One In Jesus

We continue to consider how, if salvation by faith is based on the covenant with Abraham, Christianity is different. So far, we’ve covered two points:

1. Christianity is based on promises already fulfilled. Judaism is based on promises not yet fulfilled.

2. “Faith” in Christianity is faith in Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah and LORD. In Judaism, it’s faith in God and a Messiah not yet revealed.

To these we now add —

3. In Christianity, the nations are invited in, granted repentance unto salvation, and grafted into the Jewish root. This was promised to Abraham and appears occasionally in the prophets, but it was a radical change in God’s relationship with his people.

Before Jesus, much of the Torah was dedicated to separating the Jews from the Gentiles. Commands such as circumcision, the Sabbath, the food laws, and the annual festivals marked the Jews as a distinctive people. When the Gentiles were invited in, these commands were obsolesced and needed to be obeyed no longer. Gentiles did not have to become Jews to be saved. Rather, the intent in Christianity was to erase the distinction altogether. Continue reading →

Now, in Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God 4), N. T. Wright attempts to explain why the early church saw Jesus as God while not denying monotheism — a tricky bit of theology if ever there was one — but a critically important one.

It was a matter of [the First Century Jews] pondering the promises of the One God whose identity, as Bauckham has rightly stressed, was made clear in the scriptures, and wondering what it would look like when he returned to Zion, when he came back to judge the world and rescue his people, when he did again what he had done at the Exodus.

Not for nothing had Jesus chosen Passover as the moment for his decisive action, and his decisive Passion. It was then a matter of Jesus’ followers coming to believe that in him, and supremely in his death and resurrection—the resurrection, of course, revealing that the death was itself to be radically re-evaluated—Israel’s God had done what he had long promised. He had returned to be king. He had ‘visited’ his people and ‘redeemed’ them. He had returned to dwell in the midst of his people. Jesus had done what God had said he and he alone would do. … Continue reading →

So, remarkably, we find that the Christian covenant is very much made up of the Abrahamic covenant. Reckoning faith as righteousness (Gen 15:16). Blessing the nations (Gen 18:18). Producing justice and righteousness within those in covenant relationship (Gen 18:19).

If you’ll recall the lesson taught here some time ago, God’s blood oath with Abraham also speaks to the Christian covenant. God symbolically promised to pay, with his own life, the price for the sins of Abraham (and his descendants) in blood (Gen 15).

It’s not all there, but a lot of it’s there.

Then in the Law of Moses, we find the promise of Deu 30:6 for God to circumcise the hearts of his people, a promise that the prophets later explained would be fulfilled through the outpouring of the Spirit.

So what was “new” in the new covenant? Why is the covenant of Christ better than the covenants that preceded? After all, the theme of Hebrews is the superiority of Christ and his covenant. Continue reading →