore,” we know that something important has come before.  Therefore, let’s discuss what has come before prior to attempting to unpack these verses.

In Romans, Paul starts with a key doctrinal point.  All men are at enmity with God.  The heart is a dark cesspool of evil that can lead to no good.  No man seeks God, no not even one.  The sum total value of our efforts to seek God is failure and our deserved death.  Then, starting with Romans 3:21, Paul explains that there is another pathway to righteousness before God, apart from works, that comes from God as a gift.  In Chapter 4, Paul explains the covenant of Abraham and how it applies both to Gentiles as well as Jews.  So, when Paul comes to Chapter 5, he has already laid a ton of doctrine on the table that must be assumed when you come to the word “therefore.”

Instead of the constant and usual impulse to look for “practical application for daily living right now” in Romans, try to put that aside for a while.  Paul will come back to it in chapter 12.  The first 11 chapters of Romans need to be considered from an Eschatological perspective.  What does this mean?  We need to view this argument in terms of redemptive history.  These arguments are concerned with a much larger topic than how we live day to day.  Paul is talking about Judgment Day, that day when each one of us will stand before God and make an account of ourselves in a bid for Salvation, eternal union with God and everlasting Joy and Peace with God.  This is the focus.  Let go of the here and now for a while and focus on the big picture.

On Judgment Day we face a problem.  We are all enemies of God.  There is no internal means of righteousness that will satisfy God’s Holiness and expectation for a judgment that is less than death.  This is the Great Court Room and we are all on trial.  The charge is sin and we are all guilty.  The standard for a not guilty verdict is perfection, Matthew 5:48, and we all fall short of the standard.  In this courtroom, the Judge has mercy upon us, because for believers, the Son is also our Mediator and Advocate.  Think about what those words mean in a legal sense.  Our courtroom judge is also our Covenant Attorney.  But then, this is where it gets absolutely incredible, for the believer, our sin is imputed to Jesus and His perfect righteousness is imputed to us.  This is sometimes known as the Great Exchange.  So now, there we believers stand, clothed in the righteousness of Christ, awaiting the judgment of God.  Here comes the best part.  God, who is infinitely Holy and infinitely Just, can now render a Not Guilty verdict for us believers without violation of either His Holiness or His Justice.  That is a very important point.  God’s justice must be satisfied.  But it is better than that.  From Romans 3:25 we believers see that not only are we Not Guilty, but our right relationship with God is restored.  God is propitiated by the exchange; His wrath is not only turned away, but we believers are granted the infinite rewards of Justification, Sanctification and Glorification.

Now, let us define those three words and then place them chronologically in our redemptive historical timeline.  First, Justification is a declaration of our righteousness.  It occurs instantaneously, as we are declared righteous.  The action which justified us was the life, death and resurrection of Christ 2000 years ago.  We become Covenant members with Christ at Baptism.  If the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of true faith, we will not only get the benefits of the Covenant in this present age, but we will also receive the eternal rewards in the Age to Come.  The blessings and curses that attend to Covenants are part of all covenants in the Bible.  I will discuss these in the next post.  Sanctification is both instantaneous and a process.  As long as we are alive, as long as we have this present body in this present evil age, we are IN ADAM, therefore, we remain in sin.  Even though by Baptism we are declared to be new creatures in Christ, our bodies are of this world, of this present evil age.  Read Romans 7 and see how Paul describes his struggle in sin after his transformation because his body is still in Adam.  Sanctification is the process of our moving towards the perfection that we will require on the Last Day.  This is a very difficult concept, but let me try to explain this better.  The life, death and resurrection of Jesus were completely sufficient both for our justification and our sanctification.  But our bodies are still in sin, so we struggle while we remain in this world with sin.  There are means of Grace through which we receive renewal throughout our lives to assist us in our Sanctification.  The Holy Spirit provides this grace through two means: the Word and the Sacraments.  Therefore, and notice this carefully because it is vitally important, we have nothing to do with either our justification or our sanctification.  The means of both are external to us.  God provides both.  When we go to church, we repent, we receive absolution, we hear the Word read and preached, we participate in the Sacrament of Communion, and we are sent out into the world again to continue in the Great Commission.  That is Christian Living.  That is God’s purpose for us.  That is God’s plan for us.  That was all provided for us by God for God’s chosen people.  It is all independent of us and our meager efforts.  There are no works in this formula for either justification or sanctification.  That is what Paul is writing about in Chapters 3-5 for justification and 6-8 for sanctification.  We’ll talk about the fruits of the Spirit another time, because I don’t want to muddy the water just yet.  This last bit IS the Gospel according to Paul.

Now Glorification occurs on the Last Day.  That is when we become finished beings.  Our renewed souls are reunited with our resurrection bodies as complete, restored, redeemed and perfect creatures of God.  We will never be glorified until after our death or the second Coming of Christ, whichever comes first.  As Christ passed through death on our behalf to rid the world of sin, so must we also pass through death to inherit His eternal kingdom.  This one is pretty simple.

