Great Bible Truths Podcast Episode 123
The Promises of God Talk 4
Identifying further promises
In our first three talks we have concentrated mainly on Bible verses that contain the word promise. We saw that all God’s promises centre on Christ and the salvation that he offers us. They are primarily fulfilled already by the coming of Christ, but they will find their ultimate completion at his second coming. Some of God’s promises we see fulfilled already, but others we must patiently wait for knowing that their fulfilment is guaranteed in Christ.
In this talk we’ll be looking at verses in the New Testament where the word promise is not directly mentioned. We’ll be considering:
- How to identify them
- How to decide if they are for us
- What we can learn from those that are not for us
How to identify them
It’s important to know how to identify which Bible passages contain promises and which do not because, as we saw in our first talk, not every verse in the Bible contains a promise. Some are commands, some are questions, some are expressions of praise, and some are simply statements of fact. So how do we identify God’s promises? Quite simply, by remembering the definition.
Based on how the New Testament uses the Greek word epaggelia (promise), we said in our first talk that:
when God makes a promise it is his assurance of something good he is going to do for someone.
This may be taken to include not only things God will do for us but also things he has done that will be of benefit to us in the future. For example, Christ died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3) is a statement about the past but which will, if only we will believe it, radically affect our future! Strictly speaking it’s not a promise, but we may justifiably see it as one because, as we know from elsewhere in scripture, implicit within it is the promise of eternal life for all who will believe. So our understanding of what Bible passages include one of God’s promises needs to be broadened to take this onto account.
This means that, generally speaking, if we find a passage that fits in with this definition, even if it does not contain the word promise, we may trust it as a promise from God. However, there are some exceptions to this, where the scripture makes clear that the promise is made by someone other than God. For example, when Satan promised to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would fall down and worship him (Matthew 4:8-9), or when Peter promised Jesus that he would not deny him but later went on to deny him three times (Matthew 26:34-35, 74-75).
I’m not suggesting that anyone would seriously mistake these as promises from God, but they illustrate very clearly that some promises in the Bible were of human or even satanic origin. However, apart from cases like these where it is obvious that the promise was not of divine origin, we are right to assume that the promises of scripture are the promises of God himself, because all scripture is given by the inspiration of God. As Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:16-17:
- All Scripture is breathed out (inspired) by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
- that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
So, to identify God’s promises all we need to do is check that the verse or passage we are looking at:
- fits the definition of the word promise
- does not make it clear that the promise it contains is not being made by someone other than God.
Then, having established that it is a promise from God, our next question must be, How do I know the promise is for me?
How to decide if they are for us
I have already suggested in these talks that it’s a mistake to assume that all the promises in the Bible are for us. However, in my experience many Christians believe that they are. This view is largely based on 2 Corinthians 1:20 which says that all the promises of God find their Yes in him (Christ). This is taken to mean that all God’s promises are available to us as Christians.
However, based on what we’ve been saying in earlier talks, it’s much more likely that Paul is saying that Christ is the fulfilment of all the promises God made to Abraham and others back in the Old Testament. This means that the promises are already fulfilled. So if you have Christ there’s a sense in which you don’t really need the promises because they’re already fulfilled in him. Once you’ve received a gift that someone has promised you, you no longer need the promise, because you have the gift!
Nevertheless, as we have seen already, although God’s promises to Abraham are already fulfilled in Christ, the final outworking of God’s promises will not be complete until Jesus comes again. Once he has come, promises will no longer be needed. They will all be finally fulfilled. Meanwhile God has given us precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature… (2 Peter 1:4). These promises are not the promises God made to the patriarchs which have already been fulfilled in Christ, but the promises that relate to our salvation, which we were considering in our last talk.
So, if I’m reading a passage of scripture that contains a promise, how do I decide that the promise applies to me? The answer is quite simple. Examine the context. Examining the context is the golden rule when it comes to interpreting any passage of scripture. Someone once said that a text taken out of context is a pretext. It’s all too easy when we desperately want God to say something to us to take a verse out of context and ‘claim’ it as ours. And while this may give us some temporary comfort or encouragement, in the long run it will only lead to frustration.
So how do we examine the context? Basically this means looking at the surrounding verses to see if they shed light on what the verse means. However, it may sometimes be necessary to look at the book as a whole, then the surrounding chapters before considering the verses in the immediate context. This isn’t always necessary, but if we do take the trouble to do this, we’re more likely to arrive at a correct understanding of what the verse is saying.
Then, having looked at the wider context, as we come to consider the immediate context, it may be helpful to ask questions like:
Who said it? To whom? When and where was it said? And why?
Other helpful questions to ask would be:
Does this passage apply to everyone?
Does this passage apply to all Christians?
Clearly, if we’re trying to answer the question, Does this promise apply to me?, then these questions would be particularly helpful. If the passage applies to everyone (like John 3:16), then clearly it applies to you, even if you’re not yet a Christian. And if it applies to all Christians (but not to those who are not), then, provided you are a Christian, the promise applies to you. Consider the following example. In 1 Corinthians 1:8-9 we read that Christ will
sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
This was written to the Corinthians almost 2000 years ago. How do we know it’s for us today. Verse 2 gives us the answer. The letter is addressed to:
…the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.
So we know that the promise contained in verse 9 is for us because it’s a promise made to all Christians. But what about promises that are not for us?
What we can learn from promises that are not for us
In talk 1 we gave an illustration of a promise that’s not for us. We saw that in Genesis 12:1-2 God tells Abraham that he will make him the father of a great nation. This promise was made to a specific person at a specific time and clearly cannot be claimed by a Christian today. But does that mean that there is nothing that we can learn from Abraham’s story? By no means. We learn that God does keep his promises and we can expect him to do so for us today.
Perhaps the best way to understand it is this. It is in the Bible that we learn the true nature and character of God. So whether it’s through the promises he makes, or the commands he gives, or the accounts of the things he did, we are constantly learning about him, his love, his power, his holiness, his justice, his faithfulness and so on. We see these things particularly in the life of Jesus. Hebrews 1:1-2 tells us that
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
Today, says the writer, God speaks to us by his Son, not so much by the promises made about him by the prophets. The Bible is a progressive revelation to all mankind of the nature of God. But now the revelation is complete – in Jesus. So the Bible reveals to us what God is like through his dealings with mankind throughout its history. But in Jesus we see the one who is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature (Hebrews 1:3), and the more we get to know him, the more we get to trust him. Faith is not an abstract quality. It’s trusting a person. Christian maturity involves not so much looking for promises to claim as trusting the person who made them.
This concludes Part One of our series of talks on the promises of God. In Part Two we will be looking in more detail at:
- Biblical principles for interpreting God’s promises
- How to understand the specific promises that relate to our salvation.