Title: The Absolute Authority of God's Promises
Contents
15 Brethren, I speak according to the customs of men, that after a covenant has been established, no one can abolish or add to it.
16 These promises were made to Abraham and to his descendants, not by referring to the many as their descendants, but by referring to the one as your descendants, which is Christ.
17 For this I say, that the covenant which God had foreordained could not be made in vain without the law, which was made four hundred and thirty years later.
18 If the inheritance is from the law, it will not be from the promise, but God gave it to Abraham by grace through the promise.
1. Words that begin
2. Human Covenant
The Apostle Paul explains with human common sense that the law cannot abrogate God's promise of salvation. In other words, even if it is a human covenant, once it is established, no one can abolish or add to it. Neither the party making the promise nor the third party can do anything about the promised promise, and they should not do anything about it. You just have to keep your promises.
In the 8th century AD, the Moors who lived in northwest Africa conquered Spain. A rich Moorish Muslim was walking in a garden in Granada, the capital of the Western Saracen Kingdom. Just then, an unfamiliar Spanish young man rushed in and said, “Sir, I am being chased by the police because I accidentally killed a Moor. Please hide it,” he begged. The rich man promised to protect the young man and hid it.
But after a while, the rich man received very sad news. It was that his son had been murdered by a young Spanish man. The rich man said, “It was the work of the very Spanish young man I hid! You must take revenge now.” He grabbed his weapon and ran to the enemy. As he was running, he suddenly stopped as an Islamic commandment that promises to be kept must be kept no matter what the outcome. He could not decide whether the dead son was serious or the living promise was serious. After pondering for a moment, he realized that his son, who had died, could not be brought back to life anyway, so he gave his words to the murderer, the enemy, to escape.
Of course, the rich man's actions can lead to moral or legal controversy. However, the most important lesson for modern people to take is that the rich kept their promises that are really hard to keep. Keeping promises is a very important virtue. How are you? A rich pagan man endured more suffering than death, yet he followed the precept and kept his promise. What about you? How well are you keeping your promises to God as well as to humans according to God's Word? When we were all studying or baptized, we promised that we would diligently attend worship services, obey the Word, live a life of tithing and gratitude, and be devoted and loyal. If we must keep our promises with humans, we must keep our promises with God even more.
In particular, we believers, more than anyone else, must keep our promises to God as well as to people. This is because we have already been promised abundant blessings and tremendous salvation from God. Also, because no one or anything can break God's promise. According to God's promise, we have already been saved and are receiving blessings. Even now, God makes promises to all people, and he is also fulfilling his promises.
3. The Eternity of God's Promises
However, the false teachers were making the mistake of breaking the promise by placing more importance on the law than on God's promise of salvation. So, the Apostle Paul refutes how the promises made by the God of eternal love can be abolished, even though the promises made between people are so firm that no one can cancel or change them.
God's promise was made to Abraham and his descendants. Genesis 17:7-8, “I will establish my covenant between me and your descendants for generations to come, as an everlasting covenant, to be the God of you and your descendants. and I will be their God.” And in 22:17-18, “I will bless you and increase your descendants as great as the stars in the sky and like the sand on the seashore, and your descendants will break the gates of their enemies. And through your offspring all peoples under the heavens will be blessed, because you have obeyed my word.”
Since God's promise of salvation to be fulfilled in Christ is effective only after the coming of Christ, it is said that before the coming of the promised Christ, the Jews were saved by the works of the law, and in the case of the Gentiles, by the works of conscience. There are these. Also, the Jewish rabbis claimed that because God's promises did not save mankind, He gave them a better law 430 years later than the promises, so that they could be saved by doing them. However, this claim is completely wrong. The promises of blessing and salvation that God has pre-determined cannot be abolished by the law that was created 430 years later, and those promises cannot be made in vain.
This can be seen by analyzing the concept of a promise. The meaning of a promise is not, as is often thought, the moment when it is promised or when it is fulfilled. When a promise is made, the promise is fulfilled, and when the promise is fulfilled, the promise is over. The meaning of a promise is the period from when the promise was made to just before the promise was made. That is, the promise takes effect from the moment the promise is established. A promise is alive until it is fulfilled. It is as if an agreement between the owner and the guest to make a credit transaction with the terms of payment at the end of the month would have the same effect as a cash transaction from then until the end of the month.
Therefore, those who believe and accept the promise that God will send Jesus Christ, the descendant of Abraham, and that all who believe in him will be blessed and will be saved, will be blessed and saved even before the promised Christ comes. The law was given to help those who do not know the truth and seek salvation on their own, to realize that they are helpless sinners.
4. Conclusion
God has promised to save mankind through Christ. Therefore, before Christ came, people had to believe the promises of God. We have been saved through faith in Christ, who came as promised. God will surely fulfill all the blessings He has promised to us who are saved. Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him also gift us all things?”