OK, now we can come back to Romans 5.  Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.  What Paul is saying here is that because we have been given this faith that justifies, and we have been transformed in our hearts (but not in our bodies yet), we are at Peace with God.  We were at war with God, but now our sin has been declared gone and we are declared righteous before God through our faith.  Let me say this again.  Paul spends 3 chapters explaining that we were at enmity with God.  Read the rest of Chapter 5.  While we were still at enmity with God, He declared us righteous and justified us with by clothing us with a righteousness external to us and restored us to right standing with Him through the propitiation provided by the blood of Jesus.  Now, by the same declaration, we are at Peace with God.  This is a declaration of our status with God.  We may not feel like we are at peace with God, but this declaration is external to us.  This declaration of Peace is a part of the Gospel; it is news.  Think about the benediction that we receive at the end of our service on Sunday.  Go in Peace to Love and Serve the Lord.  This is NOT an imperative; this is a declaration of our condition as believers in Christ.  We are now at Peace with God.  He has declared it thus.

Now, here we come to verses 3-5.  Not only are we at peace with God now, but because of this, we can now rejoice in this life EVEN THROUGH OUR SUFFERING.  We can rejoice because we have been declared at Peace with God.  More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.  That string of conditions between suffering and hope are not meant as a checklist for our lives.  That is also a declaration of fact.  Because we are now at Peace with God, we can rejoice in our suffering, because suffering does produce endurance, and endurance does produce character, and character does produce hope.  And very importantly, our hope as believers does not put us to shame, because our hope has been given to us by the Holy Spirit in the form of our faith in the work of Jesus on the Cross and its efficacy for us for our Salvation.  Because of the knowledge that we are now at Peace with God, where before we were His enemies, by no doing of our own, we can now be at peace in this present age, even through our sufferings.

That is what the reformers believed that Paul was saying in Romans 1-5.  I hope that this fairly lengthy explanation satisfies the enquiry that was put forth to me on the subject.  As always with Paul, when the word “therefore” appears in a verse, we must understand the antecedent before we can understand the verse.

--Troll--

What is Spiritual?

As I become a better student of Paul, I have found myself accused of not believing in anything spiritual.  Ironically, that is the same accusation that many liberals have leveled against Paul.  The reformers, on the other hand, viewed Paul as the Apostle of the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, l thought it would be helpful to look at why I consider myself spiritual.

I believe in the Trinity.  That is surely a good start.  The third person of the Trinity is the Holy Spirit.  We’ve discussed what the Holy Spirit does in the past, but for the sake of review, John 14-16, 20 are all good red letter sources on the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, testifies about the Son, and fills the disciples so that they may testify about the Son.  That is Who the Holy Spirit is and what He does.  The Holy Spirit brings true faith to the believers.  The Holy Spirit is the key to unlocking Salvation through the propitiating life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  That is a very spiritual doctrine.

Secondly, I believe that man has a spirit, a soul, a part of his existence that is completely tied to his body, and at the same time can be separated from his body.  In a way, Salvation is the eternal union of body and soul.  Without the Salvation through Jesus Christ (full formula implied,) the body will die and the soul will burn.  With Christ, first the soul is saved and then later the body is saved and reunited with the soul.  That is Biblical and that is a very spiritual doctrine.

What I don’t believe is any idea of Gnosticism or Mysticism that rips the Holy Spirit from the Trinity and has Him performing parlour tricks at the whim of man.  These ideas have been considered heretical since the first century.  The word-faith, name-it-claim-it groups do such tremendous violence to the Gospel that it is not recognizable as Gospel and constitutes heresy and false teaching in every sense of the phrase.  Paul warns constantly about false teachers, but here is what he says to the Corinthians on the subject.  This is a fairly stern warning.  Their end will correspond to their deeds.  This is a Law statement and it is true of all people at Judgment Day.  The difference is that the true Gospel gives access to a different righteousness that is external to us and given to true believers apart from any perceived merits on our part and regardless of any perceived faults on our part.  This is what Paul says in Romans 3-5 concerning justification.

Therefore, am I spiritual?  Absolutely, I am among the most spiritual people you know.  Am I a mystic?  Certainly not.  Am I a Gnostic?  Clearly not.  There is a type of spirituality apart from the magical realm of the mystic that resides within many faiths.  In Christianity, it is clearly defined in scripture.  Remember why we are not all Roman Catholics today.  Sola Scriptura is not such a bad thing, after all.

--Ogre--

Progressive Revelation: Connecting the dots, part 1

It grieves me to hear so many men in our group who have no interest or connection to the Old Testament.  When Jesus or the Apostles refer to scripture in the New Testament, they are referring to the Old Testament.  There is much more to the Old Testament than just some historical references to the Jews.  The key to understanding what it is that Jesus did for us is in the study of the Old Testament.

Ask yourself the following questions.  Why did Jesus have to die?  Jesus absolutely had to die.  He is God.  He would not have subjected His human incarnation to such a brutal death unless it was critically important.  Does your understanding of what Jesus did at Calvary require Him to die?  If it does not absolutely necessitate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, then perhaps you need to reconsider your view of the Old Testament.

