Transforming Grace

The covenant of God’s grace with Adam reveals that our exclusion from God’s presence is both a blessing and a curse. Knowing the grace and goodness of God in the exclusion of Adam and Eve from the garden causes us to see both blessings and curses in the sickness and death which results from our being away from God’s presence. Richard Baxter’s Directions for a Peaceful Death point us toward the blessings. Here are two edited directions of his eighteen:

Comfort is not desirable only as it pleases us, but also as it strengthens us, and helps us in our greatest duties. And when is it more needful than in sickness, and the approach of death? I shall therefore add such directions as are necessary to make our departure comfortable or peaceful at the least, as well as safe.

Direct. II. Misunderstand not sickness, as if it were a greater evil than it is; but observe how great a mercy it is, that death has so suitable a harbinger or forerunner: that God should do so much before he takes us hence, to wean us from the world, and make us willing to be gone; that the unwilling flesh has the help of pain; and that the senses and appetite languish and decay, which did draw the mind to earthly things: and that we have so loud a call, and so great a help to true repentance and serious preparation! …ordinarily it is a mercy to have the flesh brought down and weakened by painful sickness, to help to conquer our natural unwillingness to die.

Direct. III. Remember whose messenger sickness is, and who it is that calls you to die.  …You cannot deny him to be the disposer of all things, without denying him to be God: it is he that loves us, and never meant us any harm in any thing that he has done to us; that gave the life of his Son to redeem us; and therefore thinks not life too good for us. Our sickness and death are sent by the same love that sent us a Saviour, and sent us the powerful preachers of his word, and sent us his Spirit, and secretly and sweetly changed our hearts, and knit them to himself in love; which gave us a life of precious mercies for our souls and bodies, and has promised to give us life eternal; and shall we think, that he now intends us any harm? Cannot he turn this also to our good, as he has done many an affliction which we have complained about?

I know this post jumps the gun as I am yet to give the biblical and systematic justification for my understanding of the covenant of grace in the garden. Time was against me this morning. This quote was ready to post. And, we can enjoy these blessings without the justification for now.

I have just finished an 11 week sermon series in Genesis 37 to 50 and have realised for the first time that Joseph is the preeminent OT type of Christ, the suffering servant king. I need to write this down before I forget. The patterns of Joseph’s life foreshadow and point forward to the life of Christ. The chronological order of Joseph’s life differs somewhat from the life of Christ but the patterns of innocent suffering as saviour of God’s people and risen king of the world are clearly present:

Joseph is hated by his brothers for his righteousness relationship with his father (Gen 37:2 cf John 15:24) and for having received the privileged status and honour of firstborn son from his father who loves him above all (Gen 37:3-4 cf Mark 1:11). He is hated by his brothers for revealing God’s truth about his future at that of his brothers (Gen 37:5ff cf Mark 12:10-12) and for his words (Gen 37:8). The is no direct evidence in the text for Joseph deserving his brothers hatred due to any character flaw such as arrogance (cf John 15:25).

His brothers wander away from the close fellowship and security of Hebron to Schehem and finally Dothan, a place of godless material prosperity (Gen 37:12-17). They were spiritually lost. Joseph’s father sent his son to search for his lost brothers (Gen 37:13a & 14 cf John 3:17). Joseph willingly obeys his Father in the knowledge of how his brothers might treat him (Gen 37:13b cf Mark 14:36).

When he comes to them, his brothers treat Joseph with disrespect and plan to kill him (Gen 37:18 cf Mark 14:1). He is stripped of his robe and descends into the pit (Gen 37:23 cf Mark 15:20). His death causes great mourning (Gen 37:34-35 cf Zech 12:10).

As Joseph is typological for Christ, Judah is typological for God’s lost people. He sleeps with his daughter-in-law and declares that in spite of her unrighteous deceit and prostitution that she is more righteous than him (Gen 38:26). He is deserving of righteous punishment.

