This
is the forth in a series of lessons on God’s covenant with Abraham (Genesis,
chapter 17). In our previous lessons we have seen where God’s covenant
was an everlasting covenant with Abraham and with his descendants. God
promised to give to Abraham and to his descendants the
The true promise was for an everlasting heavenly land, not an
earthly land. God’s promise has always been for an everlasting heavenly
home with Him. It has been promised to Abraham and his descendants by
faith.
What we saw previously was that God was giving
Abraham both the old covenant and the new covenant promises at the same
time. The new covenant promise was the true promise. The first
(old) covenant promise was being given to his earthly descendants as the
earthly copy.
It appears that God may have been telling Abraham what His covenant requirement was just before He gave Abraham the covenant promises (In Genesis, chapter 17). In the first verse of that chapter, God told Abraham, “I am God Almighty; Walk before Me, and be blameless”.
Based on the Hebrew wording God is
commanding Abraham to walk before Him and be “perfect”. After telling
Abraham to walk before Him and be perfect, God gave Abraham the covenant with
its everlasting promise for an everlasting
Abraham was commanded to walk before the
LORD. Some of the ancient faithful who
lived before Abraham were described as having walked “with God”. We can see that in the lives of Enoch and
Noah. The scriptures say that those two
men walked "with God" (Genesis, chapters 5 and 6). Scripture says that “Enoch walked with God;
and he was not, for God took him”. Scripture says of Noah, “Noah was a righteous
man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God”.
Those two men walked with God before God gave
His everlasting covenant to Abraham. They walked with God but the
Scripture says that Abraham was commanded to walk before God and be
perfect. Did it have to do with the covenant that Abraham was
receiving?
Remember, Christ was God’s Word from the
beginning and He is God’s creator (John, chapter 1). When God appeared to
Abraham and made His covenant with him, it was Christ who was speaking to
him. Christ was making the covenant promises of God to Abraham. Was He telling Abraham that his covenant
requirement was that he be perfect?
Christ would not come in the flesh for another
two thousand years. Abraham’s life
journey was to be made before Christ would make His life journey. Was He telling Abraham that his walk through
life had to be perfect or was He saying that if he walked by faith that Christ
would make him perfect? Was that also
the covenant requirement for Abraham’s descendants?
Regarding the descendants of Abraham and how they were to walk, there is another scripture that speaks of a man of faith (A descendant of Abraham) walking “before” the LORD. It appears to be showing us how walking before the LORD means walking before Him in obedience to God’s word. After Solomon completed his work of building the temple, God appeared to him and made some promises to him.
God spoke of David and
told Solomon, “As for you, if you walk before Me as your father David
walked, even to do according to all that I have commanded you, and will keep My
statutes and My ordinances, then I will establish your royal throne as I
covenanted with your father David” (2 Chronicles 7:17-18).
The covenant that God made with David was a
part of the same covenant that He made with Abraham. The true covenant
promise is the promise of everlasting life in the kingdom of heaven. When
God promised David that one of his descendants would rule forever, He was
speaking of Christ, a descendant of David’s, being ruler over God’s spiritual
Israel in the kingdom of heaven. Solomon
was also being given that promise but, as he walked before Christ he would not hold
as faithful to God as his father David had.
Walking as David had walked did not mean being
perfect as he walked because David was not perfect. The requirement was to walk in faith as David
had walked and do what God had commanded. David was not perfect in his
walk but when he slipped, he always repented and returned to his walk of faith.
As the scripture says, “I HAVE FOUND DAVID the son of Jesse, A MAN AFTER MY
HEART” (Acts
Abraham’s descendants who lived before Christ
were to walk before Him and be perfect. It
appears that God was promising to make them perfect if they did the best they
could to walk their walk of faith. Was
God not speaking of the blood of Christ making them perfect?
We, who are walking our walk after Christ offered His sacrifice, have been told to follow Him, not walk before Him. Remember, we are required to pick up our cross and follow Jesus.
Those old covenant descendants could not follow
Jesus because He had not come to lead the way. They needed to walk their
walk of faith before He walked but they had to follow the path of faith and obedience
to God’s word. They had to hear and obey Christ as He spoke directly
through angels or through Moses.
Our everlasting covenant requirement is to
walk as David had walked but we are to follow Jesus. We will make mistakes just as David made
mistakes but we must live a life that keeps turning back to God when we mess
up. We must walk after the heart of
God. We must do our best to walk in obedient faith. If we live a
repentant life and love God with all of our heart, we will be made perfect to receive
the covenant promises.
