James 2:17: Salvation Equation.

Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 25 March 2012
and 614 Warehouse Mission, 22 April 2018
By Captain Michael Ramsay

I have a little quiz for us today. How well does everyone remember their math from school? I have papers to hand out. Put your name on the top. In order to pass the test, you have to get all of the questions correct. Are you ready? Let’s see how you do? We’ll check our own work as we go along.

1)    1+2=
2)    2+3=
3)    4+5=
4) Using the formula y=mx+b where the coordinates are (8,9) and the slope is ¾, what is the y-intercept?

Now if this isn’t a test, if this is a question in a math text book what would be a really easy way that you find get the answer to this last question? You could flip to the back where the answers are usually located. So we’re going to pretend that this question is in a math textbook and switch to the answer page.

1)    3
2)    5
3)    9
4)    b = 3.

What was the answer the question 4? b = 3. We’ll administer the test again now. Don’t forget the answer. Turn your papers over. I know you all got the first three questions correct so we’ll only have the one question on it this time. It will be this same as #4 last time. What is the answer? Turn your pages over. Here is the question. Write down your answers. What was the right answer? Oh right, this is a math test now so in order to get full marks you need to show me your work. Can someone who got the right answer put up her/his hand and come up here and show us your work.

4) Using the formula y=mx+b where the coordinates are (8,9) and the slope is ¾, what is the y-intercept? 

y = m *x + b
9 = ¾ *8 + b
9 = 24/4  + b
9 = 6 + b
9 -6 = b
3 = b

Math can be a little confusing. I found some comics here about how Bill Waterson’s Calvin and Hobbes deal with the intricacies of Math problems.

One thing about Math is that it often has an ‘=’ and when it does, this means that the items on the one side have to equal the ones on the other.  This is important. At the solution to a problem where there is an ‘=’, you want the two sides of the equation to be equal. Much of math is about balancing equations and this is very much what we are looking at today.

Today we have an equation before us in our pericopes (James 1:19-27 and 2:14-26) that has caused some people quite a bit of difficulty throughout history, not unlike Question 4 on our test today; what was the answer, by the way? (b=3)The problem we are examining here is the James 2:17 Salvation Equation and this is very closely related to Doctrine 9 of The Salvation Army. Doctrine 9 has been called the most confusing (or even controversial for those that don’t quite get it) of our doctrines; and in his inability to solve the related word problem of James 2:17, Martin Luther argued that the whole textbook of James as it were, due to this equation (which is the thesis to the whole letter),[1] was indeed just a ‘straw epistle’ and “Luther’s harsh evaluation of James as a book bereft of [or missing] the gospel and of [missing altogether the point of] Christ still lingers on in modern interpretations.”[2] Luther got so upset with this that he wanted to rip the whole book of James right out of the Bible and I think that some have felt the same about our ninth doctrine as well.  Let’s take a look at this, shall we?

The James 2:17 SalvationEquation that we are learning about today states: “In the same way, Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action is dead.”  Broken down into its component parts it says, Eternal Death (not being in a good relationship with God) = Acknowledging Jesus (God) but NOT doing what He says.

Or… Eternal Death = Faith - Action (Works)

TSA Doctrine 9 puts it this way: Continuance in a state of salvation depends upon continued obedient faith in Christ. Broken down into its component parts it says basically the same thing: Eternal Life (being in a good relationship with God) = Acknowledging Jesus (God) and doing what He says

So… Eternal Life = Faith + Action (Works)

Doctrine 9 tells us that Eternal Life (being in a good relationship with God) is related to Faith in Jesus (God) and doing what He says and James 2:17 says that Eternal Death (not being in a good relationship with God) is related to Faith in Jesus (God) but NOT doing what He says.
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q       Doctrine 9: Eternal Life = Faith + Action (Works)

q       James 2:17: Eternal Death = Faith - Action (Works)

Now in Mathematics if you really can’t find the answer and you are getting frustrated and you need to get your homework done, what can you do? Like we said with our test at the beginning, if you don’t know the answer in a Math textbook, what can you do to just get the answer? You can flip to the back of the math textbook; the answers are usually all right there and unless the teacher asks you to show your work, you can get your assignment done that way. I used to teach school; I know some students who would do their whole math homework that way: simply copying down answers from the back. It is that easy, right? The problem with this is that when it comes time for the test, you are lost. When you copy down the right answers from the back, without doing your work, maybe you get a check mark on your homework paper but when you see the question again on the test you’re completely lost.

