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Below are some highlights from our discussion.
The Biblical Narrative
Recall from our last meeting the governing four-fold narrative framework of Scripture: creation, disruption, restoration, consummation. The protagonists of the story are God and his people. The plot advances as God works with his people to help restore the harmony lost in the Garden--harmony at several levels: spiritual, social, vocational (even ecological, as one day the whole earth will need to be restored, purified from the fallout of human distrust and rebellion, cf. Isa 66:17, which is reiterated by John in Rev 21:1).
God's people function as both recipients or beneficiaries of the restored blessing as well as instruments or benefactors of the blessing. As in the real estate market, location is also important in this story. God's first couple disqualified themselves from the Garden. Where then will God's people be able to set up shop as his image-bearers? Thus, land functions as another central motif, particularly its promise (Gen 12), its acquisition (Judges), its forfeiture (Kings), and its promised renewal (prophets).
Questions surround each of the protagonists and the major elements of the story.
Abraham: God is Forming a People for His Purpose
Here we trace the motif of Abraham from Genesis 12 through Galatians. Note how two questions stand front and center, one of identify (who are the “true” children of Abraham?) and one of vocation (how will they be faithful to their original calling?). As you'll see, these are questions for us today. Do we share Abraham's identity? Do we share his vocation, his calling? According to Jesus (in Luke 19 below), this is what it means to be saved.
The Restoration Begins in Genesis 12:1-3.
Abraham and his children, the nation of Israel, were to be the recipients of God's blessing and then the disseminators of that blessing to all the nations of the world, reversing the curse that our first parents brought into the world. Since the missteps of Adam and Eve, the harmony of the Garden had been disrupted at all levels. God joined forces with Abraham and his children in order to set things right again. This was the plan. This is the only plan. This still is the plan today.
For the most part, however, ancient Israel as a whole liked being the recipients of blessing but failed to share those blessings with the world. By hoarding the blessing to themselves, they eventually forfeited their role as God's agents. Functionally, they were no longer Abraham's children. Would their refusal to participate in God's program of world-wide restoration derail the project altogether? Or would God find himself more compliant collaborators?
In steps Jesus. As the true, faithful son of Abraham, he picks up the project where it was left off. He puts the train back on the tracks. He gathered around him a segment of first-century Israelites who were serious about the Abrahamic commission and the Abrahamic promise. This band of followers constituted the "true Israel" of the first century, the "true sons of Abraham." After the resurrection and the gift of the Spirit, Gentiles were added to this nucleus of Christ-followers (without having to become circumcized Jews, mind you). These too, we are told, became children of Abraham. This new multi-racial group of Christ-following, Spirit-empowered people, the church of Jews and Gentiles, experienced God's long-promised restoration: a restoration of humanity with God (the spiritual aspect), a restoration of people with each other (the social, communal aspect), and a restoration of people with their calling as God's image-bearers, his representatives, his junior apprentices in tending "the Garden" (the earth) and tending the broken world (the vocational aspect).
But what Jesus effected in the churches of the first century was not some novel invention, some unanticipated change of plans. Jesus rather was fanning a flame that was first lit 1,900 years earlier with God's encounter with Abraham. That's when the gospel, the good news, began. And I use the word "gospel" carefully.
Read Galatians 3:8-9.
Paul tells us that this world-encompassing, world-restoring promise of God to Abraham is the gospel, the good news, begun in 1,900 BC and picked up centuries later by Jesus and the Spirit, who brought the dwindling coals within first-century Israel to to a roaring flame in the formation of vibrant churches comprised of Jew and Gentiles, living in loving harmony and demonstrating to the world, in part, what God originally intended for humanity.
Yes, the gospel has its origins in Genesis chapter 12. One story, one God, one people, one calling, one goal--to get things back in sync with God. This thread of Abraham-and-his-children-as-the-real-people-of-God-participating-in-God's-plan-of-restoration is pervasive throughout the Bible, especially in the NT. Let's explore that.
Matthew lets us know from the get-go that Jesus, Israel's anointed King, is taking up afresh Abraham's role that largely had fallen by the wayside. He is "the son of Abraham" (Matt 1:1). By telling us this at the outset, Matthew wants us to read all that follows in his biography of Jesus in this context. Jesus has picked up the dropped baton and is getting the team back in the race.
Luke tells us through Zechariah, the father of John the Baptizer, that with the coming of Jesus God will bring to life "the covenant he swore with an oath to our ancestor Abraham" (Luke 1:73). The old promise or covenant of blessing to the nations had faltered because the people of God were unfaithful to God and to their role as mediators of blessing to the world. Yes, they were God's chosen people. But they were chosen for the world's sake. Being chosen confers as much responsibility as it does privilege.
