THE PROMISE IS SUPERIOR AND IMMUTABLE
While we grew up in children’s class in church and in Sunday schools, we were introduced to the Ten Commandments and were made to memorise them. The church would have an incomplete service if no mention was made of the Jewish laws and its stern requirements. We were constantly reminded of the law and its rigid demands and merciless justice.
We knew more about the wrath of God, how angry he could become if we broke his laws. The picture of God painted in our minds was that of a wicked God waiting to kill his children once they broke his laws. So we became so fearful and lived like slaves who dread their masters. We didn’t have a father child relationship with God and we esteemed him too high and mighty a God that he could ever have a father child relationship with us. This got us into thinking that meticulous adherence to strict Jewish laws is synonymous with being a Christian. We struggled to keep the laws even though we didn’t have a true relationship with God the father. Religion tried to substitute itself with true relationship with the father.
Sadly, many people grew up being introduced to religion and hence became so religious to the extent that they actually think that religiosity means spirituality. No wonder we have many adults in church who are not born again but have played religion for several years. They know more about the laws of Moses than they know about God. They grew up chasing laws instead of chasing God.
While so much is taught about the laws of Moses and how it should be literarily made to become an object of worship, almost nothing is said about the promise of God to Abraham to save the world through faith. It seems to me that our pastors know so much about the Jewish laws but know little or nothing about the promise God made to Abraham on how he will justify the world. It is for this gross ignorance that I write about the promise of God. I am writing to state clearly that before there ever was a ten commandment, there was a PROMISE. Before Moses ever climbed Mount Sinai, Abraham already received the promise from God.
The promise was based on faith and had nothing to do with works. The promise was about what God would do to save the world. It was never about what the world should do to save itself. The law requires us to do to be saved but God’s promise to Abraham was simply about what God would do to save mankind. The law demands from us but the promise was about God’s supply.
6 Just as Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, [as conformity to God’s will and purpose—so it is with you also]. 7 So understand that it is the people who live by faith [with confidence in the power and goodness of God] who are [the true] sons of [a]Abraham. 8 The Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, proclaimed the good news [of the Savior] to Abraham in advance [with this promise], saying, “In you shall all the nations be blessed.” 9 So then those who are people of faith [whether Jew or Gentile] are blessed and favored by God [and declared free of the guilt of sin and its penalty, and placed in right standing with Him] along with Abraham, the believer{Galatians 3:6-9 AMP}
The promise of God is superior to the laws of Moses. Not only is it superior to the laws of Moses but it is also immutable. It is unchanging and therefore it is to last forever. The laws however were to last only until the seed should come to whom the promise was made. In other words, as soon as the promise was fulfilled by the arrival, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the law gave way and became obsolete. The promise took effect after its fulfilment. The end of the law was the beginning of the promise and the promise lasts for ever.
4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth. {Romans 10:4}
The promise God gave to Abraham was that the whole world would be justified by faith through his seed that is Jesus Christ. All who will believe in him will have their sins forgiven and be counted as righteous. God never told Abraham that the promise will be fulfilled only if his descendants obey certain rules and regulations. The promise had nothing to do with the works of the law but had everything to do with faith.
13 For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.
14 For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect: {Romans 4:13-14}
The church has preached for years that the way to inherit God’s promise is to obey the Jewish laws and that entry into heaven is dependent on how many laws we are able to obey as though those who will be heirs must be those who obey Jewish laws. This error has made the church worship the laws of Moses more than they worship God. Everyone thinks they are blessed because they obey Moses’ laws and will go to heaven because of those laws.
The nature of God’s promise was such that it was confirmed by an oath. God swore by himself that he would justify the nations through faith if they believe in the seed of Abraham. That he took an oath is an indication that he was serious about what he promised. He didn’t just take an oath to proof to Abraham the immutability of his counsel but that we who are the heirs of promise might trust him concerning the promise. The immutable nature of the Promise reveals that it will never change no matter what happens. That is to say no matter what we do, the promise to save us by our faith will still be fulfilled.
12 Then, knowing what lies ahead for you, you won’t become bored with being a Christian nor become spiritually dull and indifferent, but you will be anxious to follow the example of those who receive all that God has promised them because of their strong faith and patience.
13 For instance, there was God’s promise to Abraham: God took an oath in his own name, since there was no one greater to swear by, 14 that he would bless Abraham again and again, and give him a son and make him the father of a great nation of people. 15 Then Abraham waited patiently until finally God gave him a son, Isaac, just as he had promised.