James talks about showing your work in relation to the Salvation Equation this way: he refers to it like a man in the mirror. James 1:23-24: “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says [someone who doesn’t show his work] is like a man who looks at his face in the mirror and after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” You might answer it right in the homework but when you see the question on the exam, you’ll forget it just like here with the man in the mirror.

Jesus also talks about how important it is to show your work for the Salvation Equation, Matthew 7:21-23, He says:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who [shows his work and] does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not [copy down the right answer from the back, did we not] prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ [You’ll receive an ‘F’ on the test for not showing your work.]

           Matthew 25:44-46 records this in Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats about people who get the right answer from the back of the book in that they acknowledge Jesus as Lord but they fail to show their work. When they get the ‘F’ for not showing their work:

“They also will answer, [Didn’t we have the right answer written down?] ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. [You may have got the answer right, calling me ‘Lord’ but you don’t pass if you don’t show your work.]

       James 1:26-28:

 If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. [If you just know the right answer from the Good Book and don’t show your work, James says, your religion –your answer- is worthless]

       James 2:17:  “In the same way, Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action is dead.” Faith (which is always the right answer!), if you don’t show your work, is dead. It won’t save you on the test. Eternal Death = Faith - Action.

This isn’t too difficult to understand, right? We can all accept that if I believe something in general it is very different then if I actually believe it enough to do something about it. For example if I say that I support the New Liberal Conservative political party (or whomever) but then when election day comes around I never even bother vote, I didn’t really support them, did I? And I am no good to the party and even though I consider myself a supporter of theirs, I am really not. Or some people vote ‘strategically’; this has traditionally been a problem for the NDP in Canada. Excepting this last federal election, a lot of people would say in polls that they supported the NDP but then, especially in Ontario, on Election Day they would vote Liberal. For better or for worse, regardless of what they say, those people aren’t really social democrats then are they?

This seems pretty simple. ‘The proof is in the pudding’, as they say. You know you actually believe what you espouse, if you ‘put your money where your mouth is’, as they say. This is pretty straightforward; so, with all of this said, why do some, like Martin Luther for instance, have so much trouble with this salvation equation?[3] Martin Luther’s difficulty related to what he thought was a contradiction between James 2:17:  “In the same way, Faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action is dead.” And even more so James 2:24: “You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone” compared with Ephesians 2:8-10 (cf. also Galatians 2:15 and Romans 4:5):

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

This is an important objection that Martin Luther raises. James says, ‘a person is justified by what he does’ and Paul, in Ephesians says,  ‘you have been saved…not by works’

This is important so we will look at it a little more here but first I want to talk about what exactly is ‘faith’. This is pivotal to our discussion today. We have heard the definition from Hebrews 11:1: ‘Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” This is true but it is even more than that in New Testament Greek.  In Greek the word translated ‘faith’ in our Bibles also equally means ‘faithfulness’.  Trust in someone and that someone’s trustworthiness are linguistically interrelated in the New Testament; it is a symbiotic relationship; they aren’t separate ideas and the concepts of faith and faithfulness in Greek (pistis) are indeed actually bound up in the same word.[4] Belief and obedience are inter-connected.[5] “Faith means receiving the message of salvation and conduct based on the gospel” – especially in Paul’s wrings. And O. Michel tells us in the New International Dictionary of NT Theology, “James is conscious of the need to prove faith… For him faith and obedient conduct are indissolubly linked. Faith understood as merely trust and confession is not able to save.”[6] The Apostle Paul agrees. Faith, like James 5:17 says, is not just saying that you believe something; it is about actually doing it.