But now with Jesus, things will be different. He himself will be faithful to God like Abraham was and he will inspire a segment of Israel to join him, to follow in his footsteps, and to be part of a renewed obedient Israel, once again functioning in the world as God's holy nation. After all, this is what being the people of God is all about. From the time of their inception at the exodus from Israel, God made it plain to them about his intentions. Listen to God's promise to his beloved people:
Ancient Israel was delivered from captivity (that's grace!) in order to serve as God's holy ambassadors, a kingdom of priests (which would be their fitting response to grace). What God had in mind for them always had global import--note his mention here of "all the nations" and "all the earth." But only when the people respond to grace with obedience will they be able to function as priests to the world. And what do priests do? Priests serve as intermediaries between God and humans. Israel was to be a priestly nation, mediating grace, love, wisdom, and the knowledge of God to the rest of the world. It was Jesus' objective to get the nation (or at least a "remnant" of the nation) back on task, back on track, back in sync with God's long-standing purposes.
John the Baptizer, the last of the OT prophets, had this same game-plan at the forefront of his agenda. He intentionally unsettles his Jewish brothers by challenging the validity of their claim to be God's people. Like Adam and Eve, God's people are to walk with God and work alongside him. They are his image-bearers and are to reflect his character. Grace deserves a fitting response. As with Abraham their example, they are to "serve God faithfully" (Gen 17:1), to welcome his lovingkindness and to share it with others.
But Israel, as a whole, in the days of John and Jesus, had failed to carry out her divine calling. This abandonment of vocation stripped them of the privilege of identity. "If you haven't taken up Abraham's commission," John tells them, "you can't presume membership in his family." Listen to John's excoriating incrimination:
John doesn't beat around the bush, does he? He is warning that the days of Israel as God's nation are coming to an end in light of their persistent rebellion. The coming war with Rome (67-70 AD) would cut the fruitless trees down to the ground. Only those trees within Israel that bore fruit, that were marked by Abraham's faithfulness to God and to their calling, would be preserved. "Would you like to be God's true people, Abraham's children, then you must live like Abraham. If you don't live like Abraham, then you demonstrate that you are not in his family." The nation at the time presumed that identity among God's people was automatic and irrevocable, simply by virtue of their birth, irrespective of character, conduct, faith, and loyalty. Not true. Being born into the ethnic nation of Israel provided them not with inviolable privilege, but with abundant opportunity. It was up to them to leverage that opportunity and add holiness to their heritage. Only then could they claim to be Abraham's children.
Jesus sets out to gather around him that segment of first-century Israel who sought to live like Abraham. When someone, like Zacchaeus for example, began walking in the way of Jesus by casting off greedy and exploitative ways and replaced it with generosity, Jesus assigns them a place in Abraham's family. Read Luke 19:1-10. Verse 9 tells it all: "Salvation has come to this home today, for this man has shown himself to be a true son of Abraham." And did you catch verse 10? By gathering a segment of apostate Israel around himself as faithful children of Abraham, Jesus was saving "the lost," the lost within the very nation that was supposed to be God's partner.
In Acts, Peter explains that when wayward Israelites turn from sin to God in Christ this is nothing other than the outworking of the blessings promised to Abraham and his family. Read Acts 3:24-26.
And since the blessing was to extend to all the nations of the world, then the inclusion of Gentiles into the community of Christ-followers makes them too children of Abraham, the blessed members of God's one international, multi-racial family. Paul explains it this way:
Paul's perceived of his Gentiles brothers and sisters in Christ as members of the one Abrahamic family of God throughout the whole biblical narrative. This perception is so engrained that he speaks to us of Old Testament Israelites as our "forefathers"!
As those in Christ, we Explorers who "have the same kind of faith Abraham had" are the true children of Abraham. His God is our God; his calling is our calling; his blessing is our blessing; his role is our role. We have joined a centuries-old community of God's people, who throughout the ages have walked in the footsteps of Abraham, responding to grace with faith and with faithfulness, and joining in the project of restoration that commenced in the early days of Genesis.
Can you see now why the OT story is our story? We, as God's people, are one of the protagonists. We, as members of God's family, are engaged in advancing the plot. The back story has been laid out. The final Act has already been written (namely, the new heaven and the new earth). It's now in our hands to improvise within the framework of the drama* and move the story forward toward its fitting conclusion.
*The analogy of the unfinished drama is taken from Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, and one of today's leading NT scholars. Here's the way he tells it.
The Relational Paradigm
Some mistakenly contrast God's ways in the OT and God's ways in the new. They speak of God's relations with ancient Israel as based on human works and God's relations with the community of Christ as based on grace. This construct, however, is wide of the mark and fails to account for the biblical data. Grace is the theme of both the New Testament and the Old. Could it ever be otherwise? The biblical record throughout shows that God's relations with humanity always are based on grace. And God's grace invites human response, a response of trust, marked by faith and faithfulness.
The ancient Israelites were captives in Egypt. It was a loving God who heard their cries and reached out to them in grace and brought them a mighty deliverance. After their liberation, God graciously gave them his guidance and laws to govern them as his people. Their embrace of these laws wasn't in order to gain his favor. No, they already had his favor, his unmerited favor. Their glad reception of God's instructions was their response to his grace. "He saved us. He's the one we want to lead us. Lord, tell us how you would have us live as your grateful people." Relationships between God and humanity, just like those between humans, are mutual affairs. Love begets love.
Let me quote here Professor Goldingay of Fuller Theological Seminary.
For more on the unifying factors between Old and New Testaments, see our Starting Points.
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