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”, they said. “All the commands are for you to obey. All the promises are for you 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 YHWH, 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.
Some years later, I saw that both these instructions to study the Scriptures were in the Old Testament. Nowhere were there any similar instructions in the New Testament. Never did Peter, Paul, John or Jesus himself ever instruct anyone to study the Scriptures and obey their commands or claim their promises.
The Old Covenant was based on the Law and the Scriptures; the New Covenant was based on the Holy Spirit.
In this writing, I want to consider the question of claiming Bible promises. In a separate writing, I have written about Obeying Bible Commands.
“The Bible is full of wonderful promises. All these are available to you. You are like someone who has a fortune in the bank, waiting for you to use. You have millions of pounds sitting there doing nothing. All you have to do is put your card into an ATM or do a bank transfer or write a cheque, and all will be yours.”
How many times have we heard teachings like this? But are these teachings correct? Do these teachings work for you? And, most importantly, are these teachings to be found in the Bible itself?
In New Testament times, the Jewish people had a Bible. We now call it the Old Testament. No one in New Testament times ever claimed a promise from the Old Testament? God gave them promises directly through the Holy Spirit, but no one tried to claim promises which God had given to other people in previous times.
If an ordinary human being makes a promise to someone, the beneficiary does not need to claim it. The person who makes the promise has to keep the promise. If a father promises to give his son a bicycle for his birthday, the son does not need to claim it. He wakes up excitedly on his birthday, fully expecting that his father will keep his word.
If God makes a promise, he will keep it. No one needs to claim it. God is faithful and will do what he has promised to do.
In Acts 1:4, Jesus told his disciples “not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father”. In Acts 1:8, Jesus explained what the promise was: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses ...”. He did not tell them to claim the promise of the Father. He just told them to wait for it. This is exactly what they did: “They all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication” (Acts 1:14). Sure enough, God fulfilled his promise. Ten days later on the day of Pentecost “they were all filled with the Holy Spirit”.
God can speak to people in countless different ways. He spoke to Balaam through a donkey; but that is certainly not his normal method of speaking. Both in the Bible and in many people’s experiences, God spoke and is still speaking through dreams; but dreams are still not his normal way of speaking.
What then is God’s normal way of speaking to people?
Under the Old Covenant, God normally spoke through prophets. The Old Testament throughout its pages names 20 or 30 prophets through whom God spoke. He spoke through Abraham and then Moses and many more, including major prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and then lesser prophets ending with Malachi. Of course there may have been many other prophets in Old Testament times who were not actually named in the Bible.
A major change came in the New Covenant. Jeremiah prophesied, “I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah... No longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know YHWH,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares YHWH” (Jer 31,34). The essence of this prophecy is that ordinary people would no longer be dependent on human teachers, such as prophets, to hear the voice of God. They would hear directly from God for themselves.
The prophet Joel made a similar prophecy which Peter quoted on the day of Pentecost: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants (slaves) in those days I will pour out my Spirit” (Joel 2:28,29). Hearing the voice of God and prophesying would no longer be restricted to specially chosen people. God would speak directly even to young people and (can you believe it?) even to slaves and slave girls.
This means that God’s normal method of speaking to people in the New Covenant is directly and personally through the Holy Spirit.
Without doubt, God can give promises to people when they read promises made to people in the Bible. Without doubt God can give promises to people through other people, such as pastors or prophets. But the normal method God gives promises to people in the New Covenant is directly and personally to them through the Holy Spirit.
What is the place and purpose of the Bible for us? Is it God’s manual for our spiritual lives? Does the Bible itself give us any light on this question?
The apostle Paul made a clear statement to his young disciple Timothy, naming four purposes of the Scriptures: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2Tim 3:16,17).
Paul himself used the Hebrew (Old Testament) Scriptures in these ways, especially teaching. He used the story of Abraham to illustrate the teaching of justification by faith in his letters to the Romans and to the Galatians.
Matthew showed that Jesus was the Messiah by showing how he fulfilled the Scriptures. Again and again he spoke about the Scriptures being fulfilled. He was using the Old Testament for teaching.
