"The Bible's Supreme Dialectic"

"The Bible's Supreme Dialectic"Gen. 17:1-14 Jan 12, 1997  http://sermons.faithtacoma.org/genesis/genesis32.htm I intend to spend three or four Lord's Day mornings on the text before us this morning. It is some measure of the importance of this passage, the role it plays in setting the stage for what comes after, that I simply could not find a way to treat it adequately in one morning's sermon. There are several matters of immense importance for an understanding of the Bible and our faith as Christians that are either comprehensively introduced for the first time in these verses or are given a definitive statement. As one commentator put it: "This chapter is a watershed in the Abraham story. The promises to him have been unfolded bit by bit, gradually building up and becoming more detailed and precise, until here they are repeated and filled out in a glorious crescendo in a long and elaborate divine speech. From this point in Genesis, divine speeches become rarer and little new content is added to the promises, but the fulfillment of these promises becomes more visible." [Wenham, vol. 2, 16] Now, we begin our consideration of this passage by taking note of the tremendous example of the dialectic between divine grace and human responsibility that we have before us in these verses. I have called this, in the sermon title, "the Bible's supreme dialectic" because not only is it central to the Bible's whole message but because it is here that Christians most often go wrong, it is around this dialectic that the most bitter and longstanding of doctrinal disputes within Christendom continue to swirl, and it is in the proper grasp of this dialectic, I believe, that real Christian maturity rests. Now, you have heard me more than once on this subject already. I have often made a point of drawing your attention to the dialectical method by which Scripture reveals to us the truth concerning God, salvation, and the Christian life. The dictionary will tell you that "dialectic" refers to the juxtaposition -- that is, the putting side by side -- or the interaction of conflicting ideas. Now, in reference to the teaching of the Bible, we use the term in a guarded way, a somewhat different way. There are no teachings of the Bible that are in actual conflict with one another, but there are many teachings that can seem to be in conflict with one another, and, at least, can be difficult to harmonize with one another. You can easily think of some of these: the triple personality of God at one pole of the doctrine of God and the unity of God at the other; justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ received by faith at one pole of the doctrine of salvation and the judgment of our lives according to our works at the other; the absolute security of the elect in the unchanging love of God at one pole and the Scripture's repeated and urgent warning to believers not to fall away from Christ and forfeit their salvation at the other; or the complete equality of men and women in the world of grace at one pole and, at the other, the Bible's unmistakable emphasis on the distinction of genders and the submission of women to men in church and home; at one pole the celebration of a woman's physical beauty and attention to it and at the other the strongest statements to the effect that a woman's beauty is not to be found in her physical appearance, and on and on it goes. Now, all over Christendom we can see differences, divisions, sects, denominations and cults that result directly from Christians, or those who claim to be Christians, having chosen to emphasize or to embrace one pole at the expense of another. Jehovah's Witnesses and Unitarians cannot believe that you can hold faithfully to the unity of God, that you can be a true monotheist, if you believe in God's triple personality. Roman Catholics will tell you that the doctrine of the immediate imputation of Christ's righteousness undermines the doctrine of judgment according to works and so they reject the former in order to maintain the latter. Nowadays, of course, everywhere in evangelical Christianity the emphasis on the equality of genders is being used to set aside the texts that teach the distinction of genders. And, from the sublime to the ridiculous, there are churches whose distinctive convictions include a prohibition against the use of cosmetics, make-up, choosing as they do 1 Tim. 2 and 1 Pet. 3 and the pole of the strong denunciation of attention to feminine appearance while setting aside the Song of Songs and Ezekiel 16 and the pole of the celebration of feminine beauty and the cultivation of it. In each case, what in the Bible is a both/and has become an either/or because it has not seemed possible to these people to hold both teachings, both emphases, both poles together. One has triumphed over the other, when the Scripture clearly desires that both poles of the truth, that both ideas be kept and honored at the same time whether or not we can always see how they are to be reconciled or harmonized with one another. Now, as I said, we have before us here what is perhaps the supreme example of the biblical dialectic, the polar antithesis of truth: the setting side by side of two ideas that seem to be in conflict with one another. First we have the grace, the sovereign grace and working of God bringing man into covenant with himself. We have the strongest emphasis on the initiative of God. And you see that here. It begins in v. 2: "I will confirm my covenant with you." And then, in vv. 4-8, we have the recital of all that God will do for Abraham and make of Abraham and of his descendants. "I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you." And God promises to give to Abraham and his descendants the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession. But, then, as well, you have the strongest emphasis placed upon the responsibility of Abraham and his descendants to meet the conditions of this covenant, to prove faithful to it from their side. "Walk before me and be blameless," God says to Abraham. And then, in vv. 9ff. Abraham is told that any failure to keep the commandment concerning the circumcision of the males of Abraham's household will be considered a breaking of the covenant and that person shall be cut off from the covenant people. In other words, here God promises to do this and this no matter what, and demands that his people do this and this or else. Well, says someone who has little acquaintance with the rest of the Bible, there is no dialectic there. The text simply says that God will be faithful