The God of Promise and the Life of Faith

Understanding the Heart of the Bible

Scott J. Hafemann

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781433529436
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This theological primer lets the Bible tell its own message, providing a basic framework for Scripture that will encourage readers to take up the Bible for themselves and grow in faith, hope, and love.

Notes

Chapter One

Why Do We Exist?

1. Anthony A. Hoekema, Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1986), 14. Hoekema’s study is the best full-length work currently available on the biblical meaning and significance of the term “image of God.”

2. Ibid., 4. It is worth quoting Hoekema’s summary in full: “The image of God in man must therefore be seen as involving both the structure of man (his gifts, capacities, and endowments) and the functioning of man (his action, his relationships to God and to others, and the way he uses his gifts). To stress either of these at the expense of the other is to be one-sided. We must see both, but we need to see the structure of man as secondary and his functioning as primary. God has created us in his image so that we may carry out a task, fulfill a mission, pursue a calling.... To see man as the image of God is to see both the task and the gifts. But the task is primary; the gifts are secondary. The gifts are the means for fulfilling the task” (73).

3. In Genesis 1:26-28 there are two Hebrew words used to describe mankind’s identity, which are also represented in the English translation: mankind is created “in our image, after our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). A careful study shows that these two words do not refer to two different aspects of humanity, but are simply synonyms. Thus, Genesis 1:27 uses the same word twice to describe humanity (“image”), while Genesis 5:1, where we encounter the same motif again, simply uses the word “likeness” without using the word “image” at all, only to speak of being in one’s “likeness” and “image” in 5:3. So, as synonyms, both terms can be used parallel to each other, one or the other can be used by itself, or, as in Genesis 5:3, both can be used in reverse order. Hence, we must not conclude from Genesis 1:26 that humanity has two different aspects, i.e., a spiritual nature (one’s “image”) and a physical nature (“one’s likeness”), or a spiritual and psychological nature, or a rational and emotional nature, etc. To be created in God’s “image” or after his “likeness” expresses the same reality and refers to a person in his or her totality.

4. Daniel P. Fuller, The Unity of the Bible, unpublished syllabus, revised edition, 1974, vii-4. The same point has now been made in Fuller’s The Unity of the Bible: Unfolding God’s Plan for Humanity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1992), 109. Much of what follows in this chapter and throughout this book is indebted to the work of Daniel Fuller and his student John Piper, who, as God’s instruments of grace, taught me how to do biblical theology and modeled how to live in light of it (see footnotes below).

5. Meredith Kline Images of the Spirit (South Hamilton, Mass.: Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 1986 [1980]), 28.

6. Jean Danielou, In the Beginning . . . Genesis I-III (Baltimore: Helicon, 1965), 38.

7. For an analysis of this movement, see Peter Jones, The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992).

8. Paul R. House, Old Testament Theology (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity, 1998), 59. House’s very helpful theology traces the theme of theology proper, i.e., the identity, nature, and purpose of God, throughout the Old Testament.

9. John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah; expanded edition, 1996), 44-45; the quote is from Jonathan Edwards, “Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 102. For Edwards’s essay and an insightful introduction to it, see John Piper, God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, 111.: Crossway, 1998). The idea that God “went public” in creation is taken from Daniel Fuller’s Unity, chs. 8 and 9.

10. For a development of this important point, see John Piper, The Pleasures of God: Meditations on God’s Delight in Being God (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, revised and expanded version, 2000).

11. Fuller, Unity, 136.

12. Piper, Desiring God, 32.

13. Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974 [1954]), 23.

14. For the development of the link between worship and obedience, see Fuller, Unity, 150-151.

15. Blaise Pascal, Pascal’s Pensees, trans. W. F. Trotter (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958), 113; as quoted by Piper, Desiring God, 18.

Chapter Two:

What Does It Mean to Know God?

