The Fulfilment of God’s Covenant in Christ
The union of Christ’s two natures is very important as far as some of the most precious promises in Scripture are concerned. He is the fulfilment of those promises, for He is Immanuel, God with us (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23).
We refer to such promises as those of II Peter 1:4 (“that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature”), II Corinthians 6:16 (“I will dwell in them, and walk in them”), Ephesians 3:19 (“that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God”), Ephesians 5:30 (“For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones”) and Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me”—all passages that speak of what Calvin called the “mystical union” between God in Christ and His people.
That this union is more than just a figure of speech is clear from the passages themselves and even from the way faith is described in Scripture. Faith is, literally, faith in Christ or even into Christ.
These passages describe, therefore, the closest possible fellowship between God and His people, fellowship in which God’s people are actually joined and united to Him. Wonderful, is it not?
This union is realized in Christ Himself. He is, on the one hand, our own flesh and blood, and yet is also really and fully God in one person. In Him God and man meet and are united, for we are in Him by faith, while in Him also dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9-10).
He is, therefore, by virtue of His incarnation, Immanuel, God with us, not just because God visits us in Him, but because God comes to dwell with us and live in closest fellowship with us through Him.
Christian marriage is a faint picture of this in that man and woman in marriage become “one flesh.” In fact, in Ephesians 5 where Paul talks about Christian marriage and says that man and woman become one flesh, he adds, “This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church” (32).
That marriage of God and His people in Christ whereby they become one flesh is the realization of God’s covenant of grace. God’s covenant is a covenant of friendship and fellowship in which God promises to be our God and to make us His people. It is realized when we are one with God in Christ.
So we wait for the wedding feast of the Lamb—not merely as a picture of heaven’s joys, but as a description of that union with God in Christ which will be the realization of all our hopes and the beginning of all our joys. Rev. Ron Hanko
Christ Our Curse
“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:13).
The question which accompanied the request to treat this verse in the News reads: “Could you please explain and develop the thought of Christ being made a curse?”
The reference of the apostle Paul in this verse is obvious. He is pointing to the role that the law played in the old dispensation, as is evident from his quotation of Deuteronomy 21:23.
The law of God, delivered from Mount Sinai to Israel, was an expression of the will of God for the nation. As is true of the law given already with creation—as an expression of God’s will for His creatures—the law can do only two things: it gives life to those who keep it and it curses (that is, kills) those who disobey it.
This is always true of God’s law for all His creation. The law for a tree is that it be planted in the soil and receive light and oxygen. As long as that law is observed the tree lives. When that law is broken the tree dies. The law for a bird is that it fly in the heavens and the law for a fish is that it swim in the sea. In every case, breaking the law results in death.
The law of God for man is no different. Because man is a rational-moral creature, the law for him is to love the Lord his God and to love his neighbour as himself. To keep that law results in life; to break that law results in death.
Just as “life” is essentially fellowship with God and God’s blessing (John 17:3), so death is essentially separation from God and His curse (Ps. 73:27).
When man fell in paradise he died (Gen. 2:17). He came under the curse of the law. That death was spiritual as well as physical. His spiritual death consisted in total depravity. Under God’s curse he lost all ability to keep God’s law in any respect and was deprived of God’s blessing.
Because of that inability, from that moment on he stood under the curse of the law. The law could not give life nor bless (Gal. 3:21). It could only curse.
When God gave Israel the law from Mount Sinai, He did not give it so that Israel might acquire the blessing of God by keeping it. As Galatians 3:21 states, if righteousness had come by the law, then it would have been by the law. Nor could the law annul the promises of God, for the promise was given long before the law and the law could not displace the promise (Gal. 3:17-18).
Why then was the law given?
Paul answers in Galatians 3. “It was added because of transgressions, till the seed [that is, Christ] should come” (19). More specifically, “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (24).
This was true for believing Israel who lived in hope of the promise. Conscious of their inability to keep the law, they groaned under its curses (Deut. 28:15-68), for the law imposed upon them could only condemn. God intended this so that Israel might learn not to seek righteousness by the law but in Christ. The curses of the law drove them to flee to Him.
