A
Future sure as God
A series of
four studies on the matter of covenant.
by Grant
Thorpe
Download
the 
|
See also
other titles: |
| |
| |
| |
Everyone
must find a future to guide their present living. We were
born with a mission to complete and must spend our life
moving toward that goal. What hopes do we cherish? What
future do we believe in? What would make both us and our
world complete, content and deeply joyful? |
| Some may
have given little conscious thought to this-though it
probably simmers beneath the surface in everyone. Some
project their goals clearly. But everyone needs to have
a future look. The dreamers, the utopians, the people
who are never satisfied may not be stupid. Perhaps they
protest about the rest of us who, too quickly, have ceased
to 'Have glimpses that would make [us] less forlorn'. |
| But, on
what can our hopes be based? Can cleverness guarantee
its projections? Can we avert all disasters? Or, for the
more casual, will fate prove to be friendly? Will luck
be on our side? |
| And what
of virtue? Can we rely on that? The world says we all
ought to do the 'right thing'-whatever that may be. Our
contracts put this in writing and make it public. We love
to maintain and even proclaim our honour. Doubtless, our
legal infrastructure has served us well, but if we think
we proclaim our own virtue by it, we are fools. It is
obvious that we do not do what we ought to do.
|
| In many
places, it appears that hope is in short supply. Virtue
has been stretched too thin and snapped. Luck has run
out and fate shows its leering face. |
| What we
need to hear shouted from the housetops and to celebrate
in our streets is that God has not made a contract with
us-based on our doing the 'right thing'. He has proclaimed
his covenant to us-based on his own goodness, and it proclaims
a future determined and secured by God himself. |
| Can a human
being know what the world is about? Can a person know
where their life is from and where it is going? There
are many things that we cannot know, but the things we
need to know have been revealed to us by God and through
his covenant with the creation. |
God's
covenant is a plan |
From the
beginning, God has purposed to unite everything in his
Son, to reconcile all things to himself, to abolish injustice,
pain and tears, to make an end of all disaster. Everyone
will know God from the greatest to the least. He has determined
that this be so. There is a future for the race and the
whole creation. This is our hope. |
| This plan
of God embraces all of the past. Many plans made by ourselves
are built on a denial of the past, a reaction to it, a
running from its consequences. God's plan is not built
on anything but his own purpose, but it includes the past.
Our history has included many things on which we would
prefer not to build the future, but, mysteriously, God
would not have anything different from what it has been. |
| The past
of our race has included crucifying Jesus-and that is
the centre of God's plan. All our sins focus in this that
we reject the Christ. But by the power of his love, he
has turned this foolishness into salvation. By the blood
of Christ, we are forgiven for every sin and washed of
all impurity. Our past may then be recalled with gratefulness.
We move forward as whole persons with an understanding
of why we are where we are. |
| The plan
of God includes the present. We are not crusaders who
have no time for anything but carving out a future for
ourselves. Today is God's too, an important part of the
future to be relished as it passes. And if the present
is full of trouble and pain, then it is also true that
underneath us are God's everlasting arms. This is the
trust of those who walk in covenant relation with God.
They may not always feel the presence of God or be able
to prove his graciousness, but, the faithful witness of
God's Son in history and the witness of the Holy Spirit
within bring love and joy and peace into the present. |
Our
hope is larger than what can be seen |
The plan
of God includes the future. This is a mystery to us because,
like God, it is unseen. But, as the Apostle Paul says:
'we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be
seen; for what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot
be seen is eternal.' |
| Those whose
life does not flow from God, who have no hope in God,
must make of the things that are seen-its tasks and pleasures,
its relationships and resources-more than they actually
are, and these things crumble under the weight of importance
we try to give to them. |
| In particular,
everything needs a future-time to grow. This life is too
short to accommodate what God has poured into a human
being. We are too circumscribed in a world which has been
given up to futility. What God is about, and what he is
about in us requires a larger frame of reference. |
| Abraham
greeted what was promised to him 'from afar'. He died
not having received what was promised but he 'received'
the promise nonetheless. And it changed his life and made
him a blessing in the earth. |
| Israel felt
the limits of God's blessing in their national life-because
of their unfaithfulness-but increasingly saw that their
future would be secured by a Messiah. He would establish
both righteousness and peace in the earth. |
| Old Simeon,
who held the infant Jesus in his arms, said: 'my eyes
have seen your salvation'. He was content to die without
seeing more because of the promise that attached to that
child. |
Jesus
told his disciples: 'Truly I tell you, at the renewal
of all things, when the Son of Man is seated on the
throne of his glory, you who have followed me will also
sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of
Israel'.
|
He
also said: 'In my Father's house there are many dwelling
places. If it were not so, would I have told you that
I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare
a place for you, I will come again and will take you
to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.'
