Faith and the Unfolding Drama
This brief piece will be very repetitive. It’s abundantly clear to me that God forgave sins from the days of Adam and Eve down to the arrival of Jesus. Forgiveness was always by God’s holy grace and could never be "earned". God never asked anyone to "earn" it! The NT never doubts that and neither should we. David exults in the truth that there were people whose sins were not credited against them (Psalm 32:1,2 and Romans 4:6-8). But that’s not what the NT is dealing with!
Abraham’s faith in God was as true and as real as Paul’s faith in God. The faith of believers in ancient times (Hebrews 11) was truly faith in God. The NT never doubts that and neither should we. True believers are true believers no matter in what age they live. But that’s not what the NT is dealing with!
The obedience of faith that we read about in the OT (in people like Noah, Hannah, Josiah, Moses’ mother Jochebed or Melchizedek) was as real as the obedience that stemmed from faith in believers in Jesus Christ. The faith-filled obedient people are the same kind of people no matter in what age they live. But that’s not what the NT is dealing with!
The New Testament deals with a specific section of God’s unfolding drama. Everything prior to that, while absolutely essential to the drama as a whole, is prelude. The fullness of times (Galatians 4:4) and the "ends of the ages" (1 Corinthians 10:11) only arrived when God became incarnate in and as Jesus of Nazareth who is called the Christ. The NT era is the time that all the ancient worthies had to wait for if they hoped for the completed drama (Hebrews 11:39-40).
It doesn’t matter that they all didn’t know what the end was to be. It didn’t matter that they didn’t know all that the end would involve. In trusting to God they were looking for whatever it was that God had in store. Prophets spoke things they didn’t really understand and people hoped for things (as we do) that they didn’t understand. "Eye hasn’t seen, ear hasn’t heard nor has it entered into the heart of man the things God has prepared for them that love him." That is as true today for us as it would have been for ancient believers prior to coming of God in the flesh.
People enjoyed forgiveness and life with God because God in holy grace granted it to them. But that life with God that they enjoyed could never come to fullness in the world as it was and is even now. For the life that God finally intended for the human family when he was creating us wasn’t fulfilled in Genesis 1. That was the beginning of what God had in mind for us but the fullness of what God had in mind for us is revealed in Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:16) who is the last Adam (1 Corinthians 15:47). God gave forgiveness and life in a relationship to Abraham but Abraham would die, as would Moses and Samuel and David and the rest. Death would rob them of embodied life (and a human is not fully a human if not embodied). Click
Death reigned over the human family even over those that believed in God. Then came Jesus of Nazareth, the death killer! In and by him death was destroyed (2 Timothy1:9-10) and a new creation begun. In him, as a single individual, a new creation has actually begun.
By faith Abraham was as right with God in his day as Christians are right with God by faith in Jesus Christ. But the content of the Christian’s faith is richer and more developed that Abraham’s was. The shape of his faith bore witness to God within the parameters and boundaries of his place in God’s developing drama. The shape of a Christian’s faith in God through Jesus Christ is a witness to God’s bringing his creation purposes to completion in Jesus Christ. No one’s faith, prior to Jesus Christ, could bear such a witness precisely because pre-Jesus Christ faith could not proclaim what God has now accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ. Christians live at a particular time in the history of the world and have been called to be the body of Jesus Christ in the world.
The forgiveness in pre-Jesus Christ days was real but forgiveness in Jesus Christ carries with it a significance that couldn’t be carried beforehe came. Abraham’s faith-motivated obedience (Genesis 22 and James 2) was genuine and acceptable with God as righteousness (Romans 4:3). In that respect there is no difference between Abraham’s obedience of faith and the Christian’s. But Abraham’s obedience of faith could not function as a witness that God's creation purposes had been fulfilled, because they hadn't been! Abraham, along with the other ancient worthies in Hebrews 11, had to wait until the Christian era arrived (11:39-40).
Forgiveness and faith and obedience and life with God in pre-Jesus Christ days were real but they did not have the significance that those realities have in and through Jesus Christ. Christian faith proclaims—on the basis of Jesus Christ—that all that the ancient worthies had looked for (though they may not have been aware of it, and certainly not, at any rate, in full awareness)—all that the ancient worthies had looked for has now come. We look now at Jesus and in him, the individual, we see God's creation purposes fulfilled, now! (This fulfillment that he as a single individual experience will be made the personal experience of all that are embraced in his redeeming work.)
Apart from Christians the ancients—whoever they were—could not be made perfect. Forgiveness and faith and life with God all have a different complexion now that Jesus has come. Those glorious realities function with a finality that wasn’t possible for even true faith in pre-Jesus Christ times.
I’m sure we’re on the right track when we say that there are differences between Paul’s and Abraham’s faith and forgiveness and relationship with God. But the differences have nothing to do with quality or with their reality! But since they lived at different points in the divine drama (N.T Wright divides the biblical story into 5 Acts), their faith and life with God contributed to the entire drama in different ways. Ray McClendon helpfully summarises the matter like this:
"For example, the reference to an unfolding drama enables us to ponder Hebrews 11:39-40 in this light: What does it really mean that, though faithful, they didn’t receive what was promised and only together with us are made perfect?
We could put it this way. At the end of the second act (of, say, a two-act story), all of the actors come out, join hands, and bow. Receiving the accolades of the honour and glory of the completed story they presented. They all occupy (finally and in the end) the same stage; regardless of where their part was in the story; regardless of whether it came in the first act or the second act and regardless of whether their part was small or large. The actors in the First Act didn’t come out after the first act to receive all of the honour and glory because that wasn’t fully revealed or known until the second act! It couldn’t possibly be fully understood or appreciated because the story was still being told and the finale had not yet come. The Abrahams, Melchizedeks, and Rahabs were all in supportive roles; they weren’t the stars nor did they appear in the final and critical stages of the story.
But when the Star appears and the climax plays itself out, all the act 1 players take their rightful place beside the act 2 players and together with them receive all the honour and glory (compare Hebrews 11:39-40 and 12:22-24). They’re entitled to share in the glory that comes to the act 2 players because without them there could be no act 2 players and no completed drama. In addition, it wasn’t until the whole story was told/known that everyone’s role could be fully understood and appreciated. Nevertheless, everyone’s place in the story, in his or her own time and circumstances, was crucial and served the will of God who, in every generation, dealt faithfully with all the players that had a place in the drama."
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.