Last week, I’d stayed up later than usual and instead of reading a chapter in Acts before bed, I turned to the Psalms to find a short passage to read. I just happened to open the Bible (a Tree of Life Version that I keep in my nightstand) to Psalm 126. Something about this translation caught my eye, and it prompted today’s post. Here’s the full psalm to start us off:
1 When Adonai restored the captives of Zion, it was as if we were dreaming. 2 Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with a song of joy. Then they said among the nations, “Adonai has done great things for them.” 3 Adonai has done great things for us —we are joyful! 4 Restore us from captivity, Adonai, like streams in the Negev. 5 Those who sow in tears will reap with a song of joy. 6 Whoever keeps going out weeping, carrying his bag of seed, will surely come back with a song of joy, carrying his sheaves.
Psalm 126, TLV
It’s that last verse that captured my attention: “Whoever keeps going out weeping, carrying his bag of seed, will surely come back with a song of joy, carrying his sheaves.” It might (if you’re at all familiar with American gospel songs and Protestant hymns) make you think of the 1874 hymn “Bringing in the Sheaves.” For me, the part that captured my attention is this “keeps going out” line.
In Psalm 126:6, some translations simply say, “He who goes out weeping” (WEB) but the TLV and others like the NKJV include this sense of continuing to go out while you’re weeping. The setting for this psalm is restoration from captivity. Israel had gone into captivity, and now God delivered them and brought them back to the land. The psalmist is looking back on this and making an agricultural analogy.
Suppose you’re in the spring, ready to plant, but something happens. It’s a set back, a tragedy, a calamity, a grief-inducing event. It’s the sort of thing that would make you weep. At that point, you have a choice. You can “keep going out” and sowing into the future, or you could give up. But you know that if you want to reap a harvest, you need to plant seed. Similarly, the metaphorical future “harvest” that we get in our own lives is determined (at least in part) by what we “sow” now.
Do not be deceived. God will not be made a fool. For a person will reap what he sows, because the person who sows to his own flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. So we must not grow weary in doing good, for in due time we will reap, if we do not give up.
Galatians 6:7-9, NET
If the agricultural metaphor isn’t working for you, we can relate it to other things with a cause and effect. If you put a steady diet of unhealthy food into your body, you’ll get an unhealthy body; if you eat healthy foods, you’ll have a healthier body. Sowing (like how we eat and whether we exercise) is an investment in the future, for better or worse.
Notice that Paul says “we must not grow weary in doing good” and that we should “not give up.” Sowing is a long-term investment. It takes time for the seed to sprout, grow, and bear fruit. We might not see the results of it for quite some time. As Psalm 126 says we need to “keep going out” to sow, trusting that God will give us a good harvest.
The word “hope” isn’t used in the psalm that we’re looking at today, but it’s an essential ingredient for what we’re talking about here.
For it is written in the law of Moses, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” God is not concerned here about oxen, is he? Or is he not surely speaking for our benefit? It was written for us, because the one plowing and threshing ought to work in hope of enjoying the harvest.
1 Corinthians 9:9-10, NET (bold italics mark a quotation from Deut. 25:4)
Here, Paul is saying that teachers of the word have the right to make their living by preaching the gospel (1 Cor. 9). The basic principle is that if you put the work into something, you have a right to expect to enjoy the results of that labor. Hope in the Bible isn’t something nebulous. When hope is related to God, there’s a level of certainty to it. God provides a solid anchorage for our hope (Heb. 6:19), giving us good reason to confidently expect that if we keep going out sowing, we will eventually bring in a harvest with joy.
Not only this, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly await our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with endurance.
One of the things that we humans can find frustrating is that God is a long-term thinker. When He promises to give us the desires of our heart, for example (Ps. 37:6), we want that to happen immediately. I didn’t expect it to take 15+ years and a healthy dose of heartache before He answered my prayers to be a wife and mother, but then I found myself marrying a wonderful man and just over a year later having a beautiful daughter with him. I don’t think I’d be so blessed now if I hadn’t continued “sowing into” my life and my relationship with God during the season of weeping.
When we read, “all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28, NET), we often forget that Paul is talking on a cosmic timescale. Before the statement about all things working together for good, he says, “I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared to the coming glory that will be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18, NET; see Rom. 8:18-30). Sometimes–even often–a harvest of joy happens now, in our human lives. But even if it doesn’t happen now, it will certainly happen at the end if we don’t give up.
My aim is to know him [Jesus Christ], to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already attained this—that is, I have not already been perfected—but I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me.Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let those of us who are “perfect” embrace this point of view. If you think otherwise, God will reveal to you the error of your ways.
Philippians 3:10-15, NET
Scripture encourages us to look beyond our immediate circumstances with hope, trusting in the glorious future that God has planned for us. Long-term, if we’re going to “reap” the future God promises to His firstfruits, we need to keep pressing on toward the goal of eternal life. It’s this perspective that lets us “consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance” and endurance helps bring us to perfection (James 1:2-3, NET). You’ll reap blessings in this life as well (especially if you have a mindset that looks for and recognizes them), but the biggest blessings we have are the opportunity to become God’s children and the promise of eternal life forever with Him after He “harvests” us with great joy.
When I was writing last week’s post about inheriting covenants, I found myself writing a lot about Galatians. At one point while drafting, more than half that post was just about chapters 2 and 3. I decided to copy all that I’d written into a new post, condense the Galatians section, and focus entirely on Galatians this week.
I don’t usually spend much time in Galatians, at least not writing about it here on the blog (though I did previously write another “crash course” post on it 4 years ago). I’ve more than made up for that in today’s post, though, which is quite long (apologies for the 4,000 word article).
My reason for avoiding Galatians is it’s very easy to misinterpret, and I usually don’t want to take the time to contextualize verses from it and/or I’m not quite sure how to explicate them correctly. It’s easier to quote from other books, at least when we’re talking about a subject like covenants or a Christian’s relationship to God’s law. The “I am crucified with Christ,” fruit of the spirit, and “sowing and reaping” sections are the easiest to understand, so that’s where I (and most people I know of) spend most of their time if they go to Galatians. Today, though, we’ll do our best to study the whole thing.
Context and Background
Galatians is one of the letters that Paul likely wrote with co-authors. He began the letter, “Paul … and all the brothers with me, to the churches of Galatia” (Gal. 1:1-2. NET). Though Paul wrote this letter with his own hands (Gal. 6:11), it seems that he collaborated, at least to some extent, with other believers. That would make sense considering the subject matter; Paul’s main focus is on correcting errors in the Galatian’s theology. Bringing in others to consult on and probably proofread the letter makes it less about Paul and more about the truth held by trusted, established followers of Jesus.
