The Covenant of Grace

While on a mission trip to Bolivia, traveling one night in the Andes Mountains, we were 50 miles from the nearest city, and any small towns in the vicinity had no streetlights. Bumbling along in the middle rear seat of a tiny Corolla, I remember being tired. Leaning my head back to rest, I closed my eyes. After a bump in the road, I looked up through the rear window and was astonished at the number of stars I could see. I had never seen the Milky Way so bright. I recalled the story of Abraham, and I imagined what he must have seen when God took him outside to look up. There were no bright cities. The desert sky was clear nearly every night of the year. A star-filled sky was a common sight for Abraham.

“Count them if you can,” God said. “Your children shall be more numerous.”

Righteousness of Faith

The dialog between God and Abraham began with a vision. Startled by His holy presence, God reassured him, “Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great” (see Gen. 15:1, NASB). Reward? What had Abraham done up to this point to receive a reward?

Abraham was puzzled because he had no child with whom to share a reward, and because of his age, the reward would be an inheritance. What was the point of an inheritance if there were no children to give it to? Then God promised that his descendants would outnumber the stars. “Wow,” Abraham must have said as he gazed at the sky for a time and contemplated God’s promise. “That is a lot of descendants!”

Abraham did nothing other than believe that God would provide. He didn’t have to prove his worthiness. He did not begin with a promise of obedience. The Bible does not even say that he repented or asked for forgiveness. The description in the Word is simple: He believed in God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. “There is probably no more potent biblical statement of the gospel of righteousness by faith than that found in Genesis 15:6.[1]

“For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith” (Rom. 4:13, NASB).

Further study shows that not even Abraham’s faith fulfilled God’s promise—God was faithful! Abraham’s righteousness is based upon God’s faithfulness. God is full of faith. “For this reason it is by faith, in order that it may be in accordance with grace, so that the promise will be guaranteed to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the Law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all” (verse 16, NASB).

Promised Land

The promise to Abraham as “the father of us all” (believers) is to inherit the world. The inheritance of the world in the future is symbolized on a smaller scale by the promised land of Abraham’s day. “About sunset he sank into a deep sleep; and, ‘lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him.’ And the voice of God was heard, bidding him not to expect immediate possession of the Promised Land, and pointing forward to the sufferings of his posterity before their establishment in Canaan. The plan of redemption was here opened to him, in the death of Christ, the great sacrifice, and His coming in glory. Abraham saw also the earth restored to its Eden beauty, to be given to him for an everlasting possession, as the final and complete fulfillment of the promise.”[2]

Abraham wanted to ensure he would not miss the gift of possessing the Promised Land, and asked how he would know it would happen. Then God initiated a strange covenant, a visual treaty, which we know was an ancient Near Eastern tradition that was used from Abraham’s day to at least Jeremiah’s day (see Jer. 34:18, 19).

“Cutting” a Covenant

“So He said to him, ‘Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.’ Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds” (Gen. 15:9, 10, NASB).

In God’s graciousness, He condescended to enter into a covenant of the kind understood in Abraham’s day so that Abraham could understand the gospel’s message in the sacrificial imagery. Picture a scene somewhat repulsive to modern minds. The larger animals are cut in two down the middle, each half laid beside the other, and the birds left whole, are laid opposite, with room for someone to pass through the row of paired carcasses.[3] “This being done, [Abraham] reverently passed between the parts of the sacrifice, making [cutting] a solemn vow to God of perpetual obedience.”[4]

Is there any question of the sincerity of God’s love for you and the whole world?

This expression of “cutting” a covenant refers to the traditional ancient Near Eastern practice of making a covenant by walking between cut pieces of a slaughtered animal. In ancient Near East treaties, when a suzerain (overlord) entered into a treaty/covenant with a vassal (servant state), the suzerain would require the vassal to prepare the animal and pass through the pieces. What is crucial to understand is the significance of the vassal’s acknowledgment when passing through the pieces: “May it be done to me as was done to this animal if I am unfaithful to the covenant.”[5]

The Lamp and the Smoke

It was expected for the vassal to pass through the pieces, in effect making this a kind of dismemberment oath, as in Jeremiah 34. In Genesis 15 the point emphasized is that, radically contrary to ancient Near Eastern practice, in which only the vassal and not the suzerain moved through the pieces, God Himself, the Divine Suzerain or Overlord, passed through the pieces as our servant!