Now this is sobering in some ways for those of us living in North America today for, as Luke Timothy Johnson tells us, “Insofar as contemporary Christianity has aligned itself unthinkingly with the individualistic and competitive ethos of capitalism, or allowed itself to be seduced into equating financial success with God’s blessing, it has, by James' standards, become a friend of the world and not a friend of God;”[7] Pheme Perkins tells us that in the U.S. twice as many people claim to belong to churches than actually even bother to attend them.[8] Faith without deeds is not real faith and faith without deeds is dead.[9]

Well, what about Martin Luther’s objections to this text then? Where Martin Luther made his error – and most theologians today regardless of theological predisposition will admit that he made an error here[10] - was in thinking that James ‘puts the cart before the horse’, which James does not. Luther thought that James is saying here that we can somehow earn our salvation. Luther thought that James is saying that if we do these certain behaviours then we will gain salvation. James is not saying this at all. James, just like Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, is saying that when you do have an obedient faith in God, certain behaviours will naturally be the result.[11]  Our works, our actions, do not and cannot save anyone. We are alone saved by the faithfulness of God through Jesus Christ. There is no other way by which anyone can be saved. However, when we are living out our eternal life there will be a noticeable change in our life.
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James says that when (and precisely because) we are saved:

q       we will get rid of moral filth and accept the Word that can save us, James 1:21;

q       we will not only listen to the Word but we will actually do what it says, James 1:22;

q       and when we are saved we will actually provide for those in need, James 2:15-16; see also Matthew 25:31-46 and Ephesians 2:8-10.

So this Salvation Equation is actually really quite exciting because – while we do need to show our work on the test of our life – the truth of the matter is that Christ will actually show this work through us. Only one person in the class needed to do the work for us to be saved from failing eternally and that one was Jesus. Christ has already solved the question for us; so, for as long as we serve Him, He will do all of the aforementioned in our lives and more (Galatians 5:1-12; 1 Thessalonians 5:23,24 cf. Leviticus 20:5, Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:35, 49; John 17:11; Acts 3:14, 4:27-30; 2 Timothy 1:14; Titus 3:5; 1 John 2:20; 1 Peter 1:12-16; 2 Peter 1:21; Jude 20; Revelation 4:8, 6:10). God and the Bible call us to be holy as He is holy and we will be holy, not by anything we do but by everything that Christ does through us (Leviticus 11:44,45, 19:2, 20:7 and 1 Peter 1:16; see also Psalm 89:35, 2 Corinthians 13, Colossians 1:28, Hebrews 11-12).
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q       Doctrine 9: Eternal Life is evidenced by Faith + Christ's Work in our lives [12]

q       James 2:17: Eternal Death is evidenced by Faith – Christ's Work (which really is not faith at all!)

To reiterate, this is important: Doctrine 9 and James 2:17’s Salvation Equation are NOT saying that if we do certain behaviours it will result in us experiencing everlasting life. What they ARE saying is that if we DO have everlasting life then certain behaviours WILL result. You see the difference?  The more time we spend with God, the more we will become like Him just like when people have been married 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years or more: they become more and more like their spouses and can often tell what the other is thinking and even complete their sentences for them. God promises that this will happen in our lives too – the more we know Him, the more we will naturally become like Him because Salvation, like holiness, like marriage, like employment, like so much in life, is a relationship rather than a state to be attained. If we are ‘saved’ it simply means that we are in a positive (right) relationship with the one who can (and has) save us, our saviour Christ Jesus. “Salvation is neither a state to be preserved nor an insurance policy which requires no further investment. It is the beginning of a pilgrimage with Christ.”[13] And what a pilgrimage it is; so if there are any of us here today who have not yet begun this wonderful life changing relationship with Jesus Christ. If you have not yet submitted to God, the test that Christ has already passed on your behalf, I invite you to do so today.

