Promises, Promises

The promise of Law:

"See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you today, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in His ways, and by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish" (Deut 30:15-18).

The promise of Law, then, is this. Obey and be blessed, or disobey and be cursed.

The promise of Faith:

For by grace you have been saved through faith (Eph 2:8).

And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness (Rom 4:5).

The promise of Faith, then, is justification apart from works.

Christians are well aware of the gap between Law and faith. The Law condemns; faith justifies. That, in fact, is the basic message of the Gospel. We are guilty of violating the Law. We need to be cleansed. That is accomplished by faith in the Son of God. Faith corrects our failure to obey the Law. Faith, in fact, "is counted as righteousness".

What we miss, however, is how the promise of the Law works in our favor.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it -- the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe (Rom 3:21-22).

God made a promise when He gave His people the Law. If you are righteous, you are blessed. If not, you will receive curses. Fine. That makes most of us (anyone who is vaguely aware of how badly he or she has violated righteousness) shudder. Yet, by faith we have been declared righteous. "For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor 5:21). Get that? It's not simply that we're forgiven. We are declared righteous. So, on the basis of Christ's righteousness imputed to us, we fall in the category of "righteous" and are given the privilege of enjoying God's promises of blessing for the righteous.

I don't know about you, but that works fine for me.