Paul also takes great care to outline his qualifications as an authority on the subject of the true gospel. He can write to correct distorted gospels because he is “an apostle (not from men, nor by human agency, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead)” (Gal. 1:1, NET). He also reminds his readers “that the gospel I preached is not of human origin.For I did not receive it or learn it from any human source; instead I received it by a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11-12, NET). Right off the bat, Paul wants to be very clear that the gospel Galatian believers originally received came straight from Jesus and was verified by the apostles who’d been personally taught by Jesus (Gal. 1:13-2:10). That understanding helps contextualize Paul’s shock that he would even need to write this letter.
I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are following a different gospel—not that there really is another gospel, but there are some who are disturbing you and wanting to distort the gospel of Christ. But even if we (or an angel from heaven) should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be condemned to hell!As we have said before, and now I say again, if any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let him be condemned to hell!Am I now trying to gain the approval of people, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a slave of Christ!
Galatians 1:6-10, NET
We’re not sure exactly when Galatians was written, but it was at some point after Paul had preached the gospel to churches in this region. Like most of his letters, he’s writing to a group that he already has a relationship with and addresses something specific that’s going on in the church.
One exception to this pattern is the letter to Rome; Paul hadn’t been there before, and Romans is an introduction of sorts (Rom. 1:8-15; 15:22-24). That makes Romans very helpful in understanding Galatians; we can assume that the foundational theology Paul outlines in Romans is pretty much what he would have preached to the Galatians. Since the gospel he preached came straight from Jesus, it wouldn’t have been changing from church-to-church or over the course of Paul’s ministry.
Likewise, we can use the gospels as guides to interpret Galatians (as well as Paul’s other writings). As a faithful apostle, Paul would not have contradicted any of Jesus’s teachings. If there’s ever a case where we’re not sure what Paul meant (and he can be tricky to interpret, as even Peter points out [2 Pet. 3:15-16]), we need to compare what he’s saying to Jesus’s teachings. Whatever interpretation we go with must agree with Jesus. We won’t talk about the General Epistles much in today’s post, but those are also helpfulpre-reqs for understanding Paul.
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Paul Setting The Stage
Paul does not outline the specifics of the heresy in Galatia. He assumes his readers already know what’s going on. Those of us divorced from this context have to read closely and draw conclusions from the letter and what Acts tells us about similar questions. It appears that the Galatian believers had been deceived by someone who came in and told them they needed to keep the whole Jewish law in order to be saved. The Galatians were worried that male believers needed to be circumcised, that they all had to keep the whole Old Covenant law, and that they additionally had to keep Jewish additions to God’s law.
A large section of the letter’s introduction is devoted to Paul explaining his ministry and pointing out that the true Christian apostles never compelled new Gentile converts to be circumcised (see Acts. 11 and 15). Male circumcision was a key part of the Abrahamic Covenant, which continued for ancient Israel into the Sinai Covenant and up to the time of Jesus. Paul addressed the question of whether new converts to following Jesus the Messiah should be circumcised in several letters. Taken together, his basic explanation was that New Covenant circumcision happens in the heart rather than as a physical sign (which aligns perfectly with God’s Old Testament intention as well [Deut. 10:16; 30:6; Jer. 4:4; 9:26; Rom. 2:29; Phil. 3:3; Col. 2:11-12]).
But when Cephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he had clearly done wrong. Until certain people came from James, he had been eating with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he stopped doing this and separated himself because he was afraid of those who were pro-circumcision. …
We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that no one is justified by the works of the law but by the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by the faithfulness of Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified. But if while seeking to be justified in Christ we ourselves have also been found to be sinners, is Christ then one who encourages sin? Absolutely not! But if I build up again those things I once destroyed, I demonstrate that I am one who breaks God’s law. For through the law I died to the law so that I may live to God.
I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside God’s grace, because if righteousness could come through the law, then Christ died for nothing!
Galatians 2:11-12, 15-21, NET
In other words, the Old Covenant ended with Jesus’s death and a New Covenant took its place. We certainly don’t live lawlessly now, but we live with the knowledge that we can’t make ourselves righteous. Jesus’s faithfulness brings us righteousness and justification. The moment we think we’re saved by our own efforts rather than Christ’s sacrifice, we’ve set aside God’s grace. That doesn’t mean we break God’s law now; Christ in us does not encourage sin nor did He do away with God’s law (Matt. 5:17-20; Rom. 3:28-31). But He also didn’t redeem us and give us the Spirit so that we could then try to save ourselves by our own efforts.
You foolish Galatians! Who has cast a spell on you? Before your eyes Jesus Christ was vividly portrayed as crucified! The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?Are you so foolish? Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort?Have you suffered so many things for nothing?—if indeed it was for nothing. Does God then give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law or by your believing what you heard?
Galatians 3:1-5, NET
These questions prime the Galatians for the next parts of Paul’s argument. He defends the gospel he preached previously, then asks questions to wake them up to ways they’d distorted the gospel. From the way Paul speaks, I assume the Galatians made one of two errors very common to people trying to follow Jesus.
Sometimes, we err by becoming too permissive and thinking that God’s grace means we have no responsibilities and that law doesn’t exist anymore (Paul addressed this with the Corinthians, who prided themselves on allowing sin in the congregation). Other times, we’re more like the Galatians and error by thinking that if we do every command written in the Bible just right and maybe add some Jewish tradition on top of that, then we’ll make ourselves good enough to deserve salvation. Neither is correct.
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Faith Like Abraham
Rather than present again the nuanced rhetorical argument of Romans, where Paul explains that the New Covenant replaces the Old Covenant entirely and elevates the Law of God to a higher, spiritual, internalized level, in Galatians Paul goes back even farther to the covenant God made with Abraham. For this letter, he needs to show that the Galatians are not saved by doing the works commanded in the law and counter the claim that new believers should be circumcised. To do that, he argues that New Covenant believers follow the same pattern that Abraham did even though they’re not doing the physical sign of that covenant.
Just as Abraham believedGod, and it was credited to him as righteousness,so then, understand that those who believe are the sons of Abraham.And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, proclaimed the gospel to Abraham ahead of time, saying, “All the nationswill be blessed in you.”So then those who believe are blessed along with Abraham the believer.