Joseph demonstrates God’s presence with him during his life as a slave (Gen 39:3) and his wisdom brings prosperity and blessing wherever he is (Gen 39:5-6).

Joseph is severely and persistently tempted by Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39:7-12a cf Mark 1:13) but does not sin (Gen 39:12b). In spite of his moral innocence he is falsely accused (Gen 39:17-18 cf Mark 14:57-59) and is punished without a just trial (Gen 39:19-20 cf Mark 15:7-15). He descends into prison (Gen 39:20) but again prospers because the Lord is with him and he is wise (Gen 39:21-23).

He shares his punishment with two criminals (Gen 40:1-4 cf Luke 23:33). The criminals ask Joseph to help them (Gen 40:7-8 cf Luke 23:39). Joseph reveals their future (Gen 40:8bff cf Luke 23:43). God has mercy on one of the criminals and shows no mercy to the other (Gen 40:21-22 cf Luke 23:43).

Joseph is resurrected from prison (Gen 41:14 cf Mark 16:6). He ascends to the right hand of Pharaoh (Gen 41:39-40 cf Luke 24:51). Joseph rules over the kingdom of Egypt and his rule spreads to all nations on earth (Gen 41:56-57 cf Mark 14:62). All peoples of the earth come to Joseph for salvation (Gen 41:57 cf Matt 28:18-19).

Joseph tests his brothers and by their testing their hearts are changed. Judah is reformed (Gen 42-45). Judah is reconciled to his brother and saviour (Gen 45:4-5).

When Judah tells his father, Jacob, that Joseph is alive and ruling the whole of Egypt, Judah can’t believe it (Gen 45:26). Three things convince him that Judah is telling the truth. First, Judah repeats Joseph’s words (Gen 45:27 cf Mark 16:7). He then shows his father the physical evidence of Joseph’s life (Gen 45:27 cf Mark 16:6). Judah is a character witness who has been transformed from being murderous, nervous and deceitful to being confident, humble and magnanimous (cf Acts 2:14).

When Jacob is reunited with Joseph, he is introduced to Pharaoh. Judah confesses his sin to Pharaoh (Gen 47:9). He is then given the best part of the land of Egypt and all the provisions for his family, including Judah, as an act of grace by God (Gen 47:11-12 cf Mark 10:29-30). The gift Jacob receives is life (cf John 3:16). The value of this free gift is highlighted by what it costs the Egyptians to buy their life; all their money, livestock, land and freedom (Gen 47:13-25 cf Mark 10:17-21).

God’s sovereignty, goodness and grace are revealed through his suffering servant, king Joseph (Gen 50:19-21).

Today I am starting a new category of posts (Grace in Eden on the categories menu, bottom right) looking at the relationship between God, Adam and Eve and the two trees in the midst of the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:9).

I’ll outline my covenantal understanding of the first three chapters of Genesis in this post. Subsequent posts will seek to justify and build on the following understanding.

Why a covenant of Grace in the garden?

What follows is an outline of an expanded version of the traditional reformed covenant of works. This outline concurs with the reformed covenant of works with respect to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but differs with respect to the tree of life. I call what is also known as the Garden, Adamic or Creation covenant a covenant of grace because it is by nature, but not by means, essentially the same covenant offered to all in Christ.

Key to this understanding of the Adamic Covenant is the fact that there are two named trees in the midst of the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:9). God named the two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The names of the trees contain two sacramental promises of God. Adam faced a choice between these two sacraments. God told Adam that he was free to eat from every tree in the garden, including the tree of life (Gen 2:16) and, as he ate, God would immediately confer on Adam the promise annexed to that particular tree. The first promise was eternal life and the second promise the knowledge of good and evil. Adam was prohibited from eating the second sacrament upon pain of death. Adam and Eve’s access to the tree of life was unrestricted and unconditional.

What is a sacrament?

A sacrament is a physical means given by God for people to ratify a promise made to them by God.

