When I was a young believer, I was told that the Bible was the Word of God. I should read it as if every word in it was addressed to me personally. “When you pray”, they told me, “you speak to God”. “When you read the Bible”, they said, “God speaks to you”.
The Bible is full of both promises and commands. All the commands were for me to obey. All the promises were for me to claim.
The Bible itself appeared to support what they were saying.
Joshua 1:8 says: “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
Psalm 1 is similar: “Blessed is the man … whose delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.”
Here, surely, was the recipe for a successful spiritual life.
Later in life, one day I saw that these instructions to study the Scriptures were both in the Old Testament. Nowhere were there any similar instructions in the New Testament. Never did Peter, Paul, John or indeed Jesus ever instruct anyone to study the Scriptures and obey their commands or claim their promises.
In this writing, I want to consider the question of promises in the New Covenant. In a separate writing, I have written about Commands in the New Covenant.
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