The “covenants of promise”

If you, as a church-going Christian, were asked: What are the covenants of promise? how would you reply? Would you rack your brains, searching for an answer?

Yet they are something essential for your salvation: without them you have no hope. Paul wrote to his Gentile converts that before they were converted they were: without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.¹

How many sermons have you heard explaining God’s promise to some Old Testament characters in relation to the work of Christ? Not many, I suspect. Yet for the earliest Christians these promises were fundamental to their beliefs. Without them it was a case of having no hope and without God in the world. Do you, as a twenty-first century Christian, know what these promises were?

To a Jew, and indeed to a first-century Christian, the covenants of promise meant only one thing. They were the promises that God made to Abraham and David. When Paul was on trial in Caesarea, accused of being a Christian, he said to his Jewish opponents: And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers.² And these promises to the Jewish fathers were not a side issue for Paul. It was the very basis of his preaching. Addressing his audience at Antioch he said of the famous King David: From this man’s seed, according to the promise, God raised up for Israel a Saviour – Jesus.³ He ended his discourse by saying that this promise concerning Jesus made to the Jewish fathers was good news for his listeners: And we declare to you glad tidings – that promise which was made to the fathers.⁴

As Christians, we should surely want to know details of this promise that God made to King David concerning Jesus. It involved the coming of his very special descendant: When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father, and he shall be my son… And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever.⁵ Here was promised a king reigning forever, who would be directly descended from King David.

There is no doubt that the Lord Jesus Christ is this promised son of David who would rule on David’s throne and in his presence for ever. Admittedly, David’s immediate son, Solomon, partially fulfilled the promise, but long after Solomon’s death the complete fulfilment was still eagerly anticipated. Isaiah, in words universally applied to Jesus but rarely properly understood, said of the coming son that should be born: Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.⁶ There is overwhelming evidence that the Bible writers taught that one day Jesus would actually reign as king on the earth.

When the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus he said that this would be in fulfilment of God’s promise to David: He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.⁷

Is that what you were taught? Do you expect Jesus to reign on David’s restored throne in Jerusalem one day?

God’s promise to Abraham

But much earlier, God made a promise concerning Jesus to another Jewish “father”: Abraham. He was the ancestor of all the Jewish people. Paul tells us that this promise, although it was made nearly 2000 years before Jesus was born, is in fact nothing less than the gospel: And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, In you all the nations shall be blessed.⁸

Does God’s promise to Abraham fit in with your concept of the Christian gospel?

Let us go back to the earliest days of Christianity and listen to the Apostle Peter preaching in Jerusalem. His clear message was that the Jesus whom the Jews had just crucified had been raised from the dead, had ascended to heaven and was to return to the earth. This was, he said, so that: times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.⁹ Note here that the literal return of Jesus to bring refreshing and blessing to the earth was the central theme of Peter’s preaching in the earliest days of Christianity.

But Peter does not stop there. He equates this future time of refreshing with God’s promise to Abraham made centuries before. He ended his speech by speaking of: The covenant which God made with our fathers, saying to Abraham, And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.¹⁰ Don’t fail to see the significance of this. All the earth will be blessed when God’s promise to Abraham is fulfilled.

We obviously need to go back to Genesis to find out more. (Incidentally, this is why acceptance of the Old Testament is so vital for a genuine Christian.) Abraham was an outstandingly faithful man and because of this God promised him an amazing future. Over Abraham’s lifetime God repeated this promise several times.¹¹ Here are just two of these occasions.

When Abraham had migrated to the land of Canaan (now called Israel), God said to him: Lift your eyes now and look from the place where you are – northward, southward, eastward, and westward; for all the land which you see I give to you and your descendants forever.¹²

On the occasion that Abraham had demonstrated his faith in God by being prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac, God told him: Because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son – blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.¹³ And this, Paul says, is the gospel that was beforehand preached to Abraham.¹⁴

This was a far-reaching promise. Abraham was to have eternal possession of the land in which he then only wandered. He was also promised a great number of descendants who would be very successful; and in a literal sense this has happened. All Jews have descended from Abraham (although the true descendants of Abraham are something different, as we will see).

But it is the final part of God’s promise that is what the Apostle Peter was speaking of: In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. This word seed (meaning “descendant”) can be either singular or plural – meaning one individual seed or a lot of seeds. The New Testament tells us which alternative is meant. Quoting this promise to Abraham, Paul told the Galatians: The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say and to seeds, meaning many people, but and to your seed, meaning one person, who is Christ.¹⁵

So, in promising Abraham a very notable single descendant, God was speaking of Jesus. We can now understand why Peter on almost the very first occasion when Christianity was preached referred to this promise.

And what was the blessing that would come through this great seed of Abraham? Peter tells us. After quoting God’s words to Abraham And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed, he then told his audience: To you first, God, having raised up his servant Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from your iniquities.¹⁶ So the blessing God promised to all the families of the earth was forgiveness of sins. No wonder that Paul later wrote that this promise to Abraham was in fact the Christian gospel: God… preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, In you all the nations shall be blessed.¹⁷

But this blessing of forgiveness is not automatic. The Christian has to do something in order to share in this blessing. Paul again: For as many of you as were baptised into Christ have put on Christ… there is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.¹⁸

So to receive this blessing of forgiveness a Christian has to put on Christ by baptism (more about baptism later). The baptised person then becomes part of that multitude of “descendants” promised to Abraham, and can receive the forgiveness we all need.

But the future blessing that comes from Abraham’s seed is even more extensive. When Jesus returns he will be king over the whole earth. The Bible has many word pictures describing Christ’s future rule. Read Psalm 72, which describes the rich worldwide blessings of peace and prosperity of the Kingdom of God under Christ’s beneficent rule. The psalm concludes with words that reflect the promise to Abraham: His name shall endure forever; his name shall continue as long as the sun. And men shall be blessed in him; all nations shall call him blessed.¹⁹

These covenants of promise to Abraham and David²⁰ were the core beliefs of the first Christians. They looked forward to when they would be fulfilled. To them they were the gospel.

Do you feel the same about them? Are you part of Abraham’s seed, and an heir according to the promise?