We’ve been speaking about the sons of God and our inheritance. What I’d like to do now is to summarize this very extensive series. I’d like to begin, and address the subject of “the first covenant”. In traditional evangelical theology we are often inclined to think about the covenant from Mt. Sinai as being the first covenant, and then Calvary being the second. But that is in fact not the case, because Calvary is not the enacting of a covenant but the ratifying of an existing covenant—the first covenant.
If you go back and think about what had been said in different parts of this series, we began with the understanding that there is “time” which is linear and there is the “eternal” which is non-linear. And the distinction between time and the eternal is that—in respect to future events—time waits upon the future in order to know the events. In the eternal however, the thing is known from the beginning so that every event that is brought forward into time comes within the context of what God already knows. If you are in the eternal, you are not waiting to discover the future; you already know how the matter ends. But in time we are waiting to discover the future, so every event is something that is new and without precedent.
But if you see that time is the venue, the location, and the moment in which God deposits the thing that is already known, then every event that occurs in time has its completeness, as determined by the eternal. So every event in time is simply a small increment of the big picture that is already known. With that understanding, suddenly things that seem so profoundly difficult are relatively simple. Begin with this: there was a pre-existing covenant that framed the creation of the world. How do we know that? The Scriptures say that the Lamb—namely the Lord Jesus Christ—was slain from the foundations of the world. (Inserted – actual verse—“All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast—all whose names have not been written in the book of life belonging to the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.” – Revelation 13:8)
Why would you pay the price for the salvation of man if the price is not paid as part of a pre-existing agreement? To pay a price without an agreement is to have an action without justification. Who is bound to honor a paid price if there is no agreement? The thing is that—as John described Jesus when John the Baptist saw Jesus coming—John said, “Behold, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” (Inserted – actual verse—“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” – John 1:29) This Lamb—not an animal, but a man—this Lamb was destined to take away the sins of the world. That being so—when He came to Calvary and He paid the price—He accomplished the fact of taking away the sins of the world.
But the Scriptures had previously spoken to this event taking place before the foundation of time. “The Lamb was slain from the foundations of the world.” So, what happened at Calvary was a ratification of what had already been agreed upon. But the question is: who agreed? If man were not present—because this agreement took place prior to the creation of man—then who would have to be the agreeing parties? One would agree to pay the price and one would require the price to be paid in order to take away the sins of the world. The Scriptures tell us then, in the book of Hebrews, the 6th chapter, “since there was none other for God to swear by, God swore on oath to himself.” (Inserted – actual verse—“When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself," - Hebrews 6:13)
Obviously there was no human present. Abraham would be well beyond this time, or this epoch—to be more accurate—this eon, before he could be part of this covenant. So God agreed with God. God swore to God that a price would be paid, and man—the creature who had not yet been created—would be created to be the sons of God. So, when God contemplated the making of man, He said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness.” (Inserted – actual verse--"Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." - Genesis 1:26)
So God created man in the image and likeness of God. Why would God create man in the image and likeness of God? Because God was creating sons. The requirement that attended the intent to create sons was that these sons would be saved. Rather than salvation being the purpose for man being created, salvation is a necessary part of the purpose for which man was created. Now, the point being: God didn’t make man so that He could save him. If that were the case, save yourself the trouble... don't create him. But God created man with the specific intent of making him into a son. I have another entire series entitled “Spiritual Authority” that explores the background to this. But God created man with the specific intent of making man His son.
The salvation of man was a fully contemplated part of that process, so rather than God being “surprised” that man sins—and that God has to save man—God fully foreknew that man would sin and provided fully for the salvation of man so that the purpose for his creation—which is that he might be made into a son of God—might fully come forward. So, the fact that man would sin does not in any way set aside the intention of God. God knew that that was part of the price. In fact, if this weren’t the case, the question may well arise: why was it necessary to enter into a covenant—God with God—in order to have sons?
If God did not know that man would sin then what is the intention—what is the need—to covenant? Simply create the being—the ones who sinned—they fell away and you got rid of them. And the fact that the majority wouldn’t sin… then you would go forward and fulfill the plan. But God knew that everyone would sin… that “in Adam we would all die”. (Inserted – actual verse—“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” – I Corinthians 15:22) So He contemplated how to rescue man in light of Adam. He knew what man would do, so from the foundations of the world He ordained the salvation of man through the last Adam. There is the first Adam and the last Adam. The last Adam is the living God himself, because it would take God—in the form of man but nevertheless God—to save man from the condition of sin (which would effectively work to frustrate the purpose of God in having sons).
