We are people who enjoy promises. Our motivation to show such a surprising, yet committed kind of love such as keeping a promise is rooted in our being made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26–31; 2:7–24). We as people love both receiving and giving the unexpected gift to or for a loved one. This is normally to celebrate a special occasion, like a birthday or holiday. Likewise, God has also occasioned a promise to be fulfilled. He made it clear in the Old Testament that it would come to pass, and he personally carried out the promise in the story of the New Testament.
After humanity was created, God had charged Adam and Eve with the task of taking care of God’s creation. They were like ambassadors who ruled the world as God ruled them; but the story immediately takes a turn when Adam and Eve are approached by the serpent, a crafty and intelligent creature who was in clear rebellion against God, and he convinced them to rule and reign in the world according to their own self-declaration, instead of living according to God’s declaration. To them, if what the serpent said was true, God’s way wasn’t going to cut it.
Unfortunately, Adam and Eve learned very quickly that God’s promises do come true, even the bad ones. Adam was promised death if he were to disobey God by eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:17). With the integrity allowed him, Adam and Eve led him and his wife Eve down the road to death and separation from God. However, God is just as faithful in making promises as he is in keeping them. God said that one of Eve’s children, a descendant of Adam, would come and reclaim what was lost due to Adam and Eve’s rebellion, restoring humanity’s relationship with God (Gen. 3:15).
This promise begins to run the course of fulfillment when a man who will come to be known as Abraham steps onto the scene. He definitely carries the sinful brokenness of his first parents Adam and Eve, even though he is generations removed from them. He is a liar, coward, and an adulterer who only sought to protect himself, and didn’t think God could carry his weight of the deal in his promises. Yet, God still made a promise he was going to prove he could keep, and he did this by giving Abraham and his wife Sarah a child in their old age. It was through this child that Abraham was going to be made “into a great nation, and that his name would be made great as to be a blessing to other people” (Genesis 12:1–22:24)
God continued using those in Abraham’s lineage to carry out the inner workings of the redemptive story he was writing. David was the King of Israel, chosen and anointed by God, and would eventually become the standard for kingship in mind of many Jewish people, even today. And yet, he followed suit in the role of his ancestors. He took for a wife a woman who was married to one of his most trusted soldiers and left him for dead on the battlefield. And yet, God made a promise to David; that he would establish the one who comes from his family and take over the throne that David would give up one day. God was going to establish his kingdom forever (2 Sam. 7:12–16). There was just one issue…he didn’t look like a king.
Jesus Christ was born of a virgin girl named Mary and was engaged to a man named Joseph, who was of the lineage of David and Abraham. According to the promise of God via an angel, Mary conceived Jesus, known as God with us or “Immanuel”. Because Jesus was born of a woman, he had not just human form, but human nature. Because he came down in the power of his divinity, he maintained his divine nature as well. As much of a headache as that is, just know that the point of this was that God wanted to be sure that humanity understood how far God would go to fulfill his promises. He literally made it his personal agenda to rid us of our sin, and the shameful separation from His presence that it brought; and brought us back into a right relationship with him. We couldn’t do this, so he did it for us out of love, just as any father would for his children (Matt 1:18–24; John 1:1–18).
As Christians, we live daily as a people set apart for God’s own possession and purpose through the salvation brought forth by Jesus Christ. Our role in God’s story is to make known the testimony of God’s faithfulness in the gospel just as Israel was to do according to the law (Deut. 6:4–9). We bear the image of Jesus Christ, bringing about order where there is chaos, walking in the power of the Holy Spirit, and declaring the good news of the kingdom of God. That Jesus Christ has purchased salvation for us at the cost of his own life, and he defeated death that we might live forever in a reconciled relationship with God (Romans 8:1–39).
As people, we really enjoy promises. As you consider the promise that God has made and kept, remember to live as people of that promise. There are so many around us that experience the crushing reality of promises unkept, but we as Christians know that in the midst of that brokenness, the promise of God in the Gospel of Jesus Christ will always be true, because God’s faithfulness is without end, and is aimed at sinful man like an archer passionate about striking the target upon which his eyes are set.