to us if we are faithful to him. It is an arrangement requiring the mutual fulfillment of obligations. God will do his part if we do our part. But that does not do any justice either to what God says to Abraham here or to what the rest of the Bible teaches us to think about what God says to Abraham here. No, we are taught to understand God's promises in vv. 2-8 as unconditional. They will be kept no matter what. For the fact is, God has kept and keeps today and will forever keep this promise that he made to Abraham. He kept it when Abraham did not walk before him blamelessly; he brought Israel into the Promised Land even though she had failed him in every way and miserably in the centuries between; even when Israel continued to rebel against the Lord and that in the most flagrant way, even when God had to send her into exile to purify her of her sins, he did not and would not cast her off precisely because he had made his covenant with her, a covenant that could not be broken from his side. Indeed, in the NT, the ingathering of the Gentiles after Pentecost, the preaching of the Gospel throughout the world, takes place in fulfillment of this covenant God made with Abraham. We gentiles who believe in Christ today are the sons of Abraham. And we have not, no more than Abraham himself, walked before God blamelessly, and yet God has made and kept his covenant with us. You see, in the rest of the Bible, we are taught to see in this general language here in Gen. 17 about God making his covenant with Abraham and with his descendants, the theological reality of election and sovereign grace. Paul will later teach us that God never once failed to be true to his promise to make his covenant and keep his covenant with the descendants of Abraham -- even though many individual Jews did not believe, even though he drove Israel out of the Promised Land, even though the Jews rejected and crucified the Prince of Life when he came among them, even though the nation and the people of Israel has now been cast off from the people of God --grafted out of the Olive Tree --. "Not all Israel are Israel" Paul wrote. That is, the covenant God made here with Abraham concerned not all physical descendants of Abraham but his spiritual descendants, and God by his electing and saving grace saw to it that there were always such spiritual descendants, always those with whom he was in true covenant. There was always a remnant, God saw to that. And he had to see to it, because left to himself, no man, Jew or otherwise, would walk before God and be blameless; no one would believe in God; no one would keep the covenant God has made with him or her. The entire Bible rises up to insist that if there is a man or woman who has lived and died in the faith of this divine covenant, God has done it; God has made it so. Just as with Abraham, so with everyone else, one does not decide to enter into covenant with God, one is summoned into that covenant by a divine call he neither can nor will resist, and kept in that covenant by a divine grace he did nothing to earn. What is more, Paul wrote, God intends someday to return in grace to the Jews and draw them as a nation and people into true fellowship with himself and into true faith in Jesus Christ. He will make them willing in the day of his power and all Israel will be in covenant with Him! In other words, we cannot understand this text in Gen. 17 as simply a bargain between God and man, nor does the Bible allow us to understand it in those terms. It is a promise that God will keep and has kept. On his side this covenant cannot fail, has not failed, and never will fail. His "I will establish my covenant..." was a promise of unqualified certainty of fulfillment. On the other hand, we cannot minimize the reality of the human responsibility and obligation that is likewise signaled in this passage. "Walk before me and be blameless is a general statement of our responsibility as participants in this covenant." And, then, the obligation of circumcision is one important specific obligation. But there are, of course, many more. The law of God given through Moses is just a grand summary of those obligations and there are others in the Bible. For example, the covenant God makes here with Abraham includes his descendants, his children and their children. But, just across the page, in 18:19 we learn that that promise carries with it specific obligations as well, that Abraham instruct and direct his children to keep the way of the Lord. What that means is elaborated in many other texts throughout the Bible. Even the promise of the Promised Land had specific conditions attached, as that wicked generation in the wilderness were to find out when they were shut out of the land and not allowed to enter in. Now, think carefully and hard with me. The point is this: this covenant that God here makes is in the final analysis unconditional. There is no way that it can fail, no failure on man's part that can nullify it. God has made his covenant and he will see to it that there is always a covenant people -- such is his sovereign grace. But, at the same time, there are very definite conditions upon which a person's membership in that covenant are suspended. The failure to meet those conditions, the breaking of the covenant, will cause a person to be cast off from God's people. Now, how are we to hold those together? How are we to understand how the covenant is unconditional and conditional at the same time? What are we to think about the certainty of God's covenant and, at the same time, its contingency, its being suspended upon the faithfulness of men and women to it? This is the great problem in Christian theology. This is what divides Roman Catholics from Protestants; Arminians from Calvinists; Calvinists from hyper-Calvinists. How do we deal with these two "conflicting ideas": sovereignty and human freedom; sovereign grace and human responsibility; or certainty on God's side and contingency on man's side. Hyper-calvinists deny the contingency, the real and effective freedom and responsibility of man in order to preserve inviolate the sovereignty of divine grace. God makes his covenant, he makes his people to believe in Christ, he protects in that belief and brings them at last to the Promised Land. All their faith and obedience is simply his work in them. They wish to hear nothing else. Arminians and Roman Catholics deny the sovereignty of grace in order to preserve the freedom and contingency of human life. God makes his covenant but it is a conditional and contingent covenant and it only works, it only brings God's