Galatians 3:6-9, NET (bolt italics mark quotes from the Old Testament)
Here, Paul quotes from the record in Genesis of God cutting a covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15). This covenant is one of inheritance and blessing. We learn more about this in Genesis 17 and 18, which Paul also quotes. Back in Genesis, God said He would bless Abraham and that “I have chosen him so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just. Then the Lord will give to Abraham what he promised him” (Gen. 18:19, NET). Notice that God’s covenant with Abraham included following the Lord’s way and doing what is right. But, as Paul emphasized, the promises come to Abraham and his descendants because God is faithful, not because they kept the Law that God later shared as part of the Sinai Covenant or because they observed Jewish traditions added later.
For all who rely on doing the works of the law are under a curse, because it is written, “Cursed is everyone who does not keep on doing everything written in the book of the law.”Now it is clear no one is justified before God by the law, because the righteous one will live by faith.But the law is not based on faith, but the one who does the works of the law will live by them.Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (because it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”)in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham would come to the Gentiles, so that we could receive the promise of the Spirit by faith.
Galatians 3:10-14, NET (bolt italics mark quotes from the Old Testament)
God does want people to follow His law (it defines sin, and since sin is not consistent with God’s character it damages relationships between us and Him). But God also knows that all people sin and we can’t keep His law perfectly. It is very, very good for us that He upholds His parts of covenants even when people aren’t faithful, because one of those covenant promises was that God would send Jesus as the Messiah. That’s how we inherit the Abrahamic Covenant promises: through Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, I offer an example from everyday life: When a covenant has been ratified, even though it is only a human contract, no one can set it aside or add anything to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his descendant. Scripture does not say, “and to the descendants,” referring to many, but “andto your descendant,” referring to one, who is Christ. What I am saying is this: The law that came 430 years later does not cancel a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to invalidate the promise. For if the inheritance is based on the law, it is no longer based on the promise, but God graciously gave it to Abraham through the promise.
Galatians 3:15-18, NET (bolt italics mark quotes from the Old Testament)
A few verses later, Paul says that the Law was “added because of transgressions, until the arrival of the descendant to whom the promise had been made” (Gal. 3:19, NET). He also says the law was a guard to keep us safe and a “guardian” or “tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24, WEB). The law defines sin for us and reveals the penalties for breaking God’s covenant law. As transgressors of the covenant, we deserved to inherit the curses contained in the covenanting words (Deut. 11:26-32; 27:1-28:68).
The only one who perfectly kept God’s covenant was Jesus Christ, and so He’s the only one who truly deserved to inherit all the promises. Once Christ inherited, He died and “willed” those promises to us. Now, “if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29, NET). Moving from the Old to the New Covenant is like going from being slaves to being “sons with full rights” (Gal. 3:23-4:7).
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No Going Back To the Old
Now we get to the passages of Galatians that I struggle with, because I understand that the Old Covenant is over and we’re under the New Covenant, but I also know from Jesus Himself and from other apostolic writings that God’s law still exists. The confusing part is that most of God’s law that we have recorded in scripture was given as part of the Old Covenant. So I struggle sometimes with figuring out what in the Torah is God’s timeless, enduring Law and what is part of the Old Covenant that ended with Jesus’s sacrifice.
Formerly when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods at all.But now that you have come to know God (or rather to be known by God), how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless basic forces? Do you want to be enslaved to them all over again?You are observing religious days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you that my work for you may have been in vain. I beg you, brothers and sisters, become like me, because I have become like you. You have done me no wrong!
Galatians 4:8-12, NET
Remember that he’s talking with Gentile converts, so the “beings that by nature are not gods at all” are most likely references to false gods worshiped by people in the Galatian region. But Paul is also talking about not being enslaved to the Old Covenant, so we read this part about “observing religious days and months and seasons and years” and readers wonder if Paul means something pagan, something added by the Jews, or the sabbaths outlined in Leviticus 23. Many commentators say it’s the Sabbaths, but Jesus kept the Sabbath and the author of Hebrews (very likely Paul) concludes, “a Sabbath rest remains for the people of God” (Heb. 4:9). Additionally, Paul clearly instructed the Corinthians to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (1 Cor. 5:8). Whatever he’s talking about here in Galatians, it isn’t getting rid of God’s holy days.
Contextually, since Paul was talking about the time before they knew God at all, it seems most likely that he’s referring to something other than the Biblical holy days. It may be that the Galatians practiced some kind of religious syncretism and continued keeping their pagan festivals. Or perhaps he’s rebuking the Galatians for keeping the holy days wrongly (perhaps transactionally, as if by keeping these days God will “owe” them something), as ancient Israel did when God told them, “I cannot tolerate sin-stained celebrations!” (Is. 1:13, NET).
Paul then made a personal appeal to the Galatians to hear him and come back to the truth. He accuses those who’ve been preaching a distorted gospel of trying to isolate the Galatians for their own gain (Gal. 4:13-20). Then, he returns to the topic of being under the law and this time uses Abraham’s children as an allegory. It roughly parallels Romans 11, in that Paul is contrasting the Jews who didn’t follow the Messiah with the Jews and Gentiles who accept Jesus and inherit the promises of God (Gal. 4:21-31; Rom. 11).
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A Christian’s Freedom
As Paul begins to wrap up this letter (ch. 5-6), he moves to talking about the freedom of New Covenant believers to put God’s way of life into practice by living in faith and love. Essentially, the second half of Galatians is an expanded version of a statement he makes in his first letter to Corinth: “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Instead, keeping God’s commandments is what counts” (1 Cor. 7:19, NET).
You who are trying to be declared righteous by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace! For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait expectantly for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision carries any weight—the only thing that matters is faith working through love. You were running well; who prevented you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from the one who calls you! …
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity to indulge your flesh, but through love serve one another.For the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment, namely, “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”
Galatians 5:4-8, 13-14 NET
As we’ve been talking about for a good part of this past year, faith involves active, relational loyalty. It’s part of keeping covenant with God that we appreciate His gift of grace by honoring Him, patterning our lives after Him, and obeying His commands. At the same time, we must never think that the actions we take in response to God saving us are a way for us to save ourselves. Jesus is the one who saved us. He even frees us from being under the law in the sense “that law is not intended for a righteous person, but for lawless and rebellious people, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane” (1 Tim. 1:9, NET). If we aren’t any of those things (i.e. we’ve repented of sin, believe in Jesus who cleanses us from sin, and follow Him faithfully, repenting if we miss the mark), then we aren’t under any penalty from breaking the law.
But I say, live by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.For the flesh has desires that are opposed to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires that are opposed to the flesh, for these are in opposition to each other, so that you cannot do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, envying, murder, drunkenness, carousing, and similar things. I am warning you, as I had warned you before: Those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God!