1. Mark R. Talbot, “Does God Reveal Who He Actually Is,” in Douglas S. Huffman and Eric L. Johnson, eds., God Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, forthcoming, 2001). Talbot also points out that “God’s faithfulness depends on his power (see 2 Sam. 7:8-16; Ps. 91:1-3; Isa. 31:4-5; Jer. 35:18-19; Hag. 2:23; Zech. 1;17; Rev. 19:11-16), as does the trustworthiness and certainty of his word (see Jer. 7:3-7; 19:1-3,15; 32:14-15; 38:17-23; Zech. 8:2-3; Rev. 19:11-16), as does his power to save (see Ps. 80:7; Isa. 47:4; 51:12-16; Jer. 11:20; 50:33-34; Mic. 4:1-4; Zech. 3:8-10; 12:5; Mai. 3:1; 4:1-3; Rev. 11:15-18; 19:1-8) as well as his goodness and his love...”

2. C. S. Lewis, "The Weight of Glory," in Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Essays (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965), 1-15,2.

3. The missing element in this introductory work is a sustained development of the history of redemption into which these themes must be integrated. Such a framework would stretch from creation, Sabbath, and first exodus under the old covenant, to the “second exodus” in Christ, the new creation, and the reconstituted Sabbath under the new covenant. For an introduction to this framework, see Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Kingdom: A Christian Interpretation of the Old Testament (Carlisle, England: Paternoster, 1994). For more detailed presentations, see Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1948); John Bright, The Kingdom of God (Nashville: Abingdon, 1953); David E. Holwerda, Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995); and especially the works of William J. Dumbrell: Covenant and Creation (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1984); The End of the Beginning: Revelation 21-22 and the Old Testament (Homebush West, NSW, Australia: Lancer; distributed by Baker, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1985); and The Search for Order: Biblical Eschatology in Focus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1994).

4. Though we will develop this point later, to avoid confusion I should point out that I am not a “Sabbatarian,” even if the day of rest is moved to Sunday. I do not believe that the command given to Israel to keep a literal Sabbath must be kept by Christians, though of course a regular pattern of corporate worship is essential. Keeping the Sabbath under the old covenant was a symbolic reminder of the fundamental truths of creation and covenant, which are fulfilled under the new covenant in a life of faith-producing obedience seven days of week (Heb. 3:16-4:13). In Christ, every day is the Sabbath! With transformed hearts, we now keep the Sabbath by trusting in God to meet our needs in every circumstance, manifesting this faith by a life of growing contentment expressed in righteousness (1 Tim. 6:6-16). Thus, since the Sabbath was a symbol, the issue of whether under the new covenant we honor one day of the week above another as a remembrance of God’s love and commitment to his people is a matter of personal preference and conscience before the Lord (Rom. 14:5-6).

5. For this point and its implications, see the important work of John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1992), 84-86. Sailhamer argues convincingly that the phrase translated “without form and void” in Genesis 1:2 pictures the world not as a formless mass of cooling gases in space, but as an “uninhabitable stretch of wasteland, a wilderness not yet inhabitable by human beings,” that is to say, “the condition of the land before God made it ‘good’” (84, n.8, 85). The key to seeing this is the parallel between the use of this image in Genesis 1:2 and its uses in Deuteronomy 32:10 and Isaiah 45:18. Thus, “Deuteronomy 32 draws on the same imagery (v. 10) to depict Israel’s time of waiting in the wilderness before their entry into the good land” (86). The prophets too used this same imagery from Genesis 1:2 to describe Israel’s time of exile, during which the land again became “uninhabitable” and a “desert,” and the light of the heavens was gone (86, pointing to Jer. 4:23-26). “The description of the land in Genesis 1:2, then, fits well into the prophet’s vision of the future. The land lies empty, dark, and barren, awaiting God’s call to light and life. Just as the light of the sun broke in upon the primeval darkness heralding the dawn of God’s first blessing (Gen. 1:3), so also the prophets and the apostles mark the beginning of the new age of salvation with the light that shatters the darkness (Isa. 8:22-9:2; Matt. 4:13-17; John 1:5, 8-9)” (86).