Thus the curse which rightfully belongs to us was laid upon Christ in our stead, for He became a curse for us by assuming responsibility under the law.
That He became a curse for us is the express word of God in the text. Paul cites Deuteronomy 21:23 to demonstrate it. One who hung on a tree was accursed. Suspended between heaven and earth, the cross proclaimed that such a man was rejected from both. The place of the accursed is hell. That is the word of the cross.
Christ never broke the law of God. He was “made under the law” (Gal. 4:4), not because He was a sinner but to take the place of His people. He bore the curse of the law upon the cross. He became the object of God’s wrath and was driven from God’s presence. Under that curse He descended into the deepest forsakenness, as far from God as it was possible to go.
Yet there is something glorious here.
He always kept the law. He loved the Lord His God perfectly. Even when God smote Him with the blows of the curse, even when He cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46), He still loved and trusted His Father!
And so He bore the curse for us and removed it, so that the law can no longer curse those who are in Him.
And so we are redeemed.
And so the law still drives us to Christ, where we find refuge beneath His cross.
And so we are justified, not by works of the law but by faith.
We are redeemed from the curse of the law. Prof. Herman Hanko
Is Slavery Unbiblical?
Does the Bible condemn slavery? This is the question, sent by one of our readers, that we wish to answer in this issue of the News.
We wish to make it clear that we will answer this question on biblical rather than humanistic grounds. This will get us an answer, but a far different answer, perhaps, than most would expect. The truth is that the Bible does not condemn slavery!
Slavery is one of those present-world institutions about which the Bible does not concern itself very much. Like the question about different forms of civil government, Scripture simply assumes that such things are part of the world in which we live and that they are all going to be destroyed with this world. It does not bother much about them, therefore, but only gives guidance to Christians as to how they are to live in relation to these institutions.
Thus, you will not find in Scripture a condemnation of slavery. It condemns the ill-treatment of slaves (Eph. 6:9; Col. 4:1—the word translated “servant” in the Authorized Version is commonly a bondservant), the kidnapping of people to sell them into slavery (Ex. 21:16; Deut. 24:7) and, in the Old Testament, harsh bondage of a fellow Israelite (Lev. 25:39-43) and the treating of an Israelite as a bondman for sale (Lev. 25:42).
There are especially two New Testament passages that make it clear that the Bible does not condemn slavery. The first is I Timothy 6:1-5, where Paul addresses those slaves that have believing masters and does not even suggest that it is “sinful” for a believer to own slaves, even fellow Christians. In fact, Paul’s teaching in these verses is called “wholesome words” and “the doctrine which is according to godliness” (3), and those who teach otherwise are condemned as proud, perverse and destitute of the truth (3-4).
The other passage is the book of Philemon. It is a letter written by Paul to Philemon, a believer in the church of Colosse. In the letter Paul tells him that he is sending back to Philemon a runaway slave, Onesimus, who had been converted under Paul’s ministry after running away.
Nowhere in the letter does Paul condemn the institution of slavery or Philemon for keeping slaves. Indeed, the fact that Paul sends Onesimus back to Philemon indicates the opposite—that Paul thought it wrong for a slave to run away from his master. Paul only begs Philemon to receive Onesimus back as one who is now also a brother in Christ.
All this is not, however, to be taken as blanket justification of slavery as an institution or of all its practices. It simply illustrates the fact that the Bible is concerned with a kingdom that is not of this world. It views the kingdoms of this world and the institutions of this world as things which shall soon pass away—which perish even in the use of them (Col. 2:22). The Bible’s great concern, in other words, is not to justify slavery, but to teach the Christian how to live in this present world for the glory of God, no matter what his position and place may be.
In this respect the teaching of Scripture is best summarized in I Corinthians 7:22: “For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ’s servant.” Christians, bond or free, belong to Christ, their heavenly Lord and Master. Rev. Ron Hanko