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.If we live by the Spirit, let us also behave in accordance with the Spirit.
Brothers and sisters, if a person is discovered in some sin, you who are spiritual restore such a person in a spirit of gentleness. Pay close attention to yourselves, so that you are not tempted too. Carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Let each one examine his own work. Then he can take pride in himself and not compare himself with someone else
Galatians 5:16-6:4, NET
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That’s a long quote, but I think it’s key to understanding Paul’s take-away points from this letter. His insistence that the Galatian believers don’t need to be circumcised or keep the law does not exempt them from following God’s commandments. In fact, he issues the strict warning that those who sin will not inherit God’s kingdom! Living in the Spirit and walking by faith (as is expected of New Covenant Christians) means behaving in accordance with the spirit and therefore fulfilling the law of Christ (see also 1 Cor. 9.21). It’s a higher, better level of commandment keeping than the Galatians were trying to do by focusing only on the physical sign of an old covenant and not on the heart-level transformation that God looks for in His people.
Paul wraps up this letter with an admonition to teach truth, encouragement to keep doing good, and another reminder that the people who’d deceived the Galatians just wanted to avoid persecution and make themselves look righteous (Gal. 6:6-18). In conclusion, Galatians was written to address a specific problem in a specific church region at a specific time. But it still has a lot to teach us today when we take the time to put Paul’s words in context and understand his argument. Like the Galatians, we must be wary of letting ourselves get entangled in ideas or practices that sound righteous, but really distract us from faithfully following Christ and fulfilling the law of God by truly practicing love for Him and our neighbors.
I’ve been thinking about covenants a lot lately, especially the topic of which covenants transfer to us today and how that happens. I think of this as the topic of “inheriting covenants,” the title of a blog post I wrote way back in 2016. When I realized how long ago I wrote that post, I wanted to revisit the topic. As we grow in our walk with God, we should gain a deeper appreciation and understanding of His word. It’s good to go back sometimes and revisit topics we thought we understood well. As Paul said, “If someone thinks he knows something, he does not yet know to the degree that he needs to know” (1 Cor. 8:2, NET). There’s so much depth to God’s word; so much to learn as we grow.
Defining Covenants
Let’s start with the basics. In Hebrew, the word for “covenant” is berith (H1285). In Greek, for the New Testament, the word is diatheke (G1242). These words don’t mean exactly the same thing, and so it can be challenging for us today to figure out what the Biblical writers meant by covenants and how they worked. Also, most of our lives aren’t based on covenants today; in the U.S., I’ve rarely heard that word used outside of a religious context. We need to do some linguistic and historical research to understand covenants, which are so important to the Biblical world and God’s ongoing relationships with humanity.
The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (TWOT) notes that “Apart from blood ties the covenant was the way people of the ancient world formed wider relationships with each other” (entry 282a). Covenants have to do with establishing relationship. They were binding agreements between two parties that people in the ancient world took very seriously; “There is no firmer guarantee of legal security peace or personal loyalty than the covenant” (Behm, qtd. in TWOT). When God made a covenant with His people, we was binding Himself in relationship to them in the most reliable way possible. Like other covenants, the ones between God and humanity include both expectations and promises. Covenant documents between people survive to the present day, and the format of them has many similarities with God’s Ten Commandments and the book of Deuteronomy (Klein, ref. in TWOT).
In Greek, diatheke means testament, as in “the last disposition which one makes of his earthly possessions after his death,” or a covenant agreement (Thayer). According to Spiros Zodhiates, dispensation/testament is always the usage in classical Greek (The Complete WordStudy Dictionary of the New Testament, entry 1242). New Testament writers picked this word to use for covenants. That might seem odd at first, but Zodhiates proposes a definition of covenant that covers both the unilateral enactment of diatheke and the established relationship of berith. He writes that what we describe as a covenant “is a divine order or agreement which is established without any human cooperation and springing from the choice of God Himself whose will and determination account for both its origin and its character” (entry G1242, section IV).
Indeed, we always see God as the initiator of covenants and, by necessity, the relationship established by a covenant with God is always one where He is the superior party. God calls us His friends, but that is a gracious choice on His part; we are by no means His equals nor can we make demands of Him. We either choose to accept the covenants He offers, or we reject relationship with Him. We don’t get the chance to insert our own demands into the covenant; we trust that we’re more than adequately protected and provided for by His promises.
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Key Covenants
There are four main covenants that God made with human beings that are recorded in the Old Testament writings: the Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, the Sinai Covenant, and the Davidic Covenant. There are other covenants mentioned, but those are the big ones. The BibleProject has a great summary of these on YouTube:
With the exception of the Noahic Covenant, the covenants God made with people included expectations for God’s human covenant partners. God kept up His covenant promises, but people broke the covenants with God. That put us under a death-penalty; a curse (Rom. 3:23; 5:12; Gal. 3:10). Then Jesus came along. As a human being, He was a physical descendant of Abraham, an Israelite heir of the covenants with God, and a man in the lineage of David (Acts 2:29-31). He was born into the physical position of an heir to all these key covenants. He also came as God in the flesh, so He can see covenants from both sides and keep covenant perfectly both as God and human.
Prior to Jesus Christ coming to this earth, all except the Noahic Covenant were linked to Abraham’s descendants. The Sinai Covenant was with all of physical Israel and included a fuller revelation of God’s law and expectations. The Davidic covenant was more specific, applying to one line of the tribe of Judah. It was possible for a stranger to join themselves to Israel and become part of the Abrahamic and Sinai Covenants with God, as Rahab and Ruth did, but it was apparently quite rare and more often than not was discussed in a prophetic context (Is. 56:6-7).
That also changed with Jesus’s coming. In the New Testament, Paul writes to Gentile believers that they were “alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” until the time of their conversion. They were not previously heirs to the covenants, “But now in Christ Jesus you who used to be far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:12-13, NET). This is a fulfillment of a promise that God delivered through His prophets; a promise to make a better New Covenant with the people of Israel and the spiritual descendants of Abraham.
In this letter, Paul writes to a group of churches with the expressed purpose of countering distorted gospels (Gal. 1:6-8). He wants to ensure that they follow the pure gospel that he receive, not some distortion arising from human reasoning (Gal. 1:1, 11-12, 15-24). That’s the perspective Paul’s coming from when he discusses covenants in this letter.
