The Gospel According to the Old Testament

Some time ago, I began reading P&R’s Gospel According to the Old Testament series. I’ve completed one, Living in the Gap Between Promise and Reality: Gospel According to Abraham, and begun another, Living in the Grip of Relentless Grace: The Gospel in the Lives of Isaac and Jacob, so I thought I would take a moment to give you my opinion of what I have read so far.

The series title brings certain expectations. Yours might not be the same as mine, but I have to say that my expectations have, so far, proven inaccurate. My hope was for a cataloguing of specifically Christ and cross centered Old Testament texts. I was thinking of “gospel” in the narrowest sense. What I’ve read has certainly been gospel, but in a much broader sense. The theme has been much more practical than theologically technical, fleshing out Old Testament examples of the gospel truth that “the just shall live by faith.” As such, I would say it has been both less and more than I expected.

These are not difficult reading. The average high school student should be able to comprehend it. Each chapter is followed by study questions, so these would make good texts for high school and adult Sunday school classes.

I do have a couple of criticisms, which apply only to the first volume and its author (the series has multiple authors). The first is rather petty. The author, Iain Duguid, two or three times repeats the tired old phrase, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it,” leaving me shouting back, “It doesn’t matter what you believe! God said it, and that settles it!” I don’t doubt that he would agree with that, and that he is only repeating a cliché, but it does irritate me. My second criticism is more serious. In dealing with the Genesis 22 account of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah, he makes the point that Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac in obedience to God even though it meant the end of his promised legacy. He does eventually come back to Hebrews 11 and acknowledge that Abraham believed that God could raise Isaac from the dead, but I think the text tells us more than that. Abraham knew that God would either intervene, or if not, raise Isaac. He knew God would keep his promise, and that he would keep it through Isaac (Genesis 17:18–19). It was that faith in God’s promise that enabled Abraham to carry out God’s command without hesitation.

Having said that, I commend the author for not turning Old Testament narratives into Veggie Tales-style morality plays. At the same time, he does not shy away from taking legitimate practical lessons from the examples of Old Testament characters, without making them the point of the text. For example, of the favoritism of Isaac and Rebekah toward Esau and Jacob, he writes:

Not only is there favoritism here, but also the children were valued for what they could do for the parents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau. The text doesn’t tell us why Rebekah loved Jacob. Perhaps she remembered the oracle concerning him. Or perhaps it was his propensity for hanging around the tents where she was. . . . How easy it would be to love those best whose interests and aptitudes are closest to ours. How easy, but how terrible in its consequences!

—Iain Duguid, Living in the Grip of Relentless Grace: The Gospel in the Lives of Isaac and Jacob (P&R, 2002), 10.

It will be interesting to see how other the other authors of other volumes in this series approach their texts. Overall, in spite of my mistaken expectations, I have appreciated the content. I expect to be edified as I continue.

Iain Duguid on election:

The doctrine of election is a difficult one for many people. They struggle with the justice of the idea that God chooses some for salvation and passes over others. Some people, therefore, have argued that it is a matter of God’s foreknowledge. God knows in advance which people are going to choose him, and therefore he responds by choosing them. The Bible, however, is clear. God’s love for his chosen people existed long before their birth, all the way back to the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4-5). God does not love us because he foresaw we would love him. Rather, we love God because he loved us from the first (Rom. 9:16).

Yet, as we pointed out earlier, even though God’s election is sovereign, it is not arbitrary or unjust. It is not as if Esau desperately wanted to be a chosen son and God harshly turned him away, not allowing him a place among his chosen people. No, Esau has twice turned his back on his spiritual birthright. First, he sold his birthright to his brother for a bowl of lentil soup (Gen. 25:31–34). Now he compromised the fundamental goal of God’s election: the creation of a separate, holy people for God. Under the circumstances, Esau could have no complaints about being passed over.

We should also notice, however, that Jacob is not chosen because, in contrast to Esau, he is such a wonderful person. Jacob shows himself to be a scheming, conniving, calculating little rat, especially during the first part of his life. Nonetheless, because God’s choice rests upon him out of his sovereign mercy, God is going to work on Jacob, reshaping him, purifying him into a person he can use. Neither Jacob nor Esau deserves God’s grace in his life, but God’s sovereign mercy rests upon Jacob for his blessing, and so his grace begins the transforming work in his heart.

So it is also for us. Our election and our salvation are entirely of grace. God did not choose you because you were better or smarter or more beautiful or holier than everyone else. God did not choose you because he foresaw that you would exercise faith while others wouldn’t. God chose us while we were still filthy sinners, because of his electing grace. Even with his transforming power at work in our hearts, thou, the best of saints make only small beginnings on the path of holy living. We never outgrow our need for grace while we live on earth.

But God’s sovereign choice on salvation is not arbitrary. Those passed over by God have no cause for complaint. Their condemnation is thoroughly deserved. Even though we plead with them with tears to abandon their self-destructive course and find salvation in Jesus Christ, they will have none of it. The whole idea is foolishness to them. Those whom God chooses, he then begins to reshape into a people for his pleasure. As Ephesians 1:4 puts it, “He chose us . . . to be holy and blameless in his sight.” The result is that those chosen have no cause of arrogance. Their justification is undeserved by them. It is merited only by the righteousness of Christ that is credited to their account, and it is worked on them by the indwelling power o the Holy Spirit. All is of God, so that God may receive all the glory.

That truth should give us boldness in our sharing of the gospel. We may freely call all who will come to Jesus and be saved. The invitation to the party is open to all. Whoever you are, whatever you have done, your sins too can be paid for by the death of Jesus on the cross. No one is too guilty or too defiled to come. You too can receive Christ’s righteousness credited to your account. You too can participate in the feast that God has prepared for all who are his people on the final day. It’s a genuine offer, and we pray fervently and intently that many people will respond to it in faith. But we trust the outcome of our evangelism to the care of a good god, who chose a people who would be his before the foundation of the world.

That too is a comforting thought, given the imperfection of so much of our gospel witness. It is God who determines the outcome of our speaking for him, not the quality of our speech. It is God’s choice whither our words fall on the ears of an Esau, to whom they are all nonsense, or on the ears of a Jacob, for whom the road to faith may be long and hard but will eventually bring him to glory. It is God’s choice whether our words fall on the ears of an Abraham who is ready now to hear and trust and believe. We therefore invite all to come to Christ of receive the living water from him, confident that all those whom the Lord our God is calling to himself will hear his voice and will come. To him indeed be all the glory.

This truth should also give us great joy on the midst of our manifold sins and failures. Do you know yourself to be a sinner in God’s sight? Are there areas of your life where you continue to fail God over and over again? If so, the bad news is that you are normal. But the good news is that if God has laid hold of you by his electing grace, he will sustain you by that grace through every step of your earthly journey. He will use even that son which you find so difficult to combat as a means of driving you back to the cross. And one day, at the end of all things, you too will be purified completely by his grace and will stand before him without fault or blemish. What a wonderful, heartwarming, comforting, doctrine the doctrine of God’s election is!

—Iain Duguid, Living in the Grip of Relentless Grace: The Gospel in the Lives of Isaac and Jacob (P&R, 2002), 27–29.