Salvation Belongs to the Lord

An Introduction to Systematic Theology

John M. Frame

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781596383272
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

Frame makes a remarkably clear teaching tool by exploring all the major biblical truths, explaining key terms of systematic theology, and reflecting on their implications under the lordship of Christ.

PART ONE

Chapter 1

God, the Lord

Who is God? The Bible most often describes him as Lord. Lord is the name of a profoundly holy person in covenant relationship with us. This chapter will explore the meaning of God’s lordship in terms of his control, authority, and presence, as well as the related concepts of transcendence and immanence.

In this book I will introduce you to the discipline of systematic theology. I’ll discuss the nature of systematic theology itself in chapter 6. But I think we need to do some systematic theology together before we try to define it. Just for now, however, let me say that theology is the human attempt to apply the Bible to people’s questions and, indeed, to all human needs.

Systematic theology is topical theology. It studies the Bible not by going from Genesis to Revelation but by exploring topics treated in various parts of Scripture, like the topics of God, man, revelation, Christ, the last days. Theologians have sometimes called these topics loci, the Latin plural of locus (“place”). So, systematic theology asks “whole Bible” questions:What does the whole Bible teach about God? About sin? About justification by faith? These are some of the topics we’ll be looking at.

This book is an introductory survey of systematic theology, and therefore it will not cover each topic in great detail. Many theologians give book-length treatment to, say, God and man, or the person and work of Christ, or the events of the last days.¹ In this book, however, we will be covering briefly, in twenty-five chapters, the whole content of systematic theology. I’ll try to give you the main gist of each doctrinal area, so that you will have a good foundation. I hope it will motivate some of you to study some specific areas more intensively.

This first chapter, not surprisingly, is about God. In fact, we’ll spend three chapters on the doctrine of God, what some theologians call theology proper, because even in a survey this is the foundation for everything else.² How important it is to know God! Jesus prayed to his Father, “This is eternal life, that they may know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

Who is God, anyway? The Westminster Shorter Catechism in one of its most famous definitions says, “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth” (SC 4). That’s an excellent statement. I think that everything in that statement is biblical. But it’s interesting to note that the Bible doesn’t contain this kind of definition of God.

How, then, does the Bible introduce us to God? It begins with an act of God: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). I believe Moses wrote the book of Genesis, and he wrote it for the benefit of the people of Israel, whom God had delivered miraculously from slavery in Egypt. These people didn’t need a definition of God. They already knew who God was. He was the one who led them out of Egypt. So, the book of Genesis does not include a definition. It begins by telling the people that the God they know already, the God who led them out of Egypt, is also the one who created the heavens and the earth.

How did the Israelites of Moses’ generation come to know God? First through the stories of their forefathers. When God spoke to Moses, he identified himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But to the Israelites these three patriarchs were ancient history. God had helped them centuries earlier. When Moses was born, Israel had been in Egypt for four hundred years. Originally the Egyptians had been friendly to them, but later pharaohs arose who hated them and subjected them to slavery. Israel cried out to God for help, but for those four hundred years God was silent. Many Israelites must have wondered why God did not answer their cries for help. Perhaps some of them even doubted whether the old stories were true.

However, God did answer their prayers. He began by appearing to Moses. We learn about this meeting between Moses and God in Exodus 3, and I think that passage is the real beginning of the biblical doctrine of God. We read about God in Genesis, but the author of Genesis met God in Exodus 3.

In this passage Moses sees a bush that burns but doesn’t burn up. The flames do not consume it. It turns out that the burning bush is a place where God is, a place where God wants to talk with Moses. God is everywhere, of course, but sometimes he makes his presence known in a very intense way. So, God calls Moses and tells him to remove his shoes, for the area of the bush is holy ground. God identifies himself as the God of Moses’ father and of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He says that he has seen the affliction of Israel and has heard their cry. He now intends to bring them out of Egypt to the land of Canaan, which he promised to their forefathers. Moses is to be his prophet, his spokesman.

