Gospel and Kingdom, Chapter 5, “The Covenant and the Kingdom of God”

The Image of God and Human Creatureliness

The creation of humanity and the image of God distinguish human beings from animals. Humanity is not the end of a chain of evolution, for he is qualitatively distinct from the animals. Humanity was created in fellowship with God and with dominion over the rest of the created order.

Thus, there is a unique relationship between God and human beings. However, we cannot ignore the similarity between man and animals. Humanity is never more than a creature and as such, totally dependent upon the creator.

For instance, the word of God to Adam, forbidding him to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, expresses the fact that humans, the creature, are bound by the limits of their creaturehood.

There are real limits set by the creator. As such, they are expressions of the sovereignty of God, of his absolute lordship. But this lord is good and he establishes his creature, man, in a relationship which brings both rule and blessing.

God is king. Human beings are his subject. And the place where all this happens is the very best place of all. It is the garden paradise of Eden. Humanity's sin is his attempt to renounce his creaturehood and to assert his independence of God, the creator.

The Fall, Common Grace, and the Promise of Redemption

The consequent judgment in the fall of man establishes a break in the relationship between man and God. The world becomes a fallen world for fallen humanity to live in. See Romans 8. But just as a fallen creature still reflects God's glory, so human beings still reflect something of God's image.

One aspect of the mercy of God is that he reveals a gracious attitude toward fallen human beings. Even in the fall, God's grace permits the world to continue and sustains an order in which human beings may live and multiply.

The measure of God's grace is not only the common grace shown in the ongoing universe, it is seen in the declaration of the purpose to redeem a people to be the people of God. The relationship between God and humans, as it once existed in Eden, provides some indication of God's intention for his new race of people.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of what is revealed between the fall of man and the beginnings of the Hebrew nation in Genesis 4 to 11, we now examine the call of Abraham. God's promise to Abraham, expressed in Genesis 12 and subsequent chapters, provides one of the central themes of the Bible.

The Abrahamic Covenant and the People of God

The form of the promise described as covenant is essentially an agreement between parties. But this is no ordinary human covenant involving mutual consent of equals, but a lordly covenant dispensed by the gracious act of a God greatly offended and sinned against.

The covenant is an agreement in the sense that the recipient must agree to any terms that may be proposed. But before all else, we must see this covenant as one of grace, undeserved favor. God's promises to Abraham involved A, a people who are his descendants, B, a land in which they will live, C, a relationship with God and that they shall be God's people.

The covenant relationship then consists in being called the people of God. Every later expression of this relationship stems from the original covenant. We discover that this promise to the forefathers of Israel, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob becomes the basis of the relationship of all the people of God in the Bible.

Even in the New Testament, the concept of being the children of Abraham is transferred to those who by faith embrace the gospel. It's in Galatians chapter three, verse 29. Every Christian is a son or daughter of Abraham.

The Kingdom of God as the Content of the Covenant

Later, we shall look at the different areas where the covenant has given distinct expression in the Old Testament. To understand the covenant, we must examine its contents and its terms. The content of the covenant, like the goal of redemption, is the kingdom of God.

Since the covenant is related to our redemption as children of God, what is the kingdom of God? The New Testament has a great deal to say about the kingdom but we may best understand this concept in terms of the relationship of ruler to subjects.

That is, there is a king who rules, a people who are ruled in a sphere where this rule is recognized as taking place. Put in another way, the kingdom of God involves A, God's people, B, in God's place, C, under God's rule.

Given this basic analysis, it is clear that the fact that the term kingdom of God does not occur in the Old Testament is unimportant. The basic idea is woven through the whole of scripture. We see first the kingdom of God in the Garden of Eden.

Here, Adam and Eve live in willing obedience to the word of God and to God's rule. In this setting, the kingdom is destroyed by the sin of man and the rest of the Bible is about the restoration of a people to be the willing subjects of the perfect rule of God.

There are many more episodes in the Bible where the kingdom of God is given expression. The promise to Abraham is recorded in Genesis 12, verses one to three. God promises the patriarchs that their descendants, God's people, will possess the promised land, God's place, and be the people of God underneath his authority, God's rule.

The historical process by which the people are brought into that situation takes the form of a redemptive act of God. God redeems Israel when he rescues it out of captivity in Egypt. Israel's golden age comes during the period of the monarchy when northern and southern kingdoms are united as one nation.

The political, economic, and religious achievement of the kingdom of David and Solomon fulfills in a very tangible way the promises to Abraham. This kingdom is by no means perfect, but it displays all the elements of the kingdom of God.

The Kingdom in the Exodus, Monarchy, and Prophets

So a pattern is emerging. The revelation of God's kingdom begins with a very basic promise to Abraham and then moves through a process of fulfillment, which includes a redemptive experience, the Exodus, and climaxes in a fulfillment, the monarchy.

This last stage contains some things not even specifically stated in the original promise, such as the city of Zion, the temple, and the kingship of David. Solomon's kingdom fails, and this serves to underline what has been apparent all along, that the historical process from Abraham to Solomon always falls short of the glory of God's true kingdom.

Even though it reveals the nature of the kingdom in the face of the judgment upon Israel's sin, climaxing in the destruction of the nation, the prophets restate the promise of the kingdom as something that will be fulfilled in the future.

The return from the Babylonian exile fails to produce the kingdom foretold by prophets such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. The post-exilic prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, continue to direct the eyes of Israel away from their present history to the great future day when the perfect and everlasting kingdom of God will be revealed.

The Old Testament ends on the note of promise and expectation. There is no fulfillment in sight as the Jews enter nearly 400 years of prophetic silence between the two testaments. During this time, the Jews develop a variety of solutions to the problem.

The best known is that of the Pharisees who sought a literal return to the Israelite monarchy and the freedom of Israel from all foreign oppression. Jesus declares, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand.

In Mark chapter one, verse 14, he thus introduces the gospel as the bringing near of the kingdom. What it means for the kingdom to be at hand rather than fulfilled emerges as the New Testament expounds the gospel.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the promises, but at this stage, the fact that God's kingdom will triumph can only be received by faith. The New Testament describes in various places the future consummation of the kingdom where the people of God know fully and by sight that which they now only have by faith.

When Christ appears at his second coming, the saints of God will appear with him and the eternal kingdom will be made plain. In Colossians chapter three, verse four, it is now clear why the history of redemption is not simply a gradual unfolding of the truths of the kingdom, a dawning of the light, but rather a series of stages in which the kingdom and the way into it are revealed.

In each stage, the essential ingredients of the kingdom are given expression, but each successive stage builds on the former until the full revelation of the gospel is achieved. At the risk of oversimplification, we might organize our material on the kingdom of God in several blocks of revelation.

A, the kingdom revealed in Eden, B, the kingdom revealed in Israel's history, Abraham to Solomon, C, the kingdom revealed in prophecy, Elijah to John the Baptist, and D, the kingdom revealed in Christ, New Testament times to the return of Christ.

We must now consider in a more exact fashion how these stages or blocks of revelation relate to each other. The conclusions we reach about this will control our method of interpreting the Old Testament text and our understanding of their relevance to us as Christians today.