16 When a man takes an oath, he is calling upon someone greater than himself to force him to do what he has promised or to punish him if he later refuses to do it; the oath ends all argument about it. 17 God also bound himself with an oath, so that those he promised to help would be perfectly sure and never need to wonder whether he might change his plans.{Hebrews 6:12-17 TLB}
The greatest ignorance of the church in my opinion is to think that God will change his promise if we fall short of his laws. We erroneously believe that we will not be justified by faith if we broke any law. We are not sure of heaven as our destination because we think that the law is greater than the promise. Oh, if only we knew that the promise was immutable, we would not so much bother about the laws of Moses.
15 Dear brothers, even in everyday life a promise made by one man to another, if it is written down and signed, cannot be changed. He cannot decide afterward to do something else instead.
16 Now, God gave some promises to Abraham and his Child. And notice that it doesn’t say the promises were to his children, as it would if all his sons—all the Jews—were being spoken of, but to his Child—and that, of course, means Christ. 17 Here’s what I am trying to say: God’s promise to save through faith—and God wrote this promise down and signed it—could not be canceled or changed four hundred and thirty years later when God gave the Ten Commandments. {Galatians 3:15-17 TLB}
I want you to notice that once a promise is made by a person to another and signed, it cannot be changed no matter what happened. God therefor cannot change the promise to save by faith even after he gave the laws to angels to give to Moses and the Israelites What I am trying to say is that the law which was just an addendum, something temporary cannot break nor disannul the promise by faith made 430 years before in Christ. Obedience or disobedience to the laws doesn’t affect the promise. This is because the promise doesn’t depend on the law but on faith. Therefore the church should repent and begin teaching about the promise by faith instead of building a religion of rules and regulations.
God will never change his mind concerning his promise no matter what you or I do. We don’t have the capacity to make God cancel his promise. God and his promise are immutable hence we can’t make him change his masterplan. What I am saying is that your sins are not powerful enough to cause an immutable God become mutable nor make his unchanging promise become changeable. God would become a liar if he doesn’t keep his promise to save only by faith. It means God would not deserve to be trusted nor worshipped if he doesn’t keep to the oath he made to Abraham.
33 But I will not stop loving David
or fail to keep my promise to him.
34 I will not break my covenant with him
or take back even one promise I made him.
35 “Once and for all I have promised by my holy name:
I will never lie to David.
I will never lie to David.
{Psalms 89:33-35 GNT}
God said the inheritance will be by faith in Christ Jesus and that is how it will remain. We can’t subtract from that nor add to it. We can preach about the laws of Moses as much as we want but that will not change God’s mind nor disannul the promise to save by faith. Anyone who keeps his faith will inherit the promise. Such a man who has faith in God’s promise is qualified to be an heir of God. He is entitled to the inheritance of salvation and everything that accompanies salvation.
14 For if what God promises is to be given to those who obey the Law, then faith means nothing and God's promise is worthless. 15 The Law brings down God's anger; but where there is no law, there is no disobeying of the law.
16 And so the promise was based on faith, in order that the promise should be guaranteed as God's free gift to all of Abraham's descendants—not just to those who obey the Law, but also to those who believe as Abraham did. For Abraham is the spiritual father of us all; {Romans 4:14-16 GNT}
The promise was God’s free gift to us. It is not the reward for keeping Jewish rules as the church has taught for years. God made it a free gift so that it can be available to everyone who believe. This is because God knows very well that humans can never keep his laws and so he didn’t make obedience to laws the criteria for salvation. If he did it means many would not be saved and God would have failed to fulfil his promise to Abraham.
Hence to sustain the immutable nature of the promise, God made it free. That means even sin cannot stop the promise. God had to introduce something called GRACE. Yes this grace is the reason why God doesn’t punish us as we deserve when we fall short of his laws. Not only did God introduce grace, but he also made grace more powerful than our sins. He causes grace to always increase much more than our sins so that the promise of salvation can be fulfilled. Therefore whenever our sins increase, grace doesn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with it, but grace outgrows, overwhelms our sins. It weakens the power of sin. Grace makes sin handicapped and renders it weak and useless. Thanks to God’s grace, we can still get the promise of salvation even if we fall short of the laws. Put laws, sins and grace side by side. Grace always wins hands down.
20-21 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end. {Romans 5:20-21 MSG}
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