It appears that the Galatian believers had been deceived by a person or group who told them they needed to keep the whole Jewish law in order to be saved. The Galatians were worried that the male believers needed to be circumcised, that they had to keep the whole Old Covenant law, and that they additionally had to keep Jewish additions to God’s law. Paul reminds them that it is Jesus’s faithfulness that brings us righteousness and justification, not our own efforts. That doesn’t mean we break God’s law; Christ in us most certainly does not encourage sin. But He also didn’t save us and give us the Spirit so that we could then save ourselves by our own efforts. Rather, we’re following the example of Abraham.
Just as Abraham believedGod, and it was credited to him as righteousness,so then, understand that those who believe are the sons of Abraham.And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, proclaimed the gospel to Abraham ahead of time, saying, “All the nationswill be blessed in you.”So then those who believe are blessed along with Abraham the believer.
Galatians 3:6-9, NET (bolt italics mark quotes from the Old Testament)
Here, Paul quotes from the record in Genesis of God cutting a covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15). This covenant is one of inheritance and blessing. We learn more about it in Genesis 17 and 18, which Paul also quotes. If you read that section, you’ll notice that God’s covenant with Abraham included people following the Lord’s way and doing what is right. But, as Paul emphasizes, the promises come to Abraham and his descendants because God is faithful, not because they kept the Law that God later shared as part of the Sinai Covenant or because they observed Jewish traditions added later.
God does want people to follow His law (it defines sin and, since sin is not consistent with God’s character, it damages relationships between us and Him). But God also knows that all people sin. It is very, very good for us that He upholds His part of covenants even when people aren’t faithful, because one of those covenant promises was that God would send Jesus as the Messiah. That’s how we inherit the Abrahamic Covenant promises: through Jesus Christ.
Brothers and sisters, I offer an example from everyday life: When a covenant has been ratified, even though it is only a human contract, no one can set it aside or add anything to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his descendant. Scripture does not say, “and to the descendants,” referring to many, but “andto your descendant,” referring to one, who is Christ. What I am saying is this: The law that came 430 years later does not cancel a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to invalidate the promise. For if the inheritance is based on the law, it is no longer based on the promise, but God graciously gave it to Abraham through the promise.
Galatians 3:15-18, NET (bolt italics mark quotes from the Old Testament)
A few verses later, Paul says that the Law was “added because of transgressions, until the arrival of the descendant to whom the promise had been made” (Gal. 3:19, NET). He also says the law was a guard to keep us safe and a “tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24, WEB). The law defines sin for us and reveals the penalties for breaking God’s covenant law. As transgressors of the covenant, we deserved to inherit the curses contained in the covenanting words (Deut. 11:26-32; 27:1-28:68). The only one who perfectly kept God’s covenant was Jesus Christ, and so He’s the only one who truly deserved to inherit all the promises. When He died, He “willed” those promises to us. We inherit the Abrahamic Covenant alongside Him, and through Him we’re brought into the New Covenant that God long ago promised would replace the Old (Sinai) Covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8).
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Promises Through Jesus
I find it so fascinating that the New Testament writers use the fact that the Greek word for covenant also means last will and testament to connect the idea of covenant inheritance to our adoption as God’s children (Gal. 3:26-4:7; Rom. 8:14-17). The author of Hebrews spends quite a bit of time explaining this concept, particularly the transition from Old to New Covenant.
And so he [Jesus] is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the eternal inheritance he has promised, since he died to set them free from the violations committed under the first covenant. For where there is a will, the death of the one who made it must be proven.For a will takes effect only at death, since it carries no force while the one who made it is alive.
Hebrews 9:15-17
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As the Word of God, Jesus is (almost certainly) the God-being who delivered the first covenants in the Old Testament. Then, as the original testator, He died so we can be freed from the Old Covenant and join Him in a New Covenant (Jer. 31:32-34; Rom 7:1-4). At the same time, as a human heir to all the covenants (and the only person who kept humanity’s side of the covenant bargain, since He never sinned), Jesus died to take on Himself the penalty we earned for breaking the covenant, purify us with His blood, and bring us into a new covenant (Heb. 9:18-28). Yet another layer is that He inherits all the promises, wills them to us at His death, then rises again to inherit as well (Eph. 1:3-21).
We were also assigned an inheritance in him, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who does all things after the counsel of his will, to the end that we should be to the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ. …
For this cause I also … don’t cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he worked in Christ, when he raised him from the dead
Ephesians 1:11-12, 15-20, WEB
It’s amazing to me that God invites us to be covenant partners with Him and participate in the relationships that He’s been building with humanity since the world began (the word “covenant” isn’t used in the creation story, but the words of His promises to Adam and Eve are covenant-like, and some call it the Adamic Covenant). People often say that God wants a personal relationship with you, and covenants are the way that the Bible describes that relationship. They’re so important to understanding our role in God’s plan and His family, and I don’t think we talk about them enough. The more deeply and completely we understand covenants, the better we’ll understand God and the relationship He wants to have with us.
About six years ago (at the end of 2016), I wrote a blog post called “Grace to Build An Ark.” As I’ve studied grace more over the years, I keep coming back to this idea. When Noah found grace in the Lord’s eyes, God didn’t drop a ready-made ark from the sky. He gave Noah the plans to build an ark for himself.
We rightly think of grace as an “unmerited favor” or a “free gift” from God. But we often wrongly think that because the gift is given freely there are no accompanying expectations. I write about this error in posts like “Learning More About Covenant Grace” and you can learn even more about it by reading the book that inspired that post, Relational Grace: The Reciprocal and Binding Covenant of Charis(2015). Here’s one quote from the author, Brent Schmidt:
Jews knew about covenantal relationships from the Bible. Every commandment was a covenant with God. Several stories, including Joseph, Moses, and David, associate the concepts of grace and mercy with covenants. Greek-speaking Jews lived in a culture that depended heavily on reciprocal relationships and understood what charis meant. When Paul taught them using the word charis, they would have understood that by accepting God’s grace they were making covenantal obligations.
BRENT SCHMIDT, RELATIONAL GRACE, P. 64
Noah’s story is the very first time we see the word “grace” in the Bible (Hebrew chen, also “kindness” or “favor”). God looked down on earth and “saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth.” Grieving, God decided to destroy His creation, except “Noah found favor in Yahweh’s eyes” (Gen. 6:5-8, WEB). Once God chose to extend grace to Noah, He warned Him about the world-destroying flood, saying, “Make a ship of gopher wood,” gave him building instructions, and promised, “I will establish my covenant with you” (Gen. 6:13-21, WEB).