  

Let us pray.

 

http://www.sheepspeak.com/

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[1] Otto Michel. “Faith” In The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 1, edited by Colin Brown. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1981), 602.

[2] Martin Luther. Vermischte Deutche Schriften. (Translated by Rev. Robert E. Smith. Fort Wayne Texas: Concordia Theological Seminary 1994), 124.

[3]Donald W. Burdick, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:James/Introduction to James/Canonicity of James, Book Version: 4.0.2: The epistle was not readily received into the collection of writings that were viewed as being on a par with the OT Scriptures. It was rejected by some as late as the time of Eusebius (c. 265-340). Few early Christian writers refer to it. The Muratorian Canon (c. 170) omits it, as does the OL version.
[4] Cf. Roy Jeal, Presentation to WCBC, Winter 2007.

[5] Oswald Becker and Otto Michel. “Faith” In The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 1, edited by Colin Brown. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1981), 587, 594.

[6] Otto Michel. “Faith” In The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, Vol. 1, edited by Colin Brown. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1981), 601, 604.

[7] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James, (NIB XII: Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1998), p. 200.

[8] Pheme Perkins, First and Second Peter, James, and Jude, (Interpretation : John Knox Press: Louisville, 1995), p. 113.

[9] Cf. Douglas J. Moo: James: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL. : InterVarsity Press, 1985 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 16), S. 104

[10] Read any of the diverse here mentioned scholars for evidence of this.

[11] Simon J. Kistemaker, Exposition of the Epistle of James, (NTC: Baker Academic: Grad Rapids, Michigan, 2007), p. 87.

[12] The General of the Salvation Army. Salvation Story: A Handbook of Salvationist Doctrine. (London, England: The Salvation Army International Headquarters, 1998), 82: Salvation Story offers an interesting response to this line of questioning: on initial examination it apparently, for our part, reinterprets the word ‘depends’ as ‘is evidenced by’ and leaves the conditional work entirely to Christ.  “We remember that an ongoing union with Christ depends on his work and not our feelings...Such assurance must be affirmed daily by obedience and never made an excuse for carelessness or complacent presumption. It is the changed life that is evidence for the work of grace within.” ‘Obedience’ is mentioned in the preceding comment; ‘dependency’ - as our part - is not. The argument seems thus far to state that our continued Salvation depends not on our continued obedient faith but rather on Christ’s work. “We believe that God, who has accepted and saved us and given us eternal life, has given us also the assurance of our standing in him.”

[13] The General of the Salvation Army. Salvation Story: A Handbook of Salvationist Doctrine. (London, England: The Salvation Army International Headquarters, 1998), 85-86.

Genesis 15: 7 – 21: When God is Bound (revised).

Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 19 March 2012

By Captain Michael Ramsay

To view the original October 07, 2007 sermon click here: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/10/genesis-157-21-when-god-is-bound.html.

Doctrine 6 of The Salvation Army states: We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has, by His suffering and death, made an atonement for the whole world so that whosoever will may be saved.

Doctrine 4 of The Salvation Army: We believe that in the person of Jesus Christ the Divine and human natures are united, so that He is truly and properly God and truly and properly man.[1]

The other week Susan and I were in Toronto at a conference but before we flew out east to Toronto, we drove out west to Victoria to drop our children off with my parents.  That’s a lot of travel and all of this driving recently got me thinking back to my teenage years. At the church youth group I attended as a teen it wouldn’t be uncommon to have fifty kids out on any given Friday night and even more of us came out to car rallies and other big events. We had some big nights and some really competitive events – and, I must confess, my team had this terrible habit of… winning - mostly because we paid more attention to the rules than the others.

For example, we had these events called KGB runs. There were these games where you started in the university forest and had to make your way back to the church at night without being caught by the leaders, who would catch you by ‘tagging you’ with a flashlight. So everyone would start walking and sneaking through the woods trying not to get caught but my team we would sneak (yes) but right to the parking lot where one of us would leave our car and we would drive to just outside the church and walk in – no one SAID we weren’t allowed to drive.