Regarding those faithful ones who lived under
the old covenant, they were living under the Law of Moses and they were
required to meet its conditions if they were to be cleansed of their sins and
made perfect. They could never be made
perfect unless they met the Law’s conditions.
That, however, was not possible.
Not one of those who lived under that old covenant Law could ever meet
its conditions.
Paul spoke of the old Law’s requirement for
perfection in his letter to the Galatians. He was addressing his comments
to those Christians who believed that they had to keep the old covenant Law and
especially the Law’s requirement for circumcision.
Paul tells them it is those who are of faith that will be blessed with Abraham, not those of the Law. He said, “For as many as are of the works of the Law are under a curse; for it is written, "CURSED IS EVERYONE WHO DOES NOT ABIDE BY ALL THINGS WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF THE LAW, TO PERFORM THEM” (Galatians 3:10).
Moses had
written, “Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing
them” (Deuteronomy 27:26). Moses also said, “It will be righteousness for
us if we are careful to observe all this commandment before the LORD our God,
just as He commanded us” (Deuteronomy
The Law demanded perfect
obedience of everything in that Law in order for them to be made righteous. Those who were under the Law could only obtain
their own righteousness if they were perfect under the Law but they were not perfect.
They were under
a curse because they could not comply with the Law. Moses said it and Paul said it. James
also wrote, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he
has become guilty of all” (James
The old Law was written so as to provide
atonement for man's sin with their sacrificial offerings but they could never meet
the conditions. The Law demanded blood from perfect sacrifices ("Whatever
has a defect, you shall not offer" - Leviticus
In addition to perfect sacrifices, only
perfect priests were to offer those sacrifices (And serve in the outer room of
God’s house). The Law said of a priest with a defect, “he shall not go in
to the veil or come near the altar because he has a defect, so that he will not
profane My sanctuaries” (Leviticus
The Jews only
rejected priests with obvious defects but the Law said “a defect”. God’s
sanctuary was continually being profaned because they had no perfect priests to
serve for God’s people and offer perfect sacrifices.
That is the reason why the Hebrew writer spoke of that
old covenant and said that it was a faulty covenant.
He said, “For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would
have been no occasion sought for a second” (Hebrews 8:7).
He then tells us why it was a faulty covenant
when he spoke of the people of the covenant and said, “For finding fault with
them”. It was a faulty covenant because the people were faulty. God
is a perfect God and He demands perfection. Man cannot receive the
covenant promise of a home with God unless he obtains perfection.
He also spoke of that old Law and said that it
was weak and useless. He wrote, “For, on the one hand, there is a setting aside of a
former commandment because of its weakness and uselessness (for the Law made
nothing perfect), and on the other hand there is a bringing in of a better
hope, through which we draw near to God.” (Hebrews 7:18-19)
Drawing near to God in
His heavenly home is the covenant promise.
It is the promise of having that heavenly
It was a weak and useless Law from a faulty
covenant because man was not perfect and the Law could not make man
perfect. They could never comply with the requirements of the Law
because, “the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and
not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer
continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near” (Hebrews 10:1).
The old covenant Law only had the shadow; it
did not have the reality. Under the shadow, when an imperfect priest drew near,
he was profaning God's sanctuary and he was not welcome in God's presence.
Having the perfection necessary to draw near to our perfect God would require a
better way. God provided a way for us to draw near through Christ. We can draw
near to God through Christ because, “By one offering, He perfected for all time
those who are sanctified” (Hebrews
Perfection was always God’s covenant
requirement. God gave man the old covenant and its Law that demanded
perfection but man could never comply. God knew before He gave that
covenant that man could never meet His conditions but He gave us that
opportunity. Man spent some fourteen centuries trying but he could not
comply.
God was telling us about His perfection
requirements in the covenant promises that He made to Abraham. Paul
speaks of the promises to Abraham and says, “Now the promises were
spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, "And to seeds,"
as referring to many, but rather to one, "And to your seed," that is,
Christ” (Galatians
When we read from the NASB translation (The
same is true of most modern translations) where God told Abraham, “I will give
to you and to your descendants after you, the land of your sojournings, all the
land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession” (Genesis, chapter 17), the
original Hebrew word for, “descendants” was, “zera”, meaning, “Seed”.
God meant
“Seed”, singular, meaning Jesus, only. When God told Abraham that He
would give that land to him and to his Seed, He only meant Jesus, not all of
Abraham’s earthly descendants because God foresaw none of Abraham’s other
descendants being able to meet the covenant conditions. The promise was only
made to the one descendant who would meet the covenant conditions of
perfection.
