which implies any condition, but simply the first of a series of “ ands” which describe a sequence of events. God did not say to Abraham, “ When you get out and because you get out of Ur (i.e., leave your “ kindred” and “ father’s house,” v. 1) and get to “ a land that I will show you,” (v. 1), “ I will then make a covenant with you.” Nor did He say, “ I will then make this covenant valid which I am preannouncing to you, subject to your obedience.” The verses are simply stating the sequence of events which will necessarily occur as God works out His uncon- itional covenant already announced to Abraham before he left Ur. Thus Abraham will first leave Ur ( “ country” and “ kindred” ) for the very good reason that God has com manded it, and that Abraham believes God and will therefore exercise the obedience that is the hallmark of true faith. This is not the basis for God then making a covenant. The covenant was given before he left Ur, not because he left Ur! Unfortunately for the condition-of-obedience theory, Abraham would not and did not leave his “ father’s house.” Abraham’s obedience was not complete and God had to wait until Abraham’s father, Terah, died. Further, it is obvious that his obedience to this command concerning his “ father’s house” was not complete until after entering the land, for Lot was still with him. Abraham made no move to separate from Lot. He did it only because their herdsmen could not get along together (Gen. 13:5-9). This demonstrates that these things were not primarily steps in obedience on the basis of which God’s covenant hinged. Indeed, some of them were apart from Abraham’s action entirely, as for example his father’s death. They are rather a sequence in which things naturally occurred in the implementation of God’s already announced uncon ditional covenant. The next event after the completion of Genesis 12:1 in accordance with God’s announcement was that God would make of him “ a great nation” (v. 2). Necessarily this re quired the birth of Isaac and the extended growth in numbers of his descendants, first in Palestine and finally in Egypt. Then God made his “ name great” (v. 2) through Israel’s exaltation of it as being the name of their nation’s founding father. Finally, through his own experi ences and those of his descendants, the rest of verses 2 and 3 were fulfilled in the history which grew out of Genesis 12, with an overriding climactic central thought that “ all the families of the earth” would be eventually “blessed” through Abraham’s Seed— the Lord Jesus Christ! Hence, verses 2 and 3 are no more conditioned upon verse 1 by the “and” which introduces verse 2, than any other statement of these three verses is conditioned upon the material that precedes it by the and which introduces each of these statements. The proper interpretation of the ands, therefore, is that they are simple conjunctions, binding together and mak ing as one whole a list of related statements, but at no point is it said that any one of these statements depends upon a previous statement. It is simply the sensible and reasonable order in which the story would unfold, and the events transpire as an all-knowing God foresaw and foretold them. God gave the covenant to Abraham before he left Ur of the Chaldees. He did not predicate the cove nant on Abraham’s obedience but upon His own uncondi tional purpose. He announced that he would do these things for Abraham and through him to his descendants, to the nation Israel, and to the world, with all its ultimates fulfilled through Abraham’s Seed, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the proper viewpoint is that the giving of the covenant was not conditioned upon Abraham’s obedience, whether it be in chapter 11, 12, 13, 15, or 22, but that
ABRAHAMIC COVENANT CONDITIONED? (cont.) condition has to be fulfilled by Abraham in order to acti vate the covenant. It appears to me that we concede the very thing around which the question of conditional or unconditional hinges, as witness the quotation from Dr. Walvoord, “ . . . the Abrahamic Covenant hinged upon only one condition.” This concession, in my judgment, plays into the hands of those who insist that Abraham’s continued obedience was necessary to the fulfillment of the covenant. May I suggest that you look above and read again the truth referred to in Genesis 22:18, where the offering of Isaac is just one more evidence of Abraham’s attitude to ward God. I submit that if the Abrahamic Covenant had been conditioned upon Abraham’s obedience (Gen. 12:1), then that obedience was not completed in the act of Abraham’s leaving Ur, for his “ father’s house” was with him (11:31) even though he had left his “ kindred” and his “ country.” Nor was his obedience completed by in direction in the release afforded him by his father’s death (11:32), nor by his going into “ a land” that God would show him (12:1), nor by his separation from Lot (13:9), because Abraham’s obedience on the occasion of his willingness to offer up Isaac is accompanied with the same basic language formula in Genesis 22:16-18 as God had used in Genesis 12:1-3. If it be argued that the obedience of Abraham would have been necessary to the establishment of the Abrahamic Covenant in the first instance, then it might likewise be affirmed just as surely that his obedience in the willingness to offer up Isaac would of necessity have to take place before the covenant could be established. This reasoning is fatal to the thesis of an unconditional covenant, for it requires the continued and cumulative obedience of Abraham as the basis for the establishment of the Abrahamic Covenant. And however loudly we may protest that the covenant when once given becomes an unconditional covenant, if one espouses this theory the Scripture plainly indicates a shifting of the obedience- condition: from Genesis 11:31 (leaving “ country” and “ kin dred” ) to 11:32-12:6 (death of father and entrance into the “ land” that God would “ shew” him) to 13:9 (the final break with his father’s house by separation from Lot) to 15:1-7 (the promise of Isaac because Abraham ig nored the king of Sodom and honored God through Melchizedek) to chapter 22, especially verse 16 (because he did not withhold Isaac) This constant shifting of Abraham’s fulfillment of the condition of obedience from 11:31 to 22:16 plays into the hands of amillennialists who insist that the covenant was always conditioned upon obedience. This presents us with the added hazard of proving that the covenant was really and finally established in Genesis 12. For, if we argue that Abraham had to perform even one act of obedience before the covenant could be established, our opponents have a dangerous wedge and precedent offered them as basis for their insisting that other and further acts of obe dience continued to condition the covenant. It appears to me that the basic hermeneutical cue to the solution of the passage is the recognition that the sequence of the oft-repeated word “ and” merely connects the clauses of Genesis 12:1 with those of 12:2 and 12:3. Thus, rather than urging that obedience to the command of verse 1 established the covenant of verses 2 and 3, the better solu tion is that the “ and.” which opens verse 2 is not one
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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