So, of course, once the organizers catch on, at the next event like this, they have all the rules written out and among those rules are -not surprisingly- no cars are allowed and the borders of the game are well-defined as to where we are and where we are not allowed to go.  So with the new rules in place and the leaders determined to catch us, we have a new plan, not too far into the forest we have stashed really big flashlights. So when the people who are ‘it’ see the flashlights they just assume that we are on their team because we too have flashlights and our whole team walks to safety without being caught.

Now the planners are making it their priority to craft rules so airtight that no one can possibly misapply them. As they get ready for the next big event, they even brag that their rules are even ‘Mike-proof’. The next event is a car rally. You know what those are? You drive around the city and are given clues that you have to solve in order to figure out where you are going to drive to next and as you figure it out, you drive to the next location and get the next clue to figure out and so on.

The people who are planning this event, like I said, are determined to stop any creative problem solving. We are given the rules at the last moment and these rules include the normal no breaking the law or speeding –after all this is a church group. To enforce this, they have each of the drivers put our driver’s licenses in a sealed envelope. If the envelope is opened, they know that the police caught us. We then have to show that we agree to the rules by signing a written agreement and also by signing the flap of the envelope.

Our team is winning, as usual, coming near the end of the rally – and there is this open stretch of road – now you don’t get these so much in Victoria (unlike here!), so we open it up to speed for the finish line and… you guessed it. The red and blue lights come on behind us. The officer asks for my licence and I hand over the envelope.

We arrive first at the finish line and they do give us the prize and as all the other teams come in. They can’t believe that we have won again. But then the leader remembers, “Oh, I need your driver’s licences; so one by one each team puts their sealed envelopes on the table. And then it is my turn… They were bound to beat us eventually and this is how they did it. They made this big fancy agreement, we failed to live up to it and as a consequence we lost our reward.

If you’ll turn with me to our text today, Genesis 15:7 – 21, we’ll look at Abram’s big fancy agreement (or covenant) with God. Here we will see an extreme covenant. This agreement is a very significant one in that it relates back to the Good News of Genesis 12, where God promises Abraham that all nations of the earth will be blessed through him, and it looks forward to Genesis 17 where the symbol of circumcision is introduced (Genesis 17:11).

One interesting thing about the ceremony recorded in Genesis 15 and the earlier promise God made to Abraham is that the promise includes us today even though neither we nor our contemporary western nations existed at the time of this agreement (see John 8, Mark 3, Luke 3, Romans 2). Genesis 12:3 is actually the first time that the Gospel, the Good News (that all the nations of the world will be blessed through Abraham), is presented in the Scriptures and it is here in Chapter 15 that God ratifies the promises with a contract (Genesis 15:8) and a strange but significant, symbolic covenantal act.

Now I should probably take some time to explain exactly what a covenant is and was. The Hebrew word for covenant here, berit[h], is the most common term translated ‘covenant’ in the Hebrew Bible: it appears 286 times making it quite an important word. This word in all likelihood is also associated with the ancient Akkadian word biritu, which means literally ‘to fetter’, ‘to shackle’ or ‘to bind’ and when it is used as it is here, it designates the beginning or the end of a contract.[2] The image then is of two people being fettered or bound together by this covenant.

This particular contract, in the text before us today, is only one of three times in the entire Hebrew Bible where God himself is bound[3] - the others are with Noah, (Genesis 17, Numbers 25:12) and King David (II Samuel 23:5, Psalms. 89:3, 28-29; 110:4).

The word image for us is clear. It is that of God, in this contract, actually shackling himself through a promise to Abram and in so doing not only is God bound to the promise but He is bound to the consequence should the covenant be broken. Now the consequence for breaching this particular covenant, as Commissioner Ed Read in his book, Keepers of the Covenants, and may others point out, is in all probability death – God’s death (cf. Jeremiah 34:18-20).[4]

Let’s take a look at this whole contractual ceremony now because it is very peculiar. In Verse 9 it is recorded that God asks Abram to bring Him a number of different dead animals of varying (and mostly forgotten) significance and YHWH has him cut many of them in half and Abram does.[5] Abram stays by these bodies guarding them from other animals that want to eat them (Verse 11) and then he falls asleep into a ‘deep and terrifying darkness (Verse 12).’

