Genesis 17:2 Commentary and Bible Study

Children, says the Lord, come from me. I will multiply you. He tells Abram that there must be no more recourse to any methods of his own, and when it comes to spiritual children it is exactly the same. The Lord speaks of a covenant between himself and Abram. This is not the first time the covenant has been referred to; this covenant was made with Abram back in chapter 15:18, where God promised to give a land to Abram’s descendants. Even before that God had promised him that his seed would be as many as the stars of heaven (Genesis 15:5), and that his seed would inherit the land (Genesis 12:7; 13:15). What is given to him in this covenant is no different to what has been promised before. Why is the covenant necessary when the promise has already been made? Is God more bound to Abram by a covenant than by a bare promise? No, his bare word is sufficient for us to trust him implicitly. He is the God who cannot lie, his word is his promise. The covenant is necessary because it is the foundation of the promise. The promise could never have been made without this covenant in place, because only under the terms of the covenant of grace can God have any dealings with sinful man. Christ must make atonement for our sin and reconcile us to God before he can bless us. Every promise of God to men and women assumes the covenant of grace and every promise is yes, and amen in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20).How can such unequal parties enter into a covenant together? If there are conditions to be kept by both sides in a covenant, then how stable is that covenant if one of those two sides is fallen man? Not at all stable. But this is no ordinary covenant. This is a gracious covenant, made with Abraham through his seed, the Lord Jesus Christ. The promises were assured to Abraham through what his seed, the Lord Jesus Christ, would do. Abraham is included in the covenant because by faith he is united with Christ, and ‘in Christ’ he receives all the blessings of the covenant. The covenant spoken of here is the same covenant that was made in eternity past between the members of the Godhead. The Father promised to give the Son a people, and Son promised to come into the world, to take our nature, to live a perfect life, and go to the cross of Calvary and bear the punishment for the sins of all those given him by the Father. The Spirit promised to bring them to life spiritually and to work repentance and faith in them, causing them to trust in Christ’s redeeming work as the only basis of their salvation. The covenant God made with Abraham was the outworking of the covenant of grace made between the members of the Godhead before the foundation of the world. That covenant promises spiritual life and spiritual blessings in heaven. The covenant God made with Abraham included certain additional physical elements which served to illustrate, to symbolise, the spiritual aspects of the covenant. There were then two side to this covenant – a physical illustrative side, and a spiritual side. God made promises to Abraham concerning his physical descendants, to give them a land to dwell in, to protect them from their enemies, to prosper them. All his physical seed came under this side of the Abrahamic covenant, but none of this brought them salvation. Salvation only ever came through the spiritual side of the covenant by faith, and while these physical descendants failed to exercise faith, they were shut out of the spiritual side of the covenant. God set up wonderful parallels between this physical seed and the spiritual seed, and made the nation of Israel a rich visual aid to instruct mankind, but until they believed, they remained no more than physical descendants and had no eternal hope.