The properties of the trees were natural, they had no supernatural properties in themselves. They did not function ex opere operato. There was no metaphysical or ontological difference between the two named trees and the rest of the trees in the garden. Rather, the trees acted as signs and seals of the promises annexed to them as indicated by their names: eternal life (Gen 3:22) and the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:7).

What was Adam’s original condition? Was he mortal or immortal?

It follows from the sacramental purpose of the trees that Adam and Eve originally possessed neither the promise of eternal life nor the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were neither mortal nor immortal in their original condition. They were not mortal as they could not die whilst in the life giving presence of God. They were not immortal because God had not yet promised to let them live forever. They were instead sustained by the presence of God in a state of perpetual life or suspended mortality for a period of probation. They were also in an initial state of moral innocence (Gen 3:7). Their eventual condition would be decided by them.

What choice did Adam face?

Adam and Eve faced a threefold choice between two alternative sacraments; to eat one, to eat the other or abstain from both. God’s decretive will was for them to choose life. He prohibited them from gaining the knowledge of good and evil via the tree of that name.

What was the period of their probation?

The period of Adam and Eve’s probation was limited by their choice. The end of their test of faith and obedience would coincide with their eating the fruit of either named tree.

Had Adam eaten first from the tree of life, he would have learned that God is good and faithful to his word. Adam would have lived from then on in a state of eternal, joyful love of God and faithful obedience to God.

What happened at the Fall?

Adam alone received the word of promise and command (Gen 2:16-17) and was responsible for teaching Eve whom God created later (Gen 2:18).

Eve, however, made a number of critical factual errors during her encounter with the serpent. The first and most crucial error, after listening to a talking snake and not conferring with her husband, was to deny that there were two trees in the midst of the garden (Gen 2:9). She said “God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden” (Gen 3:3). Satan’s deception began by focusing her away from the tree that would give her what she needed, which was eternal life. He asked “did God really say you must not eat of any tree in the garden?” The answer expected from the question is “no we can eat from all the trees but one.” The wording of the serpent’s question and Eve’s erroneous reply focused her on the one prohibited tree. She had grouped the tree of life with all the other trees and it played no further part in her reasoning and choice.

Eve’s real choice was between eternal life and moral knowledge but she was now focused on choosing between moral ignorance and moral knowledge. The real choice was made obvious by God’s prohibition of one of the two options. But by focusing on one tree, the nature of God’s prohibition changed in Eve’s mind from being both protective and a test of obedience to being miserly and restrictive. The moral culpability of her final action is made all the more serious by the free availability of the promise of eternal life. She chose to eat on the basis of a misapprehension the gracious nature of God.

All her subsequent arguments with the serpent fail to convince her of the danger of eating what God had prohibited. Her second mistake was to misquote the prohibition, adding that God had said not to touch the fruit (Gen 3:3).

The serpent then reminded Eve of the sacramental promise attached to the fruit of the tree, “you will become like God” (Gen 3:5). Eve was made to become like God but not not in the sense offered in the prohibited tree. She desired the right thing, to become like God, but by the wrong means.

When she finally succumbed to eating from the prohibited tree, her husband capitulating, God kept his word to Eve and Adam. God acted faithfully. As soon as they ate the fruit of the tree which signified the gift of the knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were opened by God (Gen 3:7) and they gained the promised moral knowledge. Had she eaten the fruit of the other tree God would have likewise immediately granted his promise of eternal life (Gen 3:22).

In what way did God respond to the rebellion of his rational beings?

God acted with incredible, unmerited grace. Adam and Eve deserved to be summarily executed by God as he had threatened (Gen 2:17). Instead, God chose to exclude Adam and Eve from his presence. Their exclusion was both a blessing and curse. It was a blessing because it protected Adam and Eve from the all consuming purity and holiness of God (Lev 16.2, Heb 12:29). It was a curse because their suspended mortality, which had been prevented by God’s presence from running its course, was no longer suspended. The clock began to tick and Adam and Eve began to grow old and face mortal or natural death for the first time (Gen 5:5).