The reference to the smoking oven and the burning torch symbolizes the divine presence and is reminiscent of the smoking fire on Mount Sinai (see Ex. 20:18). The two words from the Hebrew link the divine presence of these events together: “smoke” and “lamp.”

Why are there two symbols of the divine presence in Genesis 15? It is significant that both a smoking oven and the burning torch pass through—two divine light sources, symbolizing the Father and the Son. Both the Father and Son appeared at Mount Sinai, and both Father and Son were involved in the covenant-making ceremony with Abraham.[6]

The Savior said, “I am the Light of the world” (John 8:12).

The Divine Dismemberment

While Abraham walked between the split animals to claim his promise to obey, his promise was short-lived, just as the promise of the children of Israel after hearing that God wanted them to obey His voice and keep His covenant. They responded in unison, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do” (Ex. 19:8). Then, 40 days later, they were found worshipping a hand-crafted golden calf.

Covenant broken.

But God initiated the covenant and passed through the pieces to be our surety. The poignant truth of Genesis 15 is that as the Father and the Son in unity passed through the pieces of the slain animals, divinity is saying, in effect, “If either party breaks the promise of keeping the covenant, then let the unity of the Godhead be dismembered, let divinity be ripped from divinity, as these pieces.” In effect, the Father and Son placed their very existence and unity on the line in this oath of covenant loyalty! That is how sure the gospel promise of the covenant is![7]

Compare the remarkable link of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 with Genesis 15. Verse 8 uses the same Hebrew root word for “making” a covenant as being “cut off.” “That He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?”

Daniel 9:26, 27 says that the Messiah would be “cut off” and have nothing. This is also tied to the cutting covenant of a death penalty with no future life.

“All His life Christ had been publishing to a fallen world the good news of the Father’s mercy and pardoning love. Salvation for the chief of sinners was His theme. But now with the terrible weight of guilt He bears, He cannot see the Father’s reconciling face. The withdrawal of the divine countenance from the Saviour in this hour of supreme anguish pierced His heart with a sorrow that can never be fully understood by man. So great was this agony that His physical pain was hardly felt.

 “Satan with his fierce temptations wrung the heart of Jesus. The Saviour could not see through the portals of the tomb. Hope did not present to Him His coming forth from the grave a conqueror, or tell Him of the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice. He feared that sin was so offensive to God that Their separation was to be eternal. Christ felt the anguish which the sinner will feel when mercy shall no longer plead for the guilty race. It was the sense of sin, bringing the Father’s wrath upon Him as man’s substitute, that made the cup He drank so bitter, and broke the heart of the Son of God.”[8]

“My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46; Ps. 22:1) were the words wrought from the Savior’s lips. God was ripped from God! Deity was torn away from Deity! Divine dismemberment took place so that we might be made whole and live![9]

Redeemed and Made Whole

“Christ was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins, in which He had no share, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no share. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His. ‘With His stripes we are healed.’ ”[10]

When we look at the well-known verse in the Gospel of John, in light of the dismemberment of God, “He gave His only begotten Son” adds a whole new depth of meaning.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:16, 17, NASB).

Is there any question of the sincerity of God’s love for you and the whole world? Is there any question about the certainty of God’s acceptance of you and the extent to which He has gone to redeem you? Can you get behind this incredible message of God’s grace and spread it to others?

[1] Richard M. Davidson, A Song for the Sanctuary: Experiencing God’s Presence in Shadow and Reality (Silver Spring, Md.: Biblical Research Institute, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 2022), p. 131.

[2] Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1890, 1908), p. 137.

[3] Davidson, pp. 131-133.

[4] White, p. 137.

[5] Davidson, pp. 131-133.

[6] Ibid., pp. 133, 134.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898, 1940), p. 753.

[9] Davidson, p. 135.

[10] White, The Desire of Ages, p. 25.