Early in my Christian life I was taught Dispensationalism. Perhaps that’s why, even as a Presbyterian now, I can see the point of it. It’s a relatively new way of looking at this topic, apparently originating with John Darby in the 1800s, but that by no means invalidates this school of thought. It does seem, at least on the surface, that God had a different deal with the Jews than he does with the Christians for instance. That’s just one example. According the the wikipedia entry there are anywhere from three dispensations to seven or eight.

Now, as a member of the Presbyterian church, I’m being taught Covenant Theology. This seems to me to make God at least a little more consistent through time. It says that God has made a covenant of works, redemption, and grace (covenant theologians don’t agree that all of these are included) and that these promises were established “in the beginning” and have been in force since. These covenants, so CT teaches, are fleshed out in the covenants God makes with the patriarchs. So the way he deals with them doesn’t change so much as they are codified or fleshed out.

So that’s an awful lot of promises. Here’s what I propose though, and this is likely not a new or staggering idea (and I could be wrong), and that is that there is only one requirement that God has of us. Faith. If we have faith in him then everything else falls into place.

God’s first recorded words to Adam were “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Now that could be pointed out as the beginning of the covenant of works, though it’s more of a “don’t do” than a “do”. I’d say though that this was God’s way of saying “have faith in me and what I know to be best for you”. All Adam had to do, all any of us have to “do” really is to trust God. The rest will flow out of that.

We achieve righteousness through faith. We receive grace through faith. We are saved by that faith. So it could be argued I think that at the root of any “dispensation” or “covenant” God has used to interact with us is that faith in him and his plan for us is. If we have that faith, that trust then God will deal justly with us. That’s a promise.

Am I oversimplifying or missing anything?

Promises, Promises is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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That quest is what God used to ultimately lead Abram to believe in the promise to make him a great nation and for that to be “credited it to him as righteousness”. He was also faithful in the binding of Isaac and in his obedience to move where God told him to go. As faithful as he was though, I don’t think it was Abram’s overall faith that made him the patriarch and one of the examples of great men of faith that is lifted up in Hebrews 11. After all, this was also the man that laid with his servant to try and “make” the promise happen. This was the man who told his wife to lie about who she was, not just once but twice. He often questioned God and had troubles believing.

I say these things not to run down a person whom many hold in high esteem, but to give you and I hope. To remind us that God chose this very fallible man and made him into what he needed him to be. God made a covenant with him, knowing that if the man had any end to hold up, that he would fail. In that sense the covenant was unconditional. There was nothing special about Abraham, nothing unique in his character that made God choose him, at least nothing that you or I know of. God simply chose him and did with him what was necessary to fulfill his plan.

Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

1 Cor 1:26-31

That’s you and me right there. We have no place to boast, just as Abraham had no place to boast. What we do for God and what God does with us is a credit to him, not a feather in our caps. The lives I’ve touched I have only touched because of God’s calling. May I have faith and rest in that and not in my own abilities, the things that are not save for God’s intervention.

The Things That Are Not is a post from: Spiritual Tramp

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