Only Son (part 2)

The brief answer to that important question is found in chapter twelve of Genesis.  There, the Creator God instructs Abraham (Abram) to “Go out from your country, your relatives, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you.  Then I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, so that you will exemplify divine blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, but the one who treats you lightly I must curse, and all the families of the earth will bless one another by your name” (12:1-3). 

So yes, the covenant God is demonstrated to have chosen Abraham so that through Abraham the nations and families and the whole of the earth could be blessed.  This becomes, for all time, the explicit charge of the covenant people.  Naturally, a person that is recognized as a “teacher of Israel” would have been quite familiar with the answer to this question.  This, however, it should be recognized, is not a sufficient answer. 

The Creator God’s words to Abraham merely beg the question as to “why.”  Why did the sovereign God of the cosmos need to choose Abraham?  Why did this God have a need or desire to make Abraham into a great nation?  Why did the one who, as indicated in the story of Scripture, repeatedly showed Himself as the God of covenants want to bless him?  Why make Abraham’s name great?  Why was there what seems to be a pressing need to exemplify divine blessing through Abraham?  Why is there all this talk of blessing and cursing in association with Abraham?  Why indeed? 

The reason for all of these things is to be found in what comes before the introduction of Abraham.  In the narrative structure, what comes before, of course, is the presentation of the ordering of the creation as the Creator’s cosmic temple, the pronouncement at every stage that this ordering was “very good,” and the placement of man, created as the divine-image, into that creation-as-cosmic-temple so as to steward it, to be a reflection of the glory of its Creator into it, and to stand as a constant reminder to the whole of the creation of its Ruler, that being the Creator God of Israel (Genesis 1 & 2). 

This record of the ordering of creation is quickly followed by the report of the divine image-bearers’ first act of idolatry, rebellion, and violation of their God’s commandment.  This is swiftly followed by the exile of the now marred image-bearers from the role to which they had been assigned by the Creator.  What accompanied this, as pointedly and painfully indicated by Scripture, is the exile of the creation from the condition and state in which it had been created (very good, perfection), as it came to share in the cursing brought about by the one appointed to its rule and stewardship (Genesis 3). 

Subsequent to that the first murders are to be found (Genesis 4), along the fathering of a son in the likeness of the fallen image-bearer rather than in the image of the Creator God (Genesis 5), the growing wickedness of the collectively fallen image-bearers (Genesis 6), a worldwide flood of judgment (Genesis 7), the curse of Canaan (Genesis 9), and the culmination of man’s self-idolatry, rebellion, and defiance of the Creator, which was the construction of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). 

It is at this point that the Creator God is said to have reached down into His creation for the purpose of choosing and appointing Abraham, as something of a project manager charged with the task of the restoration of the fallen creation.  Undoubtedly, accurately and purposefully communicating this definitive story would be part and parcel of being a “teacher of Israel,” and it would have to in such a context that Jesus delivers the words of what have come to be the most famous words in the whole of Scripture.   

Terms Of The Covenant (part 2 of 2)

What the Creator God is presumed to have said to Judah through Jeremiah, the same God effectively and presumably said to Adam, which was “Obey me and carry out the terms of the agreement exactly as I commanded you.  If you do, you will be My people and I will be your God” (Jeremiah 11:4b).  Had Adam been faithful to the covenant conditions that had been delivered to him, death would not have come upon him and (again, presumably) the creation over which he was given dominion. 

The Scriptural narrative suggests that Eden and the covenant God’s creation would have remained in the state of perfection in which it was delivered to man.  If His chosen people were faithful, Israel’s God promised to “keep the promise I swore on oath to your ancestors to give them a land flowing with milk and honey” (11:5a).  “Milk and honey” could certainly also be rendered as “fertile fields and fine pastures,” which could also serve as a description of the land into which man had been placed before the curse of his covenant failure caused it to be overrun with thorns and thistles.

It is possible to hear the Creator God not only speaking to the people of Judah, but to all that would eventually come to be His covenant people, as He says, “I solemnly warned your ancestors (Israel & Adam respectively) to obey Me.  I warned them again and again, every since I delivered the out of Egypt until this very day” (11:7).  Obviously, Adam was not personally delivered out of Egypt, though He was placed, as Israel would eventually be, in a land of the Creator God’s choosing. 

The described paths of Adam and Israel converge again, as one reads “But they did not listen to Me or pay any attention to Me!” (11:8a).  Clearly, this could be said of both, which lends credence to seeing Adam as the embodiment of Israel in the creation narrative.  “Each one of them,” the Creator God says, “followed the stubborn inclinations of his own wicked heart.  So I brought on them all the punishments threatened in the covenant because they did not carry out its terms as I commanded them to do” (11:8b). 

For His covenant people, the punishment was the curse that Jeremiah insisted was on its way; and for Adam and all of humankind, the punishment was death.  Why?  Because the Creator God is faithful to His covenants, even if and when those that are charged to be His image-bearers are not.  The Creator God of Israel demanded and expected trust, but the story of Scripture indicates that He did not receive it.  He expected these creatures that had been made in His image to reflect His glory, but they failed.        

For Israel and for Adam (and all the descendants of Adam), it could be said, “The people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem have plotted rebellion against Me…  They too have paid allegiance to other gods and worshiped them” (11:9,10b).  Both rebelled and, for all practical purposes, fell into idolatry.  Israel found itself bowing to the gods of the surrounding nations, whether by choice or through force, whereas Adam, beginning the idolatry with which each of his progeny (according to the Scriptures) is afflicted, seems to have bowed down to and worshiped himself, making himself the measure of all things, in trustful worship of the creature rather than the Creator.  The sovereign Lord’s response to this is consistent, as He says, “those gods will by no means be able to save them when disaster strikes them” (11:12b).  A redeemer would be necessary.