Understandably, Moses is overwhelmed by this responsibility. God assures him that he will be successful. God will deliver Israel, and they will worship God on this very mountain, the mountain of the burning bush. But Moses has another question: “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” (Ex. 3:13).

It seems like an odd question to us. What is God’s name?Why would Moses ask something like that? Today, we give our kids names like Billy or Susie without much thought of the meaning of those names. You might call your daughter Elizabeth because you think the name sounds good or because it was your grandmother’s name. But in the ancient Near East, names had meaning. Abram meant “high father,” and Abram’s new name, Abraham, given him by God, meant “father of a multitude.” Usually, when a father gave a name to his son, he chose a name that didn’t just sound good but conveyed something of his hopes for the child, or his feelings about the child, or the circumstances of the child’s birth. So, to ask about God’s name is to seek information about him. To seek God’s name is to ask what kind of God he is.

We should be interested in God’s answer to Moses’ question. How does God identify himself? How does God say who he is to the author of the first books of the Bible? We wait with bated breath, on the edge of our seats, to hear God’s name.

God’s name is, at first, rather bewildering. “God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you” ’ ” (Ex. 3:14). God here gives his name in a long form, “I AM WHO I AM,” and in a short form, simply “I AM.” The long form is difficult Hebrew. It can be translated in present or future tenses, and the relative pronoun translated “who” in the English Standard Version of the Bible (ESV hereafter) can be translated in a variety of other ways as well. I can’t explore all these translations here, but the main point is that God’s answer to Moses is mysterious, to say the least. Even the short form of the name, “I AM,” is difficult. It is a familiar phrase, as when one says “I am John” or “I am a teacher.” But what can be meant by “I AM” just by itself?

It will help us, however, to go on to verse 15: “God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, “The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” ’ ” Here we see the mysterious name in still a third form. We’ve seen it in a long form, a short form, and now a very short form, a one-word form translated “LORD.”The word LORD in the ESV represents the word Yahweh in Hebrew. Yahweh is derived, evidently, from a form of the verb “to be,” so it is connected with the repeated “I AM” in verse 14. Some older English Bibles render this word as “Jehovah,” but most of them now follow the example of the King James Version and translate it “LORD.”

Verse 15 says that this is the way God wants to be known, the name by which he is to be remembered for all generations. So, the English word “Lord”—representing the Hebrew Yahweh, another Hebrew word, adon, and the Greek kyrios—occurs over seven thousand times in our Bibles, mostly referring to God the Father or, and this is important, to Jesus Christ.

Our Jewish friends today often use Deuteronomy 6:4–5 as a kind of confession of faith: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” This is a confession of lordship. There is only one God, and he is Yahweh, the Lord. The Christians of the New Testament also confessed lordship: Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:9–10; 1 Cor. 12:3; Phil. 2:11). We should notice, too, that over and over again in Scripture, God says he is going to do this or that so that people “shall know that I am the LORD” (as Ex. 6:7; 7:5, 17; 8:22; 14:4; 29:46; Isa. 45:6; 49:23, 26; Jer. 16:21; 24:7; etc.). So we may say that “God is Lord” is the fundamental confession of the people of God in the Old Testament. The fundamental confession of the New Testament people of God is “Jesus is Lord.”That is a way of summarizing the main content of the Bible: “God is Lord” is the message of the Old Testament; “Jesus is Lord” is the message of the New Testament.

So, if we want to know the God of Scripture, we must come to know his lordship.There are, of course, many other concepts that are helpful in understanding God, such as the “infinite, eternal, unchangeable” of theWestminster Shorter Catechism, and we shall look at some of those. But we need to start somewhere, and it would be hard to find any starting point more appropriate than that of lordship. So we ask, what does it mean for God to be Lord?

