KindiakMath

We can now start discussing some baby biblical theology.

Just to recap: Genesis 1–2 describes the good God’s good creation establishing His shared dwelling place with His creation, paramount to that creation being human beings, whom He has crowned as being made in His image:

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. [Genesis 1:27]

However, Genesis 3 discusses what is commonly known as the “fall of man”, which is humanity’s rebellion against the good God by giving in to the serpent’s “become-like-God” temptation:

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. [Genesis 3:5–6]

As a result, God’s warning of certain death (and by implication, death of all kings), becomes reality for all of humanity:

And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” [Genesis 2:17]

However, in the list of rightful curses that God invokes on to the serpent and on to humanity, He offers hope.

Lemma 1. God promises to defeat the serpent through one of the woman’s offspring.

Proof. Genesis 3:15 records the following:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.” [Genesis 3:15]

As sinful humanity becomes refused entry into God’s sinless goodness (Genesis 3:22–24) and various events in humanity’s downward spiral of rebellion, pain, suffering, and death unfold (Genesis 4–5), God saves a subset of humanity from His judgement through one man, Noah. He commands Noah to build a boat, and in that boat, save this subset through the waters of death (Genesis 6–9:17). However, Noah’s family continues to rebel against God and plunge humanity further away from the goodness of God (Genesis 9:18–11:32).

In this chaos and turmoil (which results in tragically unsurprising death and suffering), God still holds out hope for humanity.

Lemma 2. God promises to bless the world through one man, Abraham, who is himself an offspring from the woman in Lemma 1.

Proof. Genesis 12:1–3 records God’s pivotal promise to Abraham:

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” [Genesis 12:1–3]

Our attention then turns to Abraham’s family, who, once again, rebels against God’s goodness (Genesis 12–50). God keeps on showing kindness to them and upholds His promise to save them, even as they get enslaved in Egypt and are saved into their new land (Exodus–Deuteronomy):

Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass. [Joshua 21:43–45]

The cycle of rebellion and salvation repeats ad nauseam (Joshua; Judges; Samuel; Kings), to the point that Israel themselves are driven out of God’s blessing:

And this occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced. [2 Kings 17:7–8]

Nevertheless, God never stops promising to save. He appoints prophets as “agreement-watchdogs”, calling Israel to repentance and authenticated by signs and wonders (Isaiah; Jeremiah; Ezekiel; Hosea–Malachi).

Lemma 3. God promises to David, a descendant of Abraham, that He will establish a forever-kingdom of one of his descendants. Furthermore, through this kingdom, all nations will be blessed, as per God’s promise to Abraham in Lemma 2.

Proof. The book of Samuel records this pivotal promise:

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. [2 Samuel 7:12–13]

The global impact of this kingdom is implied from Jacob’s blessing over Judah, Abraham’s descendant and David’s ancestor:

The scepter shall not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;
and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. [Genesis 49:10]

Lemma 4. The prophet Daniel describes the king in Lemma 3 as the “son of man”:

I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. [Daniel 7:13–14]

All of our aforementioned discussion can be summarised as follows: God promises to save the world through one woman’s offspring (Lemma 1), and refines that promise through Abraham, through whom all the nations will be blessed (Lemma 2). In particular, God will raise up a Davidic king from the line of Judah (Lemma 3), known as the son of man (Lemma 4), and establish his forever-kingdom, through which all nations will be blessed.

The Old Testament itself doesn’t identify this individual, and the descendants of Abraham are left wondering—who is this saviour king that God has promised to bring?

Theorem 1. Jesus is the promised Davidic saviour king. In particular, He:

• defeats the serpent who lured humanity into rebellion against God,
• blesses the nations beyond Abraham’s biological descendants,
• through His forever-kingdom in the line of David,
• as the eternal ruler of the kingdom of God.

Proof. Jesus claims to be the son of man in Lemma 4:

And Jesus said, “I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” [Mark 14:62]

Jesus receives the hopes of the people as the promised Davidic king in Lemma 3:

And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” [Mark 11:9–10]

The kingdom Jesus preaches extends beyond the biological descendants of Abraham, as per Lemma 2:

And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled. [Mark 5:19–20]

The author of Matthew summarises Jesus’ crucial ancestry as follows:

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. [Matthew 1:1]

Finally, Jesus defeats the serpent in Lemma 1 by dying (i.e. this is how the serpent “bruises” the heel) and resurrecting from the dead:

And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. [Mark 16:6]

Furthermore, Jesus’ resurrection validates his claims to deity, and therefore establishes the truth of his claims in Lemmas 2–4.

Jesus’ followers help us unpack what Jesus being God’s answer to His humanity-healing promises means for us today.

Corollary 1. God carried out every promise that He has made in Lemmas 1–4 through Jesus.

Proof. The Apostle Paul makes this analysis of God’s answering His promises through Jesus:

Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised. [Acts 13:23]

This answer that God gives humanity regarding this saviour king is described as “good news” (i.e. gospel):

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh… [Romans 1:1–3]

Corollary 2. The impact of Jesus being the promised saviour king for all of humanity is as follows: for any human being of any ethnicity in Jesus, what is true of Jesus as a human becomes true of said human being:

• can defeat death and their sin-addiction against God,
• can enjoy God’s blessing as God’s adopted children,
• as new citizens in God’s forever-kingdom,
• whose king and God is Jesus.

Furthermore, every human being in Jesus is freely forgiven of their sin-addiction.

Proof. Baptism is the outward expression of uniting with Jesus. Since Jesus died and resurrected, so shall we die and get resurrected:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. [Romans 6:2–5]

Since Jesus died and resurrected, those who are in Jesus will also die and be resurrected by the power of God’s Spirit:

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. [Romans 8:9–11]

This God welcomes us into His family as children, with Jesus as our heavenly brother:

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. [Romans 8:14–17]

This God now empowers us with His grace to frees us from our sin-addiction:

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. [Romans 6:12–14]

In Jesus, we are now welcomed into God’s kingdom:

He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. [Colossians 1:13–14]

And Jesus is our king:

Now the point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. [Hebrews 8:1–2]

The content of Corollary 2 is awesome, but how can we actually be “in Jesus”? By having faith in Him.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. [Ephesians 2:8–9]

But what does it mean to “have faith” in Jesus?

Corollary 3. A person X is said to have “faith in Jesus” if X regards as true that Jesus is the real, promised, sin-forgiving saviour God-king for X as per Theorem 1, thereby X’s one and only object of worship.

Proof. Abraham is said to “have faith” in God by believing that God will carry out everything that He has promised:

No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. [Romans 4:20–21]

Faith is described as conviction that God would carry out His said promises, though they may be invisible from our point of view:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. [Hebrews 11:1–3]

In particular, that God would graciously cleanse us from our sin-crimes against Him and give us a right-standing before Him:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. [2 Corinthians 5:21]

And for all who believe in Jesus, they regard Him as their God-king:

And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” [Matthew 14:33]

To believe in Jesus, therefore, is to be convinced that through Jesus’ death, God has really forgiven us of all of our sins and given us a new standing with Him, according to His promises that He has and will carry out, and welcomes us as His eternally living children and people, and Him as our God:

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him (Jesus). That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. [2 Corinthians 1:20]

Definition 1. A human being is a Christian if he/she has faith in Jesus as per Corollary 3.

Being with God is the essence of being in heaven, which we shall explore in the next post.

—Joel Kindiak, 18 Nov 25, 2002H