God then barred the way back to the tree of life so that man could not “reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live for ever” (Gen 3:22). God remained faithful to the promise of eternal life annexed to the tree of life but would not allow Adam and Eve to presume upon his faithfulness. One mouthful of the fruit of the tree of life would move God to fulfill his promise of eternal life for Adam and Eve.

Again, their exclusion is both a blessing and a curse. It is an act of grace by God which prevents fallen, compromised, sinful people eating the sacrament which would seal his promise of eternal life. It would be the most horrendous condition to have to live with the effects of sin with no way of escape because of immortality. And yet, being cut off from the sacrament by which God gave his word that people would live in his presence for ever is a curse.

How does this understanding of the Garden covenant and the fall fit with the rest of scripture?

The rest of the Bible is the story of how God himself graciously restores his original promises attached to the two trees, including the penalty of death for rebellion. He does this by reversing the effects of the fall for many people in the person of Jesus Christ. God himself does three crucial things in Christ which preserve the essential nature of the covenant of grace in the garden:
1. Jesus restores covenant obedience by his perfect obedience (Heb 5:8-9)
2. Jesus willingly accepts being summarily executed, taking the penalty of death his people deserve by dying in their place (2 Cor 5:14)
3. Jesus supersedes the tree of life. His resurrected body and blood, signified by bread and wine, form the new sacrament by which all the promises of God are ratified by faith in the crucified Saviour and Lord (John 6:24-40).

It was not necessary for God to do all this. This is grace. As a result, we all face a choice like Adam and Eve. God sovereignly makes his covenant of grace with many people who do not by nature have covenant obedience and so deserve God’s righteous judgement and the punishment of death. By his grace through faith many receive Christ’s covenant obedience, he dies their death and they receive the promise of eternal life in him through his body and blood. It is God’s gracious will for us to choose life (Deut 30:19) by living in the joyful, eternal obedience of faith (Romans 16:25-27).

I’m reading George Whitefield’s Journals. Here’s another case of ‘heart failing’ mourning of sin colliding with the grace of God in Christ:

It would be endless to recount the sins and offences of my younger days. They are more in number than the hairs of my head. My heart would fail me at the remembrance of them, was I not assured that my Redeemer liveth, ever to make intercession for me. However the young man in the Gospel might boast how he had kept the commandments from his youth, with shame and confusion of face I confess that I have broken them all from my youth. Whatever foreseen fitness for salvation others may talk of and glory in, I disclaim any such thing. If I trace myself from my cradle to my manhood, I can see nothing in me but a fitness to be damned. [I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not.] If the Almighty bad not prevented me by His grace, and wrought most powerfully upon my soul, quickening me by His free Spirit when dead in trespasses and sins, I had now either been sitting in darkness, and in the shadow of death, or condemned, as the due reward of my crimes, to be for ever lifting up my eyes in torments.

But such was the free grace of God to me, that though corruption worked so strongly in my soul, and produced such early and bitter fruits, yet I can recollect very early movings of the blessed Spirit upon my heart, sufficient to satisfy me that God loved me with an everlasting love, and separated me even from my mother’s womb, for the work to which He afterwards was pleased to call me.

I have noticed a tendency to become settled in life with a certain level of sin which I accept as unchangeable. The argument goes like this: I have been a Christian for 15 years. I’ve done lots of growing in that time. In the early days I was acutely aware of my moral failings and I grew in large spurts. But I seem to have reached a point where growth, if any, is in tiny incremental steps. A bad week will set me back further than I’ve grown in a year. In some way, I have grown to accept that my sinful nature creates a ceiling or a level which sanctification tends towards but cannot exceed. So I live with my short temper and impatience and presume that I have an excuse all worked out. It’s sin living in me (Romans 7) and I’ll never change. The presumption that I’ll never change is fatal. Here’s Thomas Watson on the subject of presumption:

5 Presumption of mercy. Who will take pains with his heart or mourn for sin that thinks he may be saved at a cheaper rate? How many, spider-like, suck damnation out of the sweet flower of God’s mercy? Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save sinners, is the occasion of many a man’s perishing. Oh, says one, Christ died for me. He has done all. What need I pray or mourn? Many a bold sinner plucks death from the tree of life, and through presumption, goes to hell by that ladder of Christ’s blood, by which others go to heaven. It is sad when the goodness of God, which should ‘lead to repentance’ (Romans 2: 4), leads to presumption.

