Unconditional/Conditional Promises

We find the promises of God to be precious promises. He is faithful. He keeps them. But are they conditional or are they unconditional? Of course, the right answer to that is "Yes." Some are conditional and some are not. I think, however, that it's more complicated than that.

I'm thinking about the story in Acts. You remember. They were sending Paul to Rome for trial. They were on a ship and it wasn't going well. They were in a storm throwing stuff overboard to try to save themselves and not eating for days. Then Paul tells them some encouraging news.

"I urge you to take heart, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For this very night there stood before me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before Caesar. And behold, God has granted you all those who sail with you.'" (Acts 27:22-24)

If you examine the statement, you'll see a promise without condition. "God has granted you all those who sail with you." Great!

But the story takes an odd turn. They neared land and they dropped anchors to keep from dying on the rocks. The sailors knew this was a dead-end course of action (pun intended), so they planned to get in the life raft and sneak off. "Uh ... we're just going to check the anchors." And Paul tells the centurion in charge, "Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved" (Acts 27:31). Now, hang on, Paul. You didn't mention any conditions before. You didn't say anything about conditions at all. And, yet, here it is. If the sailors leave, everyone dies.

Well, of course, as it turns out Paul was convincing, the centurion pulled them in, threw out the life raft, and everyone was saved. That is, God's promise was fulfilled. As he said.

How does that work? No conditions were given on the promise, but when they tried to do something other than the plan, there was a threat that the promise was null and void? That's problematic. I mean, if God is omniscient (hint: He is) then He would know about this upcoming little attempt to sneak out and could have said something up front. Maybe it was a ploy on God's part? That doesn't seem right. It appears that God made a promise and He kept it without fail, but there was necessary behavior on their part. His unconditional promise didn't include it, but it was there just the same.

Is it possible then, going with this example, that God makes promises that He keeps but still expects us to avoid certain things or to do certain things. In His "line of sight" He already knows if we will, so the promise is not in question. In our "line of sight" we are an "unknown" and could upset the cart, so to speak, but we don't. The outcome is not in question even though it appears to us that we are and, therefore, the outcome is. I can think of other ways that this kind of thing might show itself in Christian living. Can you?