A Reminder to the Covenant God
By John Hendryx
It is pretty common knowledge that it rains quite a bit here
in our city of
In fact, if we look back into the Old Testament book of
Genesis, the rainbow was a sign of the covenant in which God would not again
destroy creation with a flood. The word of God reads:
Then God spoke to Noah and to his
sons with him, saying "Now, behold, I Myself do establish with you, and
with your children after you; and with every living creature that is with you,
the birds, the cattle and every beast of the earth with you; of all that comes
out of the ark, even every beast of the earth. I establish My
covenant with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of
the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth." God
said, "This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for
all successive generations; I set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a
sign of a covenant between Me and the earth. It shall come about, when I bring
a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud, and I will remember My
covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all
flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh.
When the bow is in the cloud, then I
will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between Me and all flesh that is on the earth." And God
said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant which I have established
between Me and all flesh that is on earth."
So first of all, before anything else, it is a reminder to God of the covenant He
has made with us. The first purpose,
therefore, isn’t so much that this covenant reminds us, but it reminds God of
His promise to us. God looks at the sign and remembers that He will not do to
creation that which it justly deserves.
Of course this is anthropomorphism.
God does not need reminding of His promise since He is omniscient,
knowing and remembering the end from the beginning. But it is written as an assurance and comfort to us that God
remembers his covenant with us and will keep His word.
In fact it appears that all the covenants God gives his
children are accompanied by signs which remind God of something He has done for
us, usually a promise. The Lord’s
Supper, for instance, is a new covenant in Jesus’ blood … blood which reminds
God not to treat us as our sins deserve.
Thus we take comfort when we approach and take the sacrament. We know that His blood,
which the elements spiritually represent, are the only thing which God
accepts on our behalf lest we be utterly consumed. We do not come to the Lord’s Table thinking
we are a little better than last time and God may receive us because of our
piety. No, the more we grow in grace,
the more we recognize that we can only approach God as needy sinners. There is nothing you can bring out from your
own resources. Do you, right now, love
God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength and your neighbor as
yourself? Since you do not, you offend God’s law and
need a Savior. Christ is your only
righteousness before God and anything else you may imagine you can bring to Him
is the utmost folly and absurdity. The
covenant is for us and for our good that and it reminds God not to come and
trample us in the winepress of His fury, but rather, to show us mercy. Mercy meaning, not getting what
we deserve.
Consider that God’s delivering His people from the bondage
of
For I will go through the
When God sees the blood he did not deliver over the
firstborn Israelites to what they deserved. Only the Egyptians, who were not
given this sign, were not sparred. Did
God treat them differently because the Israelites were naturally better? No, He treated them better because of great His
love for them and His remembrance of the covenant He made with Abraham. In
other words, He redeemed them simply because of His sovereign good pleasure,
not because He saw something in them which was better. And likewise
God also sees the blood of Christ and passes over those to whom it has been
applied so that no plague would befall us and destroy us, the plague that we
would justly deserve. But what does it mean to take the Lord
’s Supper worthily then? It does
not mean that we need to show God how well we have obeyed and bring him a list
of our good deeds. On the contrary, it
is when we think we are rich like this, that we are poor and show we have
misapprehended the gospel. The gospel,
rather, reminds us that the more we grow in understanding the more we must come
like unto publicans who look down to the ground and say, “Have mercy on me
Lord, the sinner.” Look at Jesus’ words
in his revelation through John to the church at
Those who have placed their faith in Christ and what He has done, have their faith as a sign that they are God’s covenant people. But He did not choose us because of our faith, but UNTO faith. God does not favor people because one is wiser by nature. Rather it is the grace of God that we are what we are. For left to ourselves we would have only used our “free will” to perish and declare autonomy from God. But God’s love is so great to His children that He runs after them and delivers them from the wolf’s mouth. He doesn’t wait to see it they will utilize their will for Him. That would be to end all hope for every last person in the human race. Rather He gathers them up in His arms in spite of their hardened heart because He will not let them perish. What kind of love would leave us to ourselves and not give His Holy Spirit to help us? It is certainly what we deserve if He did so, but His love for us is so great that His Son’s life was not sparred in order to bring us to Himself. Jesus did not die for an abstract opportunity, but He died to secure the salvation of His people.
Here we discover the stark contrast in understanding the concept of love between synergistic traditions (Arminianism, Modern Evangelicalism) and the Augustinian tradition:
“[Arminians] ... say that the Augustinian tradition subordinates the love of God to the will of God ...But this is not what distinguishes the Augustinian tradition from the Arminian tradition. The distinction is between intensive and extensive love, between an intensive love that saves its loved ones, and an extensive love that loves everyone in general and saves no one in particular. Or if you really wish to cast this in terms of willpower, it's the distinction between divine willpower and human willpower. Or, to put the two together, does God will the salvation of everyone with a weak-willed, ineffectual love, or does God love his loved ones with a resolute will that gets the job done? ... The God of Calvin is the good shepherd, who names and numbers his sheep, who saves the lost sheep and fends off the wolf. The God of Wesley is the hireling, who knows not the flock by name and number, who lets the sheep go astray and be eaten by the wolf. Which is more loving, I ask?” - Steve Hays
After reading this above quote, Ted (a frequent visitor to Monergism.com), said had a response, itself worth quoting:
"Wow,
now THAT is a great quote! … That is really good. After I read that last
paragraph I began thinking to myself: Any true loving parent tries to shield
their
child from the evils of this world. No true loving parent will allow their kid
to do what they please just because they respect their "right to
choose." They will rather seek to raise their kids in the ways of the Lord
and shield them from evil even "against their will." This is
interpreted as love. However, Arminians expect us to
believe that God does not have that kind of love for us. No, He will allow us
to
choose to walk away and follow Satan. God respects our "free will."
Even so much so that He calls on dead men to believe on Him...without His help
of course. We have to do that ourselves. But when a
Calvinist says that God is so loving that he changes the disposition of our
heart (and therefore does not impose on our
will) and does not allow the enemy to sift us, this is viewed as unloving and
"monstrous." I've never heard anything so backwards.”