Jesus was perfect in His obedience to the
Father’s commandments and that included obedience to the Law of Moses because
that was God’s Law to His people when Christ was on earth. He spoke
of the Law and said that not a letter or stroke of it would pass from it “until
all is accomplished” (Matthew
He accomplished it all when He died on the cross. That was when He said, "It is finished" (John 19:30). He then bowed His head and gave up His Spirit.
Until that day came, He lived perfectly
under God’s Law. As He once told the disciples, “but so that the world
may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me.”
(John 14:31)
So, if that old covenant was faulty and its Law
was weak and useless for meeting God’s covenant conditions, why was it ever
brought into being? God would have
foreseen its shortcomings when He made His covenant promises to Abraham four
thousand years ago. If it was weak and
useless in the first century, it was weak and useless when it was first brought
into being. Why not skip the old and
just bring in the new?
Paul asked that same question after he spoke of
how the promise was made to Abraham and to his Seed, which was Christ (Galatians,
chapter 3). He was speaking of the
covenant promise to Abraham and to Christ.
He said that the Law came over four hundred years after God had made His
promise to Abraham and to his Seed and that Law does not invalidate a covenant
that had previously been ratified by God, “so as to nullify the promise”.
He continues by showing how that promised
inheritance was given to Abraham by means of God’s promise and it was not based
on law. In other words, the true promise
was to Christ, so we can only receive that promise through Christ. The true promise was never the old covenant
promise with its useless Law; it was the new covenant promise of God that comes
through Christ Jesus.
In verse 19, he asked the question, “Why the
Law then?” He then tells us that “It was
added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the
agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been
made.”
He asks another question. He asked, “Is the Law then contrary to the promises of God?” He answers by saying, “May it never be! For if a law had been given which was able to impart life, then righteousness would indeed have been based on law. But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”
The covenant
promise is to Christ and to all who will believe in Him.
Before He came, God's people were in bondage under a Law they
could never satisfy. That is why they were shut up under sin.
Only Christ could come and set them free. We have now been
set free by faith in Christ.
He then tells us that before faith came, “we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”
The promise is for a home with God. Only His sons are heirs in God's house. Christ met God's conditions for perfection and became the Firstborn Son. All who are of faith in Him will become born again sons of God with Him and heirs in the Father's house.
He tells us more about how we become sons of God and heirs with Christ in the verses that followed.
In verse 28, he tells us that applied to those who “are all one in Christ
Jesus”. He says that includes everyone, whether Jew or Greek (Gentile),
slave or free, male or female. Whether male or female, all who are
in Christ are sons of God and heirs to the promises.
Paul
tells us how we become one in Christ Jesus in verses 26 and 27 when he says
that, “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ
have clothed yourselves with Christ”.
We must be
in Christ to belong to Him and become sons of God and heirs with Him. We
become one in Christ when we have become clothed with Him in baptism.
Everyone who has become one with the only perfect heir is an heir with him and
is a son of God. Only sons of God are heirs to the promises.
Remember,
He was the only one who ever earned righteousness by being perfect under that
old Law. He was perfect in everything. He was righteous before
He came to earth but He came so that He could earn righteousness for us. God's
grace is now being shown in His gift of Christ's righteousness to the faithful
spiritual descendants of Abraham. God has allowed all of His sons to
become perfect by having been clothed in the righteous Firstborn Son of God.
God will be fulfilling another promise that God made to Abraham and Paul refers to in that same chapter. Paul tells us that the Scripture foresaw how God would justify the Gentiles by faith when it preached the gospel to Abraham, saying, “ALL THE NATIONS WILL BE BLESSED IN YOU.” (Verse 8)
That
is the gospel message. All nations will be
blessed in Abraham when those who are of faith in Christ have believed
and obeyed the message and have been baptized into Christ and become
clothed with the only
perfect Seed of promise. We must be wearing His robe of
righteousness if we are to enter God's heavenly home.
Remember, we read, that old Law was only a
shadow of the new. If God brought it into
being to show the shadow of what would be the reality, then it was brought into
being for our instruction. Just as
Christ taught His spiritual message with earthly parables, He is doing the same
thing with the old Law shadow. As we
just read, “the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may
be justified by faith.”
We can only become heirs with Christ if we are
“In Christ”. We must become one with
Him. As Jesus said in His great prayer
(John, chapter 17), “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also
who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You,
Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world
may believe that You sent Me” (Verses 20-21).
He spoke
of those that have obtained perfection by their unity with the Father and Son (“I
in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity”). We must
become one with Christ to be made perfect with Him. Only those faithful ones
who will have believed and obeyed the Great Commission command will become
clothed with the perfection and righteousness of God.