Noah and his family didn’t earn the right to be in the ark or to have a covenant-relationship with God. Their salvation was a gracious choice God made. But Noah still had to obey the command to build. Likewise, salvation is offered freely to us by God’s grace as He welcomes us into a covenant with Him. And we also have an obligation to obey God and to build something.
Giving Noah the time and ability to build an ark so he and his family would live and the world would continue was a free gift of God’s grace. But Noah wouldn’t have been saved if he’d refused to build the ark. Peter and the author of Hebrews both talk about how important this building step was, and what it means for us today.
By faith Noah, when he was warned about things not yet seen, with reverent regard constructed an ark for the deliverance of his family. Through faith he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith.
Hebrews 11:7, NET
God patiently waited in the days of Noah as an ark was being constructed. In the ark a few, that is eight souls, were delivered through water. And this prefigured baptism, which now saves you—not the washing off of physical dirt but the pledge of a good conscience to God—through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who went into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels and authorities and powers subject to him.
1 Pet. 3:20-22, NET
Hebrews talks about the righteousness by faith that Noah inherited. Peter says Noah’s salvation prefigured baptism and our salvation. We live in times very similar to those Noah faced, and we’re also fast approaching the end of this world (1 John 2:18; Matt. 24:37-39; 2 Pet. 3:1-10). Like Noah, God has extended a lifeline to us–salvation by His grace. Also like Noah, we need to respond by taking action based on faith. Twice in Genesis, we’re told “Noah did everything that Yahweh commanded him” (Gen. 6:22; 7:5). If someone wrote the stories of our lives, could they say that about you and me?
Faith is an active thing. As we studied earlier this month, God seems to like building things, particularly when it involves building people up. He talks about building us into His temple, a dwelling place for Him here on earth as He lives inside the people of His church. He also talks about us participating in the building process.
We are coworkers belonging to God. You are God’s field, God’s building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master-builder I laid a foundation, but someone else builds on it. And each one must be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than what is being laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or straw, each builder’s work will be plainly seen, for the Day will make it clear, because it will be revealed by fire. And the fire will test what kind of work each has done. If what someone has built survives, he will receive a reward. If someone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as through fire.
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?If someone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, which is what you are.
1 Corinthians 3:9-17, NET
Just like Noah so long ago, God expects us to act on the gift of grace that He gives us. God’s grace brings us into salvation and then we start building and working. We step out in obedience with faith, trusting the guides God gives us for how to build. We “work out our own salvation” while God “works in us both to will and to work, for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13, WEB).
Our walk with God doesn’t end when we receive His grace. That’s when it starts. Once we’ve covenanted with Him–in other words, entered a relationship with Him–we’re expected to “walk worthy of the calling with which you were called” (Eph. 4:1; Col. 1:10). The gift should change us. How could it not? What human being could encounter God in a meaningful, ongoing way and stay the same?
For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast.For we are his creative work, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we can do them.
Ephesians 2:8-10, NET
Before we’re told that Noah found favor in the eyes of Yahweh, we’re given a description of his character. “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time. Noah walked with God” (Gen 6:9, WEB). That’s what we’re supposed to do as well. Noah stood out from the wicked world around him because he followed God, and God noticed. When He spoke to Noah, Yahweh said, “Come with all of your household into the ship, for I have seen your righteousness before me in this generation” (Gen 7:1, WEB).
God loves and longs to save the whole world (John 3:16; 2 Pet. 3:9; 1 Tim. 2:3-4). But He won’t force people to follow Him and He won’t bring people into His kingdom who refuse the gift of salvation in word or action. That’s a choice we’re given to make. As He has always done, God sets before us life or death, blessings or cursing. We can either live in His grace or refuse to walk with Him. There’s no third option.
Behold, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and evil. For I command you today to love Yahweh your God, to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his ordinances, that you may live and multiply, and that Yahweh your God may bless you in the land where you go in to possess it. … I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your descendants, to love Yahweh your God, to obey his voice, and to cling to him; for he is your life, and the length of your days.
Deuteronomy 30:15-6, 19-20, WEB
Salvation isn’t about going on with your old life after you’ve received grace. It’s about a life-changing relationship with the One who continually gives grace (John 1:17; 1 Cor. 1:4; Eph. 4:7; 2 Thes. 2:16-17; 2 Tim. 1:9). And we have help in our quest to keep living by obedience as we build up ourselves and others in the church. God’s not going to call us into something without equipping us to finish it.
Building our arks has nothing to do with what we can accomplish on our own. Rather, it’s about believing Jesus when He said, “My grace is enough for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9, NET). By God’s grace we are saved, we’re equipped to walk by faith, and we’re told to build, just like Noah. Our building project isn’t a giant boat, but the very church of God. Jesus said, “I will build my church” (Matt. 16:18, NET), but He graciously invites us to have a role in that. We get to build each other up and we get to build up our own faith.
But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith, by praying in the Holy Spirit, maintain yourselves in the love of God, while anticipating the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that brings eternal life.
I’ve been going back and forth on making a post like this for quite some time now. There isn’t one right formula for studying your Bible, and I’m not saying there is. As long as you’re reading God’s word, praying for His guidance, and working to know Him better then you can have a productive study. I don’t want to imply the way I study is the “right” or “best” way. But a few people have asked me to recommend Bible study resources, and I also realized that some of the study tools I use to help me understand the Greek and Hebrew behind our English translations aren’t familiar to everyone.
In this post, I’ll go through resources I use frequently and highly recommend. If you have other resources that you like to use, I’d love to learn about them. Please leave a comment so everyone reading can benefit from the recommendations 🙂
Disclaimer: Some of the links on this page are affiliate links (marked with an *). This means that if the resource I mention is available for purchase on Amazon, I provide a link and if you use that link to make a purchase I will receive a commission (at no additional cost to you).
Background Reading
Whenever I’m reading a text, I like to ask myself contextual questions. When was this written? Who was it written for? What culture(s) influenced the writer? When reading the Bible, the ultimate author behind the text is God, but He used human beings who were influenced by the world they lived in. Modern, Western Christians often think of Christianity as a Western/European religion and either don’t think about or misunderstand the ancient Eastern cultural context. This can lead to misinterpretations of the Bible and misunderstandings about underlying concepts such as how language works.