blessing, it only produces real communion with God, if the man does his part as well, if he holds up his end, if he meets the conditions God has established for those who would be in covenant with him. They wish to hear nothing else. But neither of these views by itself does justice to what the Bible actually says. God makes his covenant and sees to its fulfillment. His grace brings sinful men and women into faithful fellowship with himself when they otherwise would never have come. But, it is just as true that the obligations he lays upon men and women -- faith, repentance, and obedience are real conditions, the lack of which has caused great multitudes of people to be cast out of the covenant and still greater multitudes never to be brought in in the first place. The Bible addresses human beings everywhere as responsible, free persons who have an obligation to respond to God's summons and, if they are in the covenant community -- either by birth or by profession of faith -- to live up to the demands of that covenant. It is everywhere warning every human being of the dire consequences of failing to obey God's will. But, the Bible never hesitates to remind those who believe that they never would have believed apart from the grace and gift and work of God within them. Those who are in covenant with God, those who receive the blessings promised to Abraham -- from the knowledge of God to the eternal Promised Land -- are never permitted to think that they achieved this blessedness by their own effort or their own decision or the exercise of their own will -- No, they were born of God! But, we are sure that we can figure this out, that we can make sense of these seemingly conflicting ideas. We can harmonize and relieve the tension. But, the result is always choosing one thing the Bible says at the expense of the other. No, we must believe them both! We must hold to them both! We must embrace both as true. We must live according to both: both the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. Christ will build his church; he has sheep throughout the world and they will hear his voice and he has purchased men for God out of every tribe and language and people and nation and they will reign on the earth! Salvation is of the Lord! But, if they will not believe they will not be saved; and if those who believe do not hold fast firmly to the end, they will not receive what was promised them, and unless a man denies himself and takes up his cross daily and follows Jesus Christ he cannot be his disciple. Sometimes the Bible speaks as if, in Luther's words, man's will were a horse that God rides and steers in whatever way he pleases. Other times the Bible speaks as if God is waiting to see what man will do and hoping he will do what is right. There are texts that state the sovereignty of God over the human will so bluntly and so starkly as to seem to leave no room at all for human freedom or responsibility. But then there are texts from the same parts of the Bible and the same biblical authors that state human responsibility so emphatically as to seem to leave no room for God's sovereign rule over human lives and destinies. Is there a mystery here? Of course there is. Everything that God reveals of himself transcends human understanding: every doctrine must terminate in mystery. That is why it is so crucial that we believe everything the Bible teaches us. In that way alone can we know the truth. It takes faith to believe that God is a merciful God when so few believe and so many remain under his wrath. And, in the same way, it takes faith to believe that God is absolutely right and just to demand of human beings what they are incapable of apart from his grace. And it takes faith to believe that absolute sovereignty such as God exercises over the world in no ways diminishes the real responsibility of human beings. But this is what mature Christians believe and know and that knowledge is the foundation of their lives. This is what I want for you. I want you to know without doubt or question that you are in covenant with God solely because he granted this grace to you, summoned you with his invincible Spirit, and granted you a heart to love him, a mind to trust him, and a will to obey him. But, I want you to know as well, that what God asks of you now is absolutely your responsibility, that you are accountable for believing in God and his Word and obeying his commandments and that you have no excuse whatsoever when you fail to do either. I want no Christians to work harder, to strive more diligently to be faithful to God and his covenant than you; and, at the same time, I want no Christians to be quicker to give glory to God for every faithful thought and every obedient act that ever rises in your life. I want you to spare no effort to live in faithfulness to God's covenant and I want you to depend upon God's grace and help entirely for that faithfulness you strive for. I want you to know as well as any Christian has ever known it that you are in covenant with God because he has brought you into that covenant and that you remain in that covenant by his grace and help alone; and I want you to care as deeply as any Christian ever has to fulfill the obligations of that covenant and never to break that covenant lest you be cast out of it on account of your faithlessness and disobedience. This is the supreme dialectic. We have it here in Gen. 17 in a pure, though introductory form. We will have it henceforth on every page of Holy Scripture. Embracing it as the truth, holding fast to both poles with equal tenacity, never permitting the tension between God's sovereign grace and your absolute responsibility to be relaxed in your heart and mind is a very large part of what it means to be mature in Christ, to live an authentic Christian life, and to give glory to God in the world! Your heart will prefer one pole or another of this dialectic a hundred times a day. But when it wishes to excuse you and to permit you to lay down your responsibilities because, after all, God is sovereign, then you grab hard for the other pole and remember that God holds you responsible for faithfulness to his covenant. And, when you are becoming either proud of your accomplishments or dispirited because of your failures, you reach for the other pole and remember that we are in and remain in covenant with God not by anything we have done or could do, but solely by his election, his work in our hearts and his mercy covering our sins. And all day every day work, obey, strive to be faithful to God and all the while pray that he will make you faithful!