Only by the perfect blood of Christ in the new
covenant can we be made perfect.
It appears that if we walk in obedient faith
that we will be made perfect by the blood of Christ. Those ancient ones
who lived before Christ came and offered His perfect sacrifice had no perfect
sacrifices to offer.
Was God
telling them that Christ’s blood would reach back to make them perfect,
also? That appears to be what the scriptures are saying when we read how,
“By
one offering, He perfected for all time those who are sanctified”. It was for "all time".
We can
see that in what the Hebrew writer said of those ancient faithful in Hebrews,
chapter 11. He listed those who lived their lives of faith before Christ,
including some of Abraham’s descendants who had been given the covenant
promises.
That
writer spoke of the ancient faithful and said how they were seeking a country
of their own. They were seeking a country but it was not an earthly
land. He writes, “And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from
which they went out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it
is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not
ashamed to be called their God; for He has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews
Remember,
Abraham lived in that land of promise as an alien in a foreign land but he was
looking for that city built by God (Hebrews 11:9-10)
The
writer ended chapter 11 speaking of those who had gained approval by their
faith but they never received the promises. He says they had not received
what had been promised, “because God had provided something better for us, so that
apart from us they would not be made perfect”.
A few of
the ancient ones were faithful and they believed God’s promises. They
lived under a Law that could not make them perfect to receive the promises but,
because they believed and obeyed God’s word, God will give them what had been
promised. They have been made perfect with us by the blood of Christ.
We must hear,
believe and obey the gospel message from Christ when He command His disciples to, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all
creation. He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who
has disbelieved shall be condemned” (Mark
We need to
believe and obey Jesus when He speaks and gives us His promises and His
covenant requirements. What had been promised was an everlasting
We can only have His perfection when we believe His word with obedience. We must believe He will give us the covenant promises if we meet the covenant conditions.
We must be made perfect and that can only happen for those who have been clothed in Christ Jesus. He is the only perfect one and the only heir so we must be “In Him” and be made one with Him if we are to receive the covenant promises.
We must hear John tell
us, “but
whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By
this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought
himself to walk in the same manner as He walked” (1 John 2:5-6).
If we say that we are “In Him”, we ought to walk as
He walked. Jesus walked in a way that denied self to live for
others. He walked about doing good works for others and He died doing
good works for others when He died for me.
In His Sermon on the Mount (Matthew, chapter 5), Jesus tells us what God requires. He mentioned a number of things that were different from what they had been taught but at the end of that chapter He said something that stands out.
He told them to love their
enemies and pray for those who persecuted them “so that you may be sons
of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and
the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous”.
Only sons of God are heirs. We must be a son of God to be an heir in His house. If we are to become sons of God, we must love all people, even our enemies. He tells us that anyone can love those who love them but we are to be different. He tells us, “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect”.
Those Jews likely
did not believe that He meant exactly what He said about being perfect.
He did. He will make us perfect if we follow Jesus and walk in love just
as He walked in love.
Remember, God is love (“The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love” – 1 John 4:8) and if we are His children we must walk in love. That means doing works of love for others.
That is why we were created. We were created in Christ Jesus for good works. We must hear
Paul say that we are, “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand so that we would walk in them" (Ephesians
Paul had just written to say how we are saved
by grace, through faith and not by our works, but true love does works of
love. We were created to do good works of love for others. We must follow Christ and love others in deed and in truth.
I must take up my cross and follow Him. I must walk as He walked and “walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Ephesians 5:2). We must follow Him and walk in love.
We must be led by the Spirit as we walk
because, “all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Romans
Paul speaks of that when he tells us how Christ became a curse for us, “in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith” (Galatians 3:14).
It is the promise of the Spirit that allows us to become His son
and have that home with God. Those who have the Spirit of God are sons of
God and heirs with Christ.
The Spirit of God dwells in His sons and His Spirit is leading them.
Our righteousness no longer depends on our
perfection under the Law, it depends on our faith in the one who has met the
conditions of the Law for us and then offered Himself so that we can obtain His
perfection.
Jesus lived a perfect life under that Law and He did for us what we could not do for ourselves. By His perfection He earned righteousness for us. We can only obtain His perfection and His righteousness by faith in Him. We must believe His word.
We must believe His promises like Abraham
believed His promises. If we believe His promises and obey His word, He
will make us one with Him (We will become clothed with Him) and He will give us
His perfection and His righteousness.
All of the faithful of both covenants and from
the time before the covenants have been made perfect by the blood of
Christ. They have all become one together “in Christ” with us and they will
receive that city to come.
Johnny Rogers
Revised
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