Misreading Scriptures with Western Eyes (coupled with attending a Messianic congregation for several years) fundamentally changed how I read the Bible, I think very much for the better. The modern world, particularly modern Western culture, is not very similar to the Biblical world. While God’s message is simple enough for a child to understand and His word can speak to everyone where they are, it’s also full of riches so deep we’ll never reach the bottom. Familiarizing yourself with the cultural context is key to understanding the Bible on a deeper level. These are my two favorite books I’ve found so far on that topic:
There are three free digital resources that I use to support a deeper study of God’s word. These tools provide a variety of Bible translations, the ability to compare those translations, resources for studying the Greek and Hebrew behind our English translations, and a variety of commentaries. I use all of these tools to varying degrees, depending on exactly what I’m trying to study.
MySword app–this is a free-to-download Android app. I use this app on my phone as my Bible when at church, traveling, and often when studying at home. It makes it easy to compare translations, look up words in a dictionary, and do pretty robust word studies all in the palm of your hand. It’s also a great supplement to the language tools I’ll talk about in the next section.
The search tool for MySword is pretty good, and you can search for Greek and Hebrew words by searching for the Strong’s number in translations that include those. However, the free version of MySword doesn’t include all the search tools that eSword has and it limits you to 100 results.
eSword for PC–a free-to-download Bible study program. I mostly use this one if I want to search for specific words or topics in the Bible. The search tools are robust (even more so than MySword) and make it easy to search for parts of words, whole words, and Greek and Hebrew words (by searching for the Strong’s number). You can also have a Bible, dictionary, commentary, and your own notes all open on the same screen.
BibleGateway–an online resource that makes comparing Bible translations very simple. It’s the easiest tool I’ve found for looking at multiple translations side-by-side and doing full text searches of more than one translation at the same time. I use it all the time when writing my blog posts for this site. One thing I like about this website compared to MySword or eSword is that it includes full footnotes (very handy with translations like NET).
Screenshot showing eSword search tool
Language Tools
I’ve done some formal study of Greek–enough to recognize words, understand basic grammar, and read it a little–but not much for Hebrew. The tools I use to study the Bible’s original languages aren’t a perfect substitute for really learning the languages, but I think they do make it easier for someone with a basic understanding of how language works (something any of us can learn relatively easily) to get a deeper look into the nuances of the Bible without devoting their lives to a study of ancient languages.
In both eSword and MySword, I recommend Thayer’s Dictionary for Greek and Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) for Hebrew. Both of these digital tools offer downloadable modules that link those dictionaries to Strong’s numbers. For any Bible translation that includes Strong’s numbers, you can click on that number and go right to the dictionary. Some of the translations also offer codes that give you more insight into how the word is used. For example, here’s what John 1:1 looks like in the MySword module for A Faithful Version with Strong’s numbers and Morphology (AFV+) if you click on more detail for the word translated “Word.”
Screenshot of MySword AFV+ translationScreenshot of MySword Thayer’s DictionaryScreenshot of AFV+ morphology
I don’t read AFV+ much just because all those codes can get confusing to look at, but it is great for looking up the nuances behind a translation. If you click on the Strong’s number (G3056), it takes you to Thayer’s dictionary. I don’t have this in the screenshot, but if you scrolled down it would also provide Strong’s definition and a list of all the places this word is used in the New Testament (you could also search for G3056 in the AFV+ or other Strong’s coded translation to see all the places its used).
If you click on the morphology link (N-NSM) this translation shows you linguistic information for the word. Logos is a noun, and here it’s in the nominative case (identifying logos as the subject of the sentence), singular in number, and masculine gender (Greek has gendered nouns much like French or German). I use this tool most often to look up whether a word is singular or plural since you can’t always tell in English (e.g. when Paul says “you are the temple of God,” “you” is plural in the Greek but ambiguous in English).
Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries
In addition to these digital language tools, I also have two print dictionaries that I really like. These provide more complete definitions than the tools in eSword or MySword and also help you understand how different words relate to each other.
Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament* (TWOT) by Laird R. Hariss, Gleason L. Archer, Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke — my favorite Hebrew dictionary. Rather than being tied to Strong’s numbers, this dictionary groups Hebrew words by their root, which provides a much deeper look at the nuances of the Hebrew language. The different numbering system can make this one a bit more challenging to use, but in MySword the BDB dictionary module makes things easy by telling you where to look up the word in TWOT.
Google Is Your Friend
Another general tool that I use a lot is a simple Google search. Don’t know what the Genitive Case is in Greek? There are language-learning tools to help you understand Greek grammar. Partly remember a verse but can’t find it in eSword, MySword, or BibleGateway? Try Googling the words you remember with the word “Bible” and it’ll help you figure out if it’s in a translation you hadn’t thought of or if it’s a quote from something else. Suddenly need an interlinear version of the Septuagint? I recently found one on StudyLight.org. We’re fortunate to live in a time when we have access to Bible Study tools people even just a few decades before could only dream about or could only access in specialized print books.
Most of my Bible studies end up on this blog. That means I’m usually looking at specific topics when I study, so being able to search the Bible effectively, look up Hebrew and Greek words, and compare translations is super helpful. It’s also helpful to be listening to and reading things that prompt Bible-related ideas that can turn into studies which then show up here on my blog. Here are some of my favorite Christian resources for inspiring new studies:
“Truth Be Told” podcast–a thoughtful and thought-provoking “theology and apologetics podcast born out of a love of God‘s word, a hope to find common ground with those who study it, and a desire to outline truth as the Bible tells it.”
Listening to Sermons–usually I don’t go out of my way to listen to extra messages, but I hear ones very much like those I link to for this point every week at my local church. So many of my ideas for Bible studies and then blog posts come from a phrase or scripture that catch my ear in a message someone else is giving, often on a completely different topic.
As I mentioned before, not everyone Bible studies the same way, and that’s okay. We have different spiritual temperaments and different ways we most easily connect with God and His word. Some might spend more time reading whole books rather than focusing on topics. Some might find the most value in picking one verse and meditating on it for their whole study time. Others could read, then search for ways to put those lessons into real-world action. And I’m sure there are way more study styles than I could list here.
I like Gary Thomas’s book Sacred Pathways* as a tool to describe those temperaments (you can read my full review by clicking here). I most closely align with what he calls the “Contemplative” and “Intellectual” temperaments, and I suspect others with similar ways of relating to God will be the ones that find this post most useful (if they haven’t already tracked down similar resources of their own). Still, I hope some of these tools and resources will be helpful for you whatever your spiritual temperament. And I hope you’ll share some of your own favorite resources in the comments.
The idea that a human being should be treated with a certain amount of respect based on a position they hold has fallen out of fashion in Western society. We routinely complain about U.S. Presidents and some people even display banners and signs cursing their names. We say no one has the right to tell us what to do. We treat “authority” like it’s a bad thing to have, assuming it will only be misused. There are still pockets of authority we might respect–patients may respect a doctor, and students a university professor, for example–but even those are being chipped away as corruption comes to light, our faith in institutions erodes, and our sense of individualism increases.