Knowing that it was necessary to redeem man in order to have sons, God covenanted with Himself to redeem man. So God had to pay the price in order for this creation of God (humans) to be able to be the sons of God. So, “as many as receive Him, to them He gives the power to become the sons of God.” (Inserted – actual verse—“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” – John 1:12,13) So the first covenant ever enacted was the covenant before the foundations of the world—God, with God—for the salvation of man. God would agree to pay the price, on behalf of man, so that the purpose of God would be fulfilled—that God would have sons.
This is the first covenant. And the entire creation of man is framed within the covenant that pre-exists. So God enters—God with God—into the first covenant, and that took place before the foundation of the world. If this is not so, then the creation of man comes about with a big question mark: when he sins, what do you do with him? Then you must—ex post facto (after the fact)—you must then seek a way to remedy his fall. Such a thing God would never consent to leave unfinished. So God—knowing the end from the beginning, because His throne is eternal and His perspective is an eternal point of view—God, knowing the end of the matter from the beginning, agrees before the fact to pay the price that He, himself, had established for the salvation of man.
Therefore, when God creates Adam, God creates Adam as a son of God. This is clearly spoken in the 3rd chapter of the book of Luke when it says, “And Adam was the son of God.” (Inserted – actual verse—“the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” – Luke 3:38) Because when God swears to God there is no possibility that this oath, and the resulting covenant, will fail. Heaven and earth would pass away before that truth would somehow be abrogated. It would be impossible. So God establishes His own relationship to man predicated upon the certainty that Calvary would occur.
It was with that in mind that, when Jesus came to the cross at Calvary, there was no other way. Though He cried out in anguish, His soul being greatly distressed, there was no possibility that He could be let out of the cross. For if that were so then the covenant that shaped the creation of mankind, and the world itself, would be abandoned and heaven and earth would disappear. Indeed there would be no basis then for anything to “be”. So, the required death of Jesus on the cross is the ratification in time of the oath God has sworn to God—God with God. When God swears to God, heaven and earth would pass away… That is why the Father could not, in any fashion, ignore His oath that He had made with himself, nor could the Son be excused from the oath that He had made with the Father.
This covenant was attached to human beings in the days of Abraham and it was a specific attachment of this covenant to Abraham. When God swore on oath to Abraham, He was swearing that in the seed of Abraham the nations of the earth would be blessed. That’s because God had already agreed to bless mankind and agreed to pay the price. This was all done. The only question was: how would this be accomplished? Since the days of Adam and Eve, and the fall of man, God had previously promised that in the seed of the woman—in her seed—that He would crush the head of the serpent. He would undo and destroy the works of the devil. (Inserted – “So the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, ‘Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’” – Genesis 3:14,15)
So it would be through the human seed that God would come. Now when the days came for God to make this choice, He specifically selected Abraham so that it was through the seed of Abraham—not the seeds—as of many (meaning not through the Jewish nation would He redeem the world. That is that the Jews themselves would not become this holy people through whom God would redeem mankind, but the Jews would become that nation through whom God would bring the seed—the one seed—through whom He would save the entire world). When it was time for God to attend to that aspect, He visited Abraham and He made Abraham the beneficiary of this pre-existing covenant by saying to Abraham, “and in thy seed I will bless the nations of the earth.” (Inserted – actual verse—“ ‘and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’” – Genesis 22:18)
So Abraham became the beneficiary of that result that came from God’s covenant with himself. What came from God’s covenant with himself was a promise… a promise… not a wish, not a hope, but an absolute promise—a guaranteed promise because God had sworn by God; God had sworn to God. Therefore the result of that oath is an absolute promise. All that might be considered “grace” is summarized in the promise that arises out of God’s oath to God, because such an oath is unshakeable and it obligates the maker and the one who performs. The maker and the one who performs are both God—God the Father and God the Son—therefore this promise is unshakeable, it’s immutable, it cannot change. Heaven and earth would disappear before such a thing wasn’t true.