Abram is terrified as the Lord approaches him and says to him, Verse 13, “know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years. Wow, this is ‘good news’! (sarcasm) – Abram is terrified (Verse 12) and the Lord meets him with the comforting words of, ‘your descendants will be slaves for 400 years.’

This is great (sarcasm) and there is even more good news. God tells Abraham that his family will be slaves (later those who enslave them will also be punished) and another people will be allowed to run wild in their Promised Land until their sin reaches its absolute full measure (Verse 16). There will be 400 years of sin and 400 years of slavery and now, Verse 17, “when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and walked between the pieces [of the dead animals]. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram… (Verses 17 &18)”

And this is interesting: the 400 years of sin and the 400 years of slavery are signs of the covenant or contract. They are not the contract itself. This section highlights a portion of the covenant and that portion states that Abraham’s descendants will eventually possess this land that he is on right now.[6] And what is the sign that they will possess this land? The sign is that they will be in slavery for 400 years and Abraham personally in his whole life will never see this sign fulfilled (compare Exodus 3:11-12, Leviticus 25:19-20).[7]

We remember too that this is one of the few times in Scripture where God is actually bound by a covenant. Here it is ONLY God who is bound by the covenant. It is only God, represented by the smoking firepot with the blazing torch,[8] who walks between the halves of the dead animals – not Abram. This is interesting because in so doing God says that He – not Abram - will pay the consequence should the covenant be broken. God says that He is bound and that He will pay for it and that He will pay for it with His own life should it be broken. This is quite a serious commitment and this ceremony has parallels in ancient customs and literature but only in Jeremiah 34:18-20 in the Scriptures is this ceremony mentioned again and there it says:

… all the people of the land, which passed between the parts of the calf; I will even give them into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of them that seek their life: and their dead bodies shall be for meat unto the fowls of the heaven, and to the beasts of the earth.

If the covenant fails after this ceremony, the one bound by it dies (Jeremiah 34:18-20). This is serious and this is like the ceremony that God has voluntarily taken upon Himself here. In Genesis 15 it is recorded that Abram does believe YHWH (and the LORD reckons it to him as righteousness, Genesis 15:6) even before the Lord goes to these great lengths to bind Himself to this promise. This is important: Abram believes God even before God covenants up to even His own life. Abraham believes God that he and Sarai will have children and that they will inherit the Promised Land and then God makes this deal by which He may even offer His own life. Then Abram, at his wife’s insistence, has sexual relations with his wife’s slave and she becomes pregnant (Genesis 16:3).

This is reminiscent of earlier in Genesis. Back in Eden, Adam takes matters into his own hands at his wife’s prompting and she blames the serpent (Genesis 3) and sin and death enter the world and here Abraham takes matters into his own hands and his wife, Sarah, blames God (Genesis 16:3) after God has just entered into this most serious covenant. God has put a lot on the line. In this contract God may be bound to die but instead of relying on God, Abraham takes matters into his own hands: just like Adam, just like the people of Babel (Genesis 11), and just like too many of us, I fear.

Well, what about us? Are we any more faithful to our covenants than Abram was with God’s life on the line? Do we really avoid all that may enslave the mind, body, and spirit, or do we rationalize that our indulgences are fine whereas other people’s indulgences may or may not be? Do we keep our vows before God about forsaking all others ‘until death do we part’ or do we pretend that God releases us from those vows as soon as we no longer wish to be bound?