In sharp contrast to this attitude are passages from New Testament epistles talking about how Christians ought to submit to human authority. I’ve written about this before, near the start of the pandemic when I and many people across the world were struggling with questions like whether to submit to rules forbidding church groups to gather. In that post, we talked about a sermon I heard covering the question of how a Christian can know when to obey human authorities and when to follow the apostle’s example of disobedience when they said, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29, WEB)
I’m approaching this question from a different angle today. We know from scripture that we’re supposed to obey human authorities because God tells us to. Submission to authority is a way for us to honor God. We also know that that obedience to human beings only goes so far because our primary loyalty lies with God. We do not obey laws that command us to do things God forbids or that command us not to do things God requires. However, appropriate submission and respect aren’t the only things the Bible says we should do for people in authority. We’re also supposed to pray for them.
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Two Reasons Why We Pray
A command to pray for authority figures shouldn’t surprise us. There aren’t many limits on who we ought to pray for. Jesus even told us, “love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:44, NET). If Jesus told us to love and pray for our enemies I doubt He’s going to say it’s okay to avoid praying for people in authority who might not even be enemies to the faith.
Sometimes, you might hear arguments that instructions to submit to and pray for rulers were added by translators. For example, I’ve heard people say the KJV includes verses about honoring the king because the men translating it wanted to curry favor with King James. Those men might have been happy to find they could include a verse like that, but they’re not where the idea came from. It came from Jesus, Paul, Peter, and other writers inspired by God. Paul explains why it’s so important to include authority figures in our prayers when writing to Timothy.
First of all, then, I urge that requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanks be offered on behalf of all people, even for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. Such prayer for all is good and welcomed before God our Savior, since he wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one intermediary between God and humanity, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself as a ransom for all, revealing God’s purpose at his appointed time.
1 Timothy 2:1-6, NET
I like the NET translation for this verse because it acknowledges that some readers might balk at the idea that praying for “all people” includes “kings and all who are in authority.” Paul had experience living in a world where the culture and the authority figures were hostile to his faith. He knew it wasn’t easy to pray for people who’d martyred your fellow believers or kicked them out of a guild, ruining their livelihood. But we need to pray for them anyways, and he gives two main reasons why:
It’s good for us. We pray for authorities so that we can lead “a peaceful and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.” Ideally, “rulers cause no fear for good conduct but for bad” (Rom. 13:3, NET). We pray that people in authority would be that kind of ruler, leaving us alone to worship God freely and working to keep society peaceful and safe.
It’s good for them. God welcomes prayers for everyone, even our enemies or those in positions of power, because “he wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” That should be our desire as well. Jesus “gave himself as a ransom for all,” and knowing that should motivate us to pray everyone would see His Light.
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Praying for Peace
God has called us to live in peace (1 Cor. 7:15; Col. 3:15). He wants us to have peaceful lives that aren’t characterized by quarreling, tumult, fear, and other things that would destroy our inner or outer peace. We can have God’s peace inside us and cultivate lives of peace and joy even when the world around us is far from peaceful. However, we should still do everything in our power to live peacefully with all people (Rom. 12:16-21; Heb. 12:4). That includes praying for those who have the power to make things un-peaceful for others.
Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says to all the captives whom I have caused to be carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon: … “Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to Yahweh for it; for in its peace you will have peace.”
Jeremiah 29:4, 7, WEB
There’s nothing wrong with wanting peaceful lives. Paul even tells one church that it should be their “ambition to lead a quiet life, and to do your own business” (1 Thes. 4:11, WEB). Life is better for us, the Christian community, and for everyone else living here if there’s peace in our communities and countries. Peace is a good thing to pray for. We can ask God to share His peace with us and to inspire people in authority to work towards peace in their spheres of influence.
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Praying for Others’ Salvation
The second reason we should pray for people in authority is because, “Such prayer for all is good and welcomed before God our Savior, since he wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-4, NET). We’re supposed to be praying for all people, and those with authority are included in that category.
God offers humanity two very clear choices: choose life with Him, or choose death without Him. That’s simply how the world works. There are no other options. Walking with God leads toward eternal life, and walking away/apart from God leads to nothing. God also makes it very clear that we each have individual choices, and that it’s possible for people to change the course of their lives. If someone is heading toward death, God wants that person to turn around and choose life (Ezekiel 18:1-32; 33:1-20).
The Lord is not slow concerning his promise, as some regard slowness, but is being patient toward you, because he does not wish for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. … Since all these things are to melt away in this manner, what sort of people must you be, conducting your lives in holiness and godliness, while waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God?
2 Peter 3:9, 11-12, NET
In this letter, Peter reminds us that the end of this present world is coming. While it might sometimes seem like Jesus’s return is taking an awfully long time to get here, what’s really happening is that God is being very patient with people because He wants everyone to choose life. Keeping in mind both this aspect of God’s character and the knowledge that Jesus will return, Peter asks us this: “What sort of people must you be?” He partly answers that question by saying we’ll be “conducting our lives in holiness and godliness” as we wait on God. Being holy and godly involves mimicking God’s character, including His perspective on other people. We need to love earnestly and pray sincerely for other people.
But the end of all things is near. Therefore be of sound mind, self-controlled, and sober in prayer. And above all things be earnest in your love among yourselves, for love covers a multitude of sins.
1 Peter 4:7-8, WEB
Showing God Who We Are
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God is never happy when someone chooses death; it’s His desire that everyone will choose life. When we pray for other people, we participate in that godly desire. We show God that we also want other people to choose life with Him because we’re learning to care about them in much the same way that He does.
By praying for those in authority, we demonstrate our character to God. We show that we care more about following His instructions than we do about our own irritations with political leaders. We show that we long for people to change, grow, and work toward peace rather than wanting them punished because they didn’t do things the way we think they should.
I don’t always remember to pray for people in power. I don’t particularly want to pray for people who plunge nations into wars, vote to continue abortions, or use their authority to avoid the consequences of wrong action. But it does no one any good if I just get angry about this and sit around fuming or refuse to pray about it.
Prayer is the best response for everyone. I can pray for God’s justice to intervene and I can pray for His mercy to soften people’s hearts. I can pray He’ll protect those in danger because of a human leader’s actions. Jesus’s example of viewing people with compassion and praying for them even while not excusing their wrong actions.
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