The foundation of all that we call “grace” is the covenantal relationship into which God entered with himself and this was the first, and the original, covenant. It was not the covenant on Mt. Sinai that was the first and original covenant, but this covenant, and when God attaches the promise of that covenant to Abraham… in the descendents of Abraham then, this covenant would be fulfilled. And this is exactly what the Scriptures speak about when, in the book of Galatians, chapter 3, the following is said, at verse 15… he says, “Brothers, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case.” Indeed, there was a covenant that has already been established: God with God, and even a human covenant, he said, could not be broken. The promises were spoken to Abraham.
You see, a covenant produces promises: God with God produced a promise to the human race. The human race is not party number one, nor is it party number two. Abraham is not a party to this covenant; it’s God with God. But there is a promise that attenuates to human beings as a result of this covenant. The promise is that we would be the sons of God. God now made this promise specifically to Abraham and to his seed, and so that is the next line. “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.” Then he gets to the point: verse 17—critical—if you are listening to this, write down Galatians 3:17 and go and look it up yourselves. He explains it this way, “What I mean is this: The law,” (this is Torah) “introduced 430 years later…” Later than what? Later than the promise that God made to Abraham. The law, or Torah, “does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise.” (Inserted – Galatians 3:15-17)
In short, there is a covenant that pre-exists Mt. Sinai. The covenant from Mt. Sinai is the second covenant. It is not “God with God”, but it is, as Moses said to the Israelites, in Deuteronomy the 5th chapter, “God did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with all of us who are here today.” (Inserted – actual verse—“The Lord our God made a covenant with us at Horeb. It was not with our fathers that the Lord made this covenant, but with us, with all of us who are alive here today.” – Deuteronomy 5:2,3) Why? Because there was a covenant that God had made with himself concerning which Abraham, the chief of the fathers of the Jewish people, became the beneficiary. This is why, in the Old Testament, prior to the covenant from Mt. Sinai that you have priests… priests. I will want to discuss this in the second portion of this summary. It is why you have priests.
There is no possibility that you can have the functioning of a priesthood apart from a covenant that establishes the priesthood in the first place. Otherwise, the people are just vicariously “priests”. It would be no different from, say, the priests of Baal or the priests of various and sundry gods of the Old Testament. When Melchizedek was described in both the Old Testament—in Genesis, the 14th chapter, and again in the book of Hebrews, the 7th chapter—when Melchizedek is described as a “priest of God Most High, who blesses Abram”, from the return of the kings. (Inserted – actual verse—“Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High, and he blesses Abram, saying, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.” – Genesis 14:18,19)
The question is: how on earth would he be a king of God Most High if there is no existing covenant with God? And the fact that he is a priest of God Most High, and no ordinary priest of God Most High, mind you, because he is the priest of the “order” of which Jesus is the high priest. Jesus is the high priest “of the order of Melchizedek.” (Inserted – actual verse—“No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was. So Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But God said to him, ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father.’ And he says in another place, ‘You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.’” – Hebrews 5:4-6)
When we get into the existence of the priesthood before the law (and I will do that in a subsequent presentation) you will see this with greater clarity. But for now, here is Melchizedek who is a contemporary of Abraham. He’s not a relative of Abraham, he is his contemporary… it means he is existing at the time that Abraham exists. He is priest of God Most High. How could you have a priest without an existing covenant by which the priesthood itself is constituted? You could not. There had to have been a covenant if there were priests of God but in the next broadcast I will show you multiple examples of priests before the law… before Torah. And these priests relate to Jesus and to his order and not to the order of Levi, which comes after this first, and greatest, of the covenants.
In short then, God framed creation within an existing covenant so whenever mankind sinned against God and became extremely wicked, God did not obliterate him [man] then, but waited—in the days of Noah—until there was a righteous man. Because God started with a righteous man—with a son of God—Adam, and God continued with a righteous man—Noah. It only takes one righteous for there to come—in the fullness of time—an entire race. Jesus is the seed of this righteousness among mankind. So even though God could have obliterated the human race in the days of Noah, He waited until there was a righteous man because He had sworn on oath to himself that He would have sons from this race that He was creating when He created Adam. Consequently He called Adam “the son of God.” We are of this line when we are the sons of God. Let us continue to discuss then, the glory of our inheritance. I’m Sam Soleyn. God bless you.
Scripture References:
Revelation 13:8
John 1:29
Hebrews 6:13
Genesis 1:26
I Corinthians 15:22
John 1:12,13
Luke 3:38
Genesis 3:14,15
Genesis 22:18
Galatians 3:15-17
Deuteronomy 5:2,3
Genesis 14:18,19
Hebrews 5:4-6