Years ago, I felt the Lord prompting me to give a particular person $500; she, I was led to believe, needed the money to go up north and gain the custody of her infant son. I gave her the money: that was a lot of money for me in those days (as it is now!). I gave this stranger the money at what I felt was the Lord’s prompting and she told me that she would meet me there again on a certain date with the money. That time comes and goes. I continue to frequent that place over the next few months still with faith. Each time, however, this faith intermingles with more doubts until it gets to the point that I am considering calling friends of mine to track her down and retrieve the money. My thoughts drift from faith to frustration.

I also think of a friend of mine, a godly man, through whom the Lord has taught me much. Before I ever met him, he felt the Lord telling him to witness to one of his employees. He was to tell him the Good News of Jesus Christ. He believed the Lord but he did not act on that faith and the next day he learned that his employee had died that same evening.

From the Bible again: Remember the Israelites with Moses on the edge of the land promised to them by God. Ten of twelve spies return saying that they are afraid; they don’t have faith that they will receive the land promised to them (Deuteronomy 1; Numbers 14). The Lord is angered by this and so tells them that because they did not act in faith their generation will not inhabit the land. In response the people rise early the next morning and say, “We know we have sinned, we’ll go do it now” - but it is too late. God is not with them and they are defeated by their enemies. There are consequences for faithlessness.

And now Abram, righteous Abram, in the text before us, has chosen to act on his own instead of trusting God. God pledged His own life so that we may have faith and faithfulness (see Romans 1-3) but we are faithless many times over and what is the consequence of our faithlessness? God dies. God dies. God is fettered and bound in this covenant with Abram. As a consequence of Israel’s sin in the desert a whole generation dies outside of the promise and as a consequence of our sin today, God dies: Jesus dies on the cross (cf. Matthew 16:21-27, Mark 8:27-34, Luke 9:22, John 10:17-18, 11:49-52, Acts 2:22-23, Romans 5:15-18; cf. also TSA docs. 4&6).

God didn’t need to make this promise to us. He didn’t need to make this promise to Abram. Abram believed Him before YHWH put His own life on the line. But God did make this promise and the thing about God is that, even if we are unfaithful to our promises, He remains faithful (Romans 3:3,4).[9] Now look ahead in our text from Genesis with me, God is not unfaithful and in Chapter 21, Verse 2, it says, “Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.”

So here it is: even though Abram may not have acted in a manner consistent with faith, ONLY God was bound and as the covenant is fulfilled, God lives!

God promised children to Abraham and God provided children to Abraham. God promised that his decedents would inhabit Canaan after 400 years of slavery, and God provided that they inhabited the land after 400 years of slavery. Like the Apostle Paul says emphatically, centuries later, in his letter to the Romans, “What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God's faithfulness? Not at all! … (Romans 3:3,4)” No way. No! No! No! God is faithful even and especially when we are not!

God promised Israel that they would inhabit the land and, even though they were faithless at the border, God still fulfilled His promise a generation later.

My friend who did not pray with his employee the night before his friend died, went on to be a pastor and never forgot the lessons the Lord taught him that night in the whole time I knew him.

And my other friend…the lady I met…just when I had almost given up hope that she would ever find me and return the $500 that I thought I so desperately needed, she did and that’s not the end of the story. Years later, I came out of my house and there she was with her son. He was now 5 or 6 years old. She knew our neighbours (tenants) and was visiting them. The Lord let me meet her son – the Lord let me see how He used His $500 to help a child be raised by his mother. She, in her excitement at seeing me, grabbed her now school-aged son and said, “This is the man from the story I told you…” This child knows the stories of the miracles of God. Even though, after I believed I had my doubts, The Lord used even me to do His will and He rewarded me in such a way that day that I will never forget it.

And that is the same for all of us. Jesus (God) died on the cross because of our sin. Jesus died because of our faithlessness but God is faithful to His promises and Jesus is alive (cf. Matthew 28:5-6, Mark 16:1-7, Luke 24:1-9, John 20:16-18, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8). Jesus rose from the dead! Jesus defeated death. He died for us and He rose again. Nothing we do can change that! Now all we need to do is not reject Him. Now all we need to do is not reject that offered salvation!