To begin with, I should emphasize that Lord is a personal name. So, our God is a person. That is a tremendously important fact. We know that in our world there are personal beings, like Joey, Cindy, Yo-Yo Ma, Sammy Sosa, George Bush, and so on.The world also contains impersonal beings, like rocks, trees, the law of gravity, tornadoes, brussels sprouts, matter, motion, space, time, and chance. Secularists usually try to argue that the personal reduces to the impersonal: in the end, Joey, Cindy, and Yo-Yo Ma are ultimately just matter, motion, space, time, and chance. But the Bible teaches the opposite: the impersonal reduces to the personal. Matter, motion, space, time, and chance are, ultimately, tools used by one great Person to organize and run the universe he has made.

Another point that we can get from Exodus 3 is that the Lord is a supremely holy person. That is, he is separate from us and transcendent over us. We may not approach him without supreme respect. Holiness also means that God is supremely righteous and good, and that he must cross a great barrier to have any fellowship with sinners like you and me. But more of that later.

The main meaning of the name Lord is that he is the head of a covenant. In a covenant, God takes a people to be his. The heart of it, often recorded in Scripture, is his saying, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Heb. 8:10; cf. Ex. 6:7; Lev. 26:12; Jer. 7:23; 11:4; 2 Cor. 6:16; Rev. 21:3). He rules them by his law (in a written document, as we shall see), and he delivers them from destruction and death. So, the covenant includes both law and grace. We’ll think some more about covenants in chapter 9.

The name Lord also tells us about his nature, what kind of God he is. Scripture typically associates three ideas with the idea of lordship, to which I’ve given the names control, authority, and presence. I warned you that this book would include a lot of threefold distinctions. This is the first of them, and there will be a lot of others that coordinate with these. I will call these the lordship attributes. Let’s look at them in turn.

Control

When God comes to Moses and identifies himself as Lord, he comes in power. He heard the cry of the Israelites, and he comes to deliver them from the oppression of the Egyptians, with a mighty hand and a strong arm. Pharaoh is the most powerful totalitarian ruler of his day, and the might of Egypt is thought to be invulnerable. But God works powerful miracles and gains a decisive victory over Egypt’s land, its rulers, its armies, and its gods (Ex. 12:12; 15:11; 18:11). He is gracious to whom he will be gracious, and he shows mercy to whom he will show mercy (Ex. 33:19). So, he judges Egypt but saves Israel. What he intends to do, he accomplishes. Nothing is too hard for him (Jer. 32:7; Gen. 18:14). His word is never void of power (Isa. 55:11). His prophecies always come to pass (Deut. 18:21–22).

This is what we often call the sovereignty of God. Everything that happens in the world comes from him. He is the one who sends rain, thunder, and lightning (Pss. 65:9–11; 135:6–7; 147:15–18). He makes things freeze, then melts the ice. The smallest details of nature are under his control: the falling of a sparrow, the number of hairs on your head (Matt. 6:26–30; 10:29–30). And the events that we call random, that we ascribe to chance, are really God at work. Look at Proverbs 16:33: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD.” Just roll dice. Whether you get a six or an eight or a twelve, the number comes from God; it’s God’s decision.

God rules not only the little things but the big things, too. How could it be otherwise, since the big things are combinations of little things? He determines what nations will dwell in which territory (Acts 17:26). He decides what king is to rule, when, and where (Isa. 44:28). He decides whether the purpose of a nation will stand or fall (Ps. 33:10–11). And he decided, once, that wicked people would take the life of his own dear Son, so that we, we sinners, might live (Acts 2:23–24).

God rules not only the important events of human history but also the lives of individual people like you and me. He knits us together in our mothers’ wombs (Ps. 139:13–16). He decides whether we will travel or stay home (James 4:13–17).

Does this mean that God controls even our free decisions? Certainly he does. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in order to harm him.That was their free decision, and they are responsible for it. But, ultimately, it was God who used their evil deed to accomplish his good purpose (Gen. 45:5–8). Indeed, Scripture often ascribes to God even the sinful behavior of human beings. He made Israel’s enemies to hate her (Ps. 105:24–25). He hardened Pharaoh’s h...