Great and Precious (1)

But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. Hebrews 8.6

Image-bearers, not animals
Christians should be careful about acquiescing in the easy way that evolutionary thinkers classify human beings as just another – albeit higher – form of animal. Humans are not animals. We are the image-bearers of God, and, as such, there is much to distinguish us from animals.

For example, consider our orientation to everyday life. Whereas animals perform their daily routines – hunting, mating, raising their young, and whatever else animals do – largely on the basis of genetic predisposition and past experience, human beings take an altogether different approach to life. Animals are instinctive in their behavior; human beings are anticipatory.

By this I mean, animal behavior is guided, for the most part, by built-up experience and genetic inheritance – what animals have known and done in the past, and how their genetic make-up predisposes them to act.

On the other hand, while people are not unmindful of past experience, and can benefit from or be harmed by it, and while we also have a unique genetic make-up, humans tend to be oriented in their behavior toward the future. People live each day for the prospect of what they hope to gain, not merely what they’ve always known, or how their genes incline them to act.

That is, people are motivated by promise.

God understood this, as He called His exiled people, through Jeremiah, to look to Him for a future and hope full of great things and mysteries they’d never previously known (Jer. 29.11; 33.3). People live toward promises.

That is, human beings engage in relationships, choose careers, settle in communities, make friends, take up avocations, choose their investments, and do practically everything else on the basis of what they hope or expect to gain from their actions – what those actions promise.

It is built into the human soul, as image-bearers of God, to live toward the future and the prospects and hopes of what our decisions and actions may produce. One of the primary points of schooling, indeed, of all child-rearing, is to hold out the prospect of what their lives can be and to encourage the young to dream and work toward their dreams.

The problem of a faulty worldview
Problems arise, however, when the promises we envision and pursue are based on a faulty worldview. If we believe that everything we can have in life is determined by what we know about ourselves and our strengths and limitations, coupled by what we suspect – from experience – the opportunities for us may be, then the promises we pursue will be constrained by our finite understanding and limited experience. We’ll always be guided by the mantra, “Well, I’ve never done that before.”

It’s not surprising, therefore, that we often find that our promises, once realized, are not as bright and satisfying as we’d hope they would be. Whereupon we set off in search of other, better promises – very often with the same result.
What shall we do? We will pursue promises – it’s who we are and how we live – and our promises, once they are realized, are likely to leave us looking for more promises.

The promise of better promises
But what if the promises held out to us are not those of our own devising or dreaming? What if the promises we embrace, and around which we order our whole lives, are offered to us by God? Those would indeed be “better promises.”

God understood that His people, captive in Babylon, might soon lose all hope and either fall into despair or turn to lying prophets for comfort. He knew they did not consider their prospects very bright, and that the promises they were clinging to were simply too small. Which is why He came to them promising things greater and more glorious than they’d ever known before. God gave them great and precious promises to sustain and guide them, and He does just the same for us.

We might expect promises made by God to be such as would help us realize the fullness of our potential as His image-bearers. Such promises would be designed to draw us along in a life-long journey of seeking, knowing, and enjoying God Himself. These would be better promises because they come from an infinitely powerful and faithful Being, Who loves us and knows us better than we know ourselves, and Who is able to do exceedingly abundantly more than we could ever dare to ask or think (Eph. 3.20).

As it happens, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, does offer better promises for all who have entered into a covenant relationship with Him by grace through faith. And His promises, offered within the worldview of His Kingdom, are not just better promises but exceedingly great and precious promises, as we shall see (2 Pet. 1.4).

For reflection
1.  What are some promises that typically guide people today? What are they hoping for and striving toward in life? Where do such promises originate?

2.  Why do people often find their promises to be unsatisfying?

3.  What role do the promises of God play in your walk with and work for the Lord at this time?

Next steps – Preparation: Make a list of all the promises that lead or drive your life. Share these with a Christian friend. How certain are you that these are the promises you should be pursuing?

T. M. Moore

This is part 2 of a 5-part series, Living toward the Promises. You can download this week’s study as a free PDF, suitable for personal or group use, by clicking here. You can learn more about living toward the promises of God by ordering a copy of the book, I Will Be Your God, from our online store (click here).

We invite you to register for the free online course, One in Twelve: Introduction to Christian Worldview. In this course T. M. Moore provides a sweeping panorama of how life in the Kingdom of God unfolds in an age in flight from God such as ours. Set your own schedule and study at your own pace. Learn more, and register for One in Twelve, by clicking here.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.