The letter to the Hebrews uses the Old Testament to show that Jesus was superior to all the prophets in the Scriptures. The first two verses set the theme for the whole book: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Heb 1:1,2). Again, using the OT for teaching.
Jesus used the Scriptures in confrontation with Satan in the wilderness. Three times he quoted verses from Deuteronomy:
Jesus was using these scriptures for “rebuking” Satan.
After his resurrection, Jesus also opened the Scriptures to two disciples on the road to Emmaus: “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Here, Jesus was using the Scriptures for teaching.
Let me repeat what Paul wrote to Timothy: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2Tim 3:16,17).
Paul did not tell Timothy that he could claim all the promises in the Scriptures or that he must obey all the commands in the Scriptures. Rather he told Timothy that the Scriptures were the tools he needed for his ministry. The writers of the New Testament all used the Scriptures in the same way. They are the model for how we should use the Scriptures. This is the way I aim to use the Scriptures in my writings.
In the Bible, God certainly made promises to individuals and to groups of people, and especially to the nation of Israel. Some of these promises were conditional and some of them were unconditional.
One of the best known Bible promises is 2Chr 7:14: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land”. This was a conditional promise which God made to the people of Israel. They could not just “claim” it. They had to obey its conditions. They had to “humble themselves, and pray and seek God’s face and turn from their wicked ways”. Only then would God heal their land.
Can we claim this promise for ourselves today? No we can’t! God made this promise to his chosen people, the Jews. Their land was the land of Israel. God’s new chosen people, the followers of Jesus do not have a special land. They have a spiritual land, but not a physical land. They are scattered all over the world.
Can we learn from this promise today? Yes we can! We can learn from everything in the Bible. God can make a similar promise to us if he chooses and we must then obey its conditions, but there is no way we can automatically claim a promise that was made to other people at another time in totally different circumstances.
In Acts 1:8, Jesus made a promise to his disciples: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth”. Here there were no conditions attached. Jesus simply told his disciples to wait - “stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). God then wonderfully fulfilled it on the day of Pentecost.
Can we claim this promise for ourselves? No! Jesus made this promise after his resurrection to his eleven remaining disciples. He had spent three years training them for their mission. You or I may have been believers for many years or we may be new believers, but none of us are in the same position as those eleven disciples. Obviously also we are not called to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
Can we learn from this promise? Yes! If we are going to serve God in any meaningful way, we need the power of the Holy Spirit and we should wait on God till we receive that power, if we have not already received it.
What is the Hebrew word translated “promise” in the Bible? You may be surpised to know there is no special word. For example, in Ps 105:42 “For he remembered his holy promise” the Hebrew word translated “promise” is דָּבָר (davar), which is most often translated simply as “word”.
With God there is no difference between a word and a promise. If God says he will do something, he does not need to make a promise to do it. His word is sufficient. He will do it! “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Num 23:19). No one needs to claim the word or promise or remind God of what he said. His word is enough; he will keep it.
The Greek word translated “promise” in the New Testament is ἐπαγγελια (ep-angelia), similar to the word translated “gospel” - εὐαγγελιον (eu-angelion). Both these words come from the root ἀγγελος (angelos) meaning a messenger. Both these words describe messages or communications from God. We do not need to “claim” messages. We simply need to receive them.
The teaching and practice of claiming Bible promises is common throughout of the Christian world. Many people have been taught to do it and they do it.
Does this practice have a sound basis in the New Testament? Did Jesus, Peter, Paul and John claim promises made in the Old Testament and teach others to do that? The answer is a definite “NO”.
Under the New Covenant, when God makes promises, he makes them directly to his people.
If and when God makes a promise, he will automatically fulfill it. No one needs to claim the promise or remind him that he made it. He does not have memory problems like some of us!
In the Bible, some of God’s promises were conditional, depending on obedience. Others were unconditional and God always fulfilled them.
Our aim must not be to base our lives on the Bible, but on the leading of the Holy Spirit. We must aim to hear God’s voice directly for ourselves and not to claim promises that God made to other people at other times. Only then will we be walking truly in the ways of the New Covenant.