In the Gospels, we are given the record of Jesus’ life, actions and Words.  In the Epistles, the Apostles explain the Gospels to us.  If you were to give just three books of the Bible to someone, which would you choose?  Consider Romans, Ephesians and Galatians.  In these three, all of the key issues and doctrines are reviewed by Paul.  But throughout the Gospels and throughout the Epistles, the Old Testament is repeatedly referenced.  Everything that happens, all that Jesus does, is by way of fulfilling the Law and the Prophets.  But before we can tackle this issue, let’s step back farther and ask another question:  why?

Why was all of this necessary?  What was God up to in sending Jesus into the world?  Why does the Bible contain all of the particular information that it contains?

Let’s begin at the beginning.  Adam was our federal representative in Eden.  This statement is important on many levels.   As Americans, we are familiar with the idea of a representative democracy or federal form of government.  Adam was in one sense our federal representative in Eden.  He acted for us.  But more than that, we were with Adam and we would have behaved exactly the same way as Adam did.  Only two men entered the world without the condition of sin.  Adam blew it and his sin was imputed to all of mankind.  This idea of imputation is important.  The sin of one man was credited to the account of every other man and woman ever born save one.  Not only would we not have done better, but because he was our representative, we were with Adam and we didn’t do better.

How do we know that this is the case?  First, Adam and all of his offspring forever were thrown out of Eden.  This is clear from Genesis 3.  Second, as Paul states on more than one occasion, through one man sin entered the world.  Romans 5:12-14 is one such example.  Therefore, we have a sin problem.  We have the condition of sin.  But what is sin?

Let’s look at what the Psalmist David had to say about sin.  Psalm 51 is one of the most amazing Old Testament passages.  Read it now.  Look at verse 4.  Go up to the top and see what exactly David is confessing again.  Against only God has David sinned, he says.  Really?  David has just arranged the murder of Uriah and taken Bathsheba as his own.  But he says that only against God has he sinned.  Sin is an affront to God.  Sin is the condition of breaking God’s Law from the perspective of our relationship with God.  And sin is punishable by death.  Our relationship with other men has a civil law that governs it.  There are gradations of lawbreaking: misdemeanors and felonies.  Not all crimes are the same among men.  With God, there is only one level of sin.  Think about it for a moment.  Adam had a bite of fruit.  For taking a bite of forbidden fruit, all mankind was doomed to die.  How much more can we be punished for murder?  Therefore, all sin is the same in the eyes of God:  an offense to His Holiness.

How does God feel about sin, and about those who commit sin?  The phrase “the Wrath of God” fits very nicely here.  I’ll give you Jonathan Edwards again if you are in the mood.  It is really quite good.  So, the verdict for sinners at judgment is the Wrath of God.  When someone asks you if you have been saved, follow the lead of R. C. Sproul.  Ask them from what are you saved.  The answer is the Wrath of God.  The time is at judgment.  Only one outcome under the Law is acceptable to God: perfection.  Matthew 5:17-20, 48 is a passage I’ve discussed before.  Jesus did not come to abolish the Law.  Jesus came to fulfill the Law.  Jesus lived a sinless life so that one human could accomplish the requirements of the Law.  Jesus has perfect righteousness under the Law.  That was the point of His life.

All that is nice, but what about his death?  What does any of this have to do with me?  What about the practical application?  Let’s look at some more Old Testament stuff.  Perhaps we can start with Genesis 15 and look at the covenant ritual involving Abraham.  Look particularly at these verses.  These 6 verses of Genesis 15 might be the most important in the whole Old Testament, and the most misunderstood.  The issue here is righteousness.  The Jews and the Roman Catholics and the Liberals make the mistake of assuming that Abraham was deemed righteous due to his works.  Genesis 15:6 states that Abraham was deemed righteous because of his faith, his faith in the promise made by God.  Faith always has an object.  In this case, the object of faith was the promise of God.  Notice Genesis 20.  If Abraham had earned his righteousness based upon his works, why didn’t he lose his righteousness and the promise of God after that morally bankrupt episode?  His righteousness was not based upon his actions, but upon his belief in the promise.  Notice what Paul says about Abraham in Romans 4.  OK, you people who don’t follow links, go back and read Paul….   I’ll wait.

Hmmm.  Did you know that was in the Bible?  Why do we focus on morals and law and piety?  Perhaps, Doctrine might be a shade more important than we thought.  Paul takes the promise of God to Abraham and applies it to the whole world.  The land bordered by the Nile and the Euphrates has been spiritualized by Jesus to mean the whole world after the coming of Jesus according to Paul.  The whole world is the Holy Land, and the people of God are all who believe in the Resurrection of Jesus and the righteousness that event gave to the faithful.

Back to righteousness again.  In part 2, we will discuss the nuts and bolts of how we are able to receive this righteousness that is apart from works, based on faith alone, so that none can boast (Romans 3:21-31.)

--Troll--