Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
We’re still thinking about what it means to live under the new covenant. Something is going on that is radically different from the way we humans normally think.
Abraham (his name at first was Abram) is the key to this radically different way of thinking, because in Galatians the apostle Paul singles him out: “To Abraham and his seed [descendants] were the promises made, ... who is Christ. ... God gave [the inheritance] to Abraham by promise. ... And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise ” (
What is going on?
“God ... calls those things which do not exist as though they did.” It’s all illustrated in Abraham’s life story: God said to him, “I have made [past tense] you the father of many nations” when by all laws of observation as we humans view things, Abraham didn’t yet have baby #1 (Rom. 4:17). What was to happen many years later God declares has already happened! It’s something like creating a world out of nothing, just speaking, and there it is.
We see the same idea revealed in what the Father said when Jesus was baptized by John in the River Jordan. He said about Jesus, “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased,” and then He put His arms also around the entire sinful, selfish, rebellious human race and said the same thing! It would be a long time before the human race is “well pleasing”! Another instance of “calling those things that do not exist as though they did”!
We see the same idea in Ephesians 1 where we read that we are sitting “in heavenly places in Christ Jesus,” “chosen ... in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, ... predestinated ... to the adoption as sons. ... He has made us accepted in the Beloved” (vss. 3-6). Again, the past tense describes what just isn’t in existence yet! That’s objective truth awaiting its subjective fulfillment.
Abraham was the one man in all the world at that time who took that mighty leap of faith and chose to believe all of this “not yet” promise. “He did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, ... fully convinced that what He had promised He was able to perform” (Rom.
We live under the new covenant when we believe as he did.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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