|
| The apostles
eagerly longed for the coming of Christ. They said that
we are saved in hope. Both we and the creation still groan
in a travail-awaiting the renewal of all things.
|
| Not to long
for all that God can do is to dishonour God. It is to
make ourselves the measure of all things. The consequence
is that we must further and further limit what is achievable
until all that we can hope for is some cloned and mechanized
and administered and negotiated settlement-which puts
a lid on the ferment of our unfulfilled desires. |
| The creative
visualising movement (creating one's own reality through
imagination) has no welcoming future because it has no
waiting Father. Ironically, the criticism made by humanists
against Christians-that they projected their fears and
aspirations to formulate an idea of god-is now embraced
by them. They project a future from their own ego and
give this absolute value-effectively constructing a god.
The Christian, in contrast to this, does not live by a
projection but a prophecy, not a word of man but a word
of God. |
| Those who
have God's hope are not idealists. They can see what is
so as well as the next person-and they suffer it too.
But their hope of what God can do leads them to pray.
Their persuasion that God has not abdicated encourages
them to persevere. Their delight in the future God has
foretold keeps them in expectant joy. The knowledge that
the world is still personally cared for keeps them from
getting embittered by the woodenness of human 'visions'. |
| Covenant
is the way of eternal life. It's compass is the age to
come, but embracing the present age. Flesh and blood are
not suited to the kingdom of God. We are in a covenant
relationship with Christ which requires that our mortality
put on immortality in order to inherit the kingdom of
God. Its compass of being co-heirs with God is too large
to be circumscribed by this present life. |
| God's covenant
with us is a prophecy and a promise. He has not just told
us how things ought to be, what we must do and what will
happen if we don't. He does not sit and wait for us to
'wake up' and to 'get it right'. His covenant is his communion
with us, and our participation with him in his purposes,
and our growing into the likeness of his nature. |
Our
hope is focussed in Jesus Christ |
Our hope
depends on Jesus Christ having the power of an indestructible
life. He has been subjected to our sins and to God's judgement
on them. But God raised him from the dead. He did this
specifically to show that our death has been overcome,
that our hope reaches into the age to come and that our
present is not to be limited by what we can envisage or
manage. By the power of his resurrected, indestructible
life, he represents us before God-forever. |
| Our major
problem with the future is not that we cannot envisage
it occurring but that we believe we are unworthy of it.
That is why we are assured that we have a great High Priest
who has entered into the presence of God on our behalf.
The offering of his body for our sins is sufficient to
give us a clear conscience before God and so a clear anticipation
of all his favour. |
| Jesus has
already entered the age to come-taking our humanity into
the presence of God. It is important to know that the
present is being administered from there. It is important
to know that the life we have in covenant with God flows
to us from where Christ is. The Holy Spirit brings to
us the love, joy and peace of a life to which, of ourselves,
we could never attain. |
| God has
no goal for us that is not summed up in Jesus Christ.
He is our future. The things to come are the things of
Christ. This puts a face on the future and a loving soul
to the striving's that must be part of this life. He said
that he would come again and receive us to himself so
that where he was there we would be also-in the place
prepared for us in his Father's house. |
| When Christ
returns and we are transformed into his image, we will
know, fully, that our life has depended on Christ. |
Our
hope is God |
From the
beginning, God's purpose has been to have us trust in
him for our vocation and future. This world is his and
not ours. Its good works are his and not ours. Its goal
is his and not ours. |
| There is
nowhere to turn for a sure hope than God himself. There
is nothing else reliable by which to be sure of these
things. God could find nothing in the creation he could
use to assure of what he was about in the creation other
than himself. He promised us on oath that he would do
as he had said. He cannot give us more hope than this.
Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of his promise and the
Holy Spirit is God himself bearing witness to us that
we are the children of God. |
| We know,
all too painfully, that our life is not perfected yet,
but we are enabled to relate to God as though we were.
Hope does not disappoint us because the love of God is
poured into us by the Holy Spirit. Relationships with
one another, likewise, can be full of hope because we
look to God and his 'timetable' rather than to our own
contrivances. Our present labours do not need to arise
from the frustration's of being incomplete so much as
to prepare for the full enjoyment of what is assured.
|
| Covenant
has always been about us being the people of God. The
future is a relationship. What future would it be if it
were not God's. What if we should make the future? What
a contest we must have; what a frustration. But God will
be our God and we will be his people. The question of
the future resolves into this: are we going to trust ourselves
or the One who has been sent from God, and has returned
to God? |
Suggested
reading |
Matthew 19:28;
II Corinthians 4:18 |
| Hebrews
6:13-20; 7:15-19; 10:19-25 |
©
Grant Thorpe |