Praise the Lord that He was true to His covenant with Abraham. Praise the Lord that He has shown Himself faithful to His eternal covenant even though humankind has been faithless many times over and praise the Lord that He is faithful to all His covenants.

So then, as this is true, let’s not be like those who confess ‘Lord, Lord’ with their mouths but then in reality do nothing about it; let us not be like that generation of Israelites who rejected God’s invitation to the Promised Land and instead died outside of that promise. Rather on this day let us be thankful to God for His sacrifice; let us inherit the promise, and let us come to Him and delight in that free gift of eternal life that God bought for us through Christ and through His own death on the cross and subsequent resurrection.

Let us pray.

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To order, the book I have written on this topic, Praise The Lord For Covenants, click here: http://www.sheepspeak.com./ptl4covenants.htm

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[1] Cf. The Salvation Army, Salvation Story: Salvationist Handbook of Doctrine, (The Salvation Army: London: 1998), pp. 35-49.

[2] G.E. Mendenhall. “Covenant.” In The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, edited by George Arthur Buttrick. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 1962),715.

[3] G.E. Mendenhall, P. 718.

[4] Commissioner J. Edward Read, Keepers of the Covenant. (Whitby, Ontario: J. Edward Read, 1995) p. 15; see also Sarna, Genesis, PP. 114-115, Terence E. Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, 446. cf also, Anet, p.532 and John H. Sailhamer Abraham and the covenant (15:1-21).  Cf. also Ronald F. Youngblood, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM: Second Samuel/Exposition of Second Samuel/II. Epilogue (21:1-24:25)/A. The Lord's Wrath Against Israel (21:1-14) and Polzin, "HWQY` and Covenantal Institutions in Early Israel," pp. 229, 234; and Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, p. 266.

[5] John H. Sailhamer Abraham and the covenant (15:1-21) and Terence E. Fretheim, NIB, P. 446.

[6] The Holiness Code in Leviticus (esp. Lev 25), as well as the prophecy of Amos (esp. 3-4) and numerous other portions of scripture testify that yes indeed the Lord was faithful in fulfilling this agreement but as the covenantal talks are re-opened with future generations who are looking for a permanent territorial blessing for their genetic offspring, it is granted to them albeit with conditions (pertaining to caring for the poor and the land) which they did not fulfill (cf. Gen 18:19; 26:5; Amos 3:1-2; Lev 25:2; 26:34-35; cf. also N.T. Wright, “Romans and the Theology of Paul,” Pauline Theology, Volume III, ed. David M. Hay & E. Elizabeth Johnson, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995): 37.) The blessing to the nations (12:3) that was offered through Abraham, however, still stands to this day. Remember also that the messianic prophecies to David are not tied to the physical land (2 Samuel 7) and of course are ultimately fulfilled in Christ. We should neither forget that God that he can raise up decedents of Abraham from stones if need be (cf. John 8:31-41; Hebrews 11:8-12). and indeed he does graft all the nations into the promises of Abraham (cf. Matthew 3:9, Luke 3:8, John 8, Romans 11). It is also interesting in this passage that God promises on his own life that Abraham’s decedents will receive this land; Abraham’s decedents are unfaithful and God pays with the life of his Son.

[7] Compare this to Moses’ sign the LORD is speaking to him (Exod 3:11-12) and the sign of the Lord’s faithfulness re: the provision of his people around the sabbatical year and the year of jubilee (Lev 25:19-20).

[8] The fire and the smoke are interesting symbols here. They cast the reader’s mind ahead to the fire and smoke with which God led the Israelites out of Egypt and to this same Promised Land. Those who have been studying Acts along with us will also note the pillars of fire that settled above the people’s heads in Acts II, which may or may not be making reference to the Exodus and by extension this passage as well.

[9] Cf. N.T. Wright, “Romans and the Theology of Paul,” p. 37. See also NT Wright, “The Law in Romans 2.”