6. Unfortunately, we know from the history of Israel in the Old Testament that the nation as a whole did not “keep the Sabbath.” See, for example: Ex. 16:27; Neh. 13:15-18; Jer. 17:14-23; Ezek. 20:13-16; Amos 8:4-6; and Hos. 2:11. For this reason, the question of what it means to keep the Sabbath became extremely important in post-biblical Judaism and in the ministry of Jesus (see, for example, Matt. 12:1-14; Mark 2:18-3:6; Luke 6:1-11; 13:10-16; 14:1-6; John 5:918; 7:21-24; 9:13-17). The Gospel accounts argue that if the Sabbath signifies God’s commitment to meet his people’s needs, then Jesus was not breaking the Sabbath when he worked to heal and forgive, since his actions embodied the very heart of what the Sabbath meant. As Jesus put it, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Hence, as the authoritative Son of Man, Jesus is “lord even of the Sabbath,” which is to say that he is the one who has the sovereign right to use it as he sees fit for his people’s good.

7. Paul R. House, Old Testament Theology (Downers Grove, 111.: InterVarsity, 1998), 61, 63.

8. Bernhard W. Anderson, From Creation to New Creation: Old Testament Perspectives (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 129; the quote is from H. Wildberger.

9. See Lev. 26:12; Jer. 7:23; 11:4; 24:7; 30:22; 31:33; 32:38; Ezek. 11:20; 14:11; 36:28; 37:23, 27; Zech. 8:8; 2 Cor. 6:16.

10. John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah; expanded edition, 1996), 50. For a profound exposition of the relationship between God’s promises for the future and the life of faith in the present, see Piper’s companion volume, Future Grace (Sisters, Ore.: Multnomah, 1995), with its restatement of this fundamental point on page 9.

11. This insightful summary of one of the main themes of biblical theology is a central pillar in Piper’s work.

12. on D. Levenson, Sinai and Zion: An Entry into the Jewish Bible (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), 37.

13. Ibid., 43.

14. The impetus for the conviction that there is a uniform covenant structure providing the essential framework for understanding all of the covenants in the Bible comes from the pivotal work of G. E. Mendenhall, “Covenant Forms in Israelite Traditions,” The Biblical Archaeologist 1 (1954), 50-76, which demonstrated that the basic covenant form in Israelite tradition was based on the form of the suzerain treaty that existed throughout the ancient Near East. For a detailed survey of the modern study of the covenant, see Ernest W. Nicholson, God and His People: Covenant and Theology in the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 3-117.

There were two basic kinds of covenants in the ancient Near East. The first was a partnership treaty established between equals, which was based on mutual demands and commitments. In this partnership, both parties agree as peers to fulfill obligations and to keep promises toward each other. This is not the kind of treaty formula that provides the foundation for the Old Testament covenant structure. Instead, as Mendenhall argued, the covenant structure in the Old Testament is based on the ancient Near Eastern practice of establishing unilateral or “suzerainty” treaties between a great king and a lesser king or between a sovereign and a helpless people, i.e., his vassals, whom the great king has redeemed or rescued from some danger. These unilateral covenants are not based on mutual obligations but on what the king has already done to protect, deliver, or rescue his vassals. These acts of deliverance are codified in historical prologues that summarize what has already taken place in the past, on the basis of which a relationship has now been established (for example, Ex. 20:1-2). Having rescued them in the past, the king makes covenant stipulations with his people that must be met if they desire to continue as his people and enjoy his ongoing pro­tection. Thus, the covenant blessings for the future are based on keeping the covenant stipulations in the present that flow from the great act of redemption and provision in the past.

In other words, God used the historical experience of the ancient Near East as a vehicle for revealing what his relationship with his people was to be like. God is the great king and we are his vassals. Out of his benevolence he has rescued us from our plight. Having made us his people, he informs us of the covenant stipulations that flow out of and maintain the relationship he has inaugurated. The keeping of these covenant stipulations (which God himself enables!) makes it possible not only for God to maintain his rule over us in the present but also for him to commit himself to doing that in the future, since our lives of obedience to the covenant glorify him.

15. I am aware that this is a controversial approach to the Bible, since a Law/Gospel contrast has dominated the interpretation of the Bible ever since the Protestant Reformation. Indeed, this Law/Gospel contrast became the centerpiece of the two predominant biblical-theological systems of the twentieth century, dispen-sationalism and modified covenant theology, despite...