I’ve learned recently that my ceiling is false. The more I grow in my heartfelt grasp of God’s grace to me in Christ, the higher my ceiling is raised. When I know the grace of God more I hate my sin more and am sensitive to what I do and say. Lord, let me know more of the wonders of your grace so I might loath my sin and live for Christ. Amen

The first aspect of three which leads to the appreciation of grace is this: the sovereign and gracious work of God in bringing sinners to Christ. Charles Spurgeon in his autobiography writes:

When I was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the very day and hour when first I received those truths [the doctrine of election] in my own soul—when they were, as John Bunyan says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I can recollect how I felt that I had grown on a sudden from a babe into a man—that I had made progress in Scriptural knowledge, through having found, once for all, that clue to the truth of God.

One week-night, when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not thinking much about the preacher’s sermon, for I did not believe it. The thought struck me, How did you come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed across my mind in a moment—I should not have sought Him unless there had been some previous influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all, and that He was the Author of my faith, and so the whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I desire to make this my constant confession, “I ascribe my change wholly to God.

My own conversion began whilst I was venomously opposed to the idea of the existence of God. Yet, I first found myself praying, unexpectedly, at the spot where my grandmother’s dead body had been found. Soon after that I was surrounded by credible, loving Christians. Everywhere I went I couldn’t get away from joyful, believing, dependable believers.

When I finally came to faith I’d been up the previous night until 5am at my 24th birthday party, drinking heavily. But the following night I felt drawn to church against common sense and the good advice of my house mate. As I listened to the words of Psalm 36 which say that because of “the sinfulness of the wicked, there is no fear of God before their eyes” yet “Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast you save, O LORD.” The fact that God knew all about my twisted heart, my spite and evil plots, my wicked words and conceit and yet showed his incomparable steadfast love, faithfulness, righteousness and justice for me in the cross of Christ melted my heart and gave me new eyes. When I look back on my life I am able but don’t echo enough the “constant confession” of Spurgeon, “I ascribe my change wholly to God.”

Ephesians 2:8-9 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith– and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God– not by works, so that no one can boast.

In this month’s edition of The Briefing in an article on justification by faith, Christopher Ash compares God’s grace to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the most precious stone in the world. It is a brilliant illustration. As we imagine holding that diamond up to the sun and gazing at its beauty, it almost defies description. Words alone cannot describe either the purity, clarity and refracted light in all its complexity nor their collective breath-taking effect on the observer. We should gaze likewise on the gift of grace in Christ and allow it to inspire our words and hearts to adoration and appreciation.

Thomas Watson makes this point well when he writes about blessedness:

Blessedness stands in the fruition of the chief good.
(i)) It consists in fruition; there must not be only possession, but fruition. A man may possess an estate, yet not enjoy it. He may have the dominion of it, but not the comfort, as when he is in a lethargy or under the predominance of melancholy. But in true blessedness there must be a sensible enjoyment of that which the soul possesses.

Our words of description will effect our appreciation. We must, therefore, be careful not to limit our description of the gift of grace to concise theological jargon-based statements. If we do, our fruition of grace is reduced to the equivalent of describing the worlds most beautiful diamond as a piece of cut transparent carbon or Buckingham Palace as a large detached house in central London. What is grace? How can it be described? More will follow…

I found when I was mixing the gospel with the law that I was never comforted. I had a persitent, nagging tension or spirtual sadness because of my sin. Thanks to Thomas Waston for highlighting that God may have withdrawn comfort until I grasped his grace or, more likely, showing that the fault lay with me:

…though the Lord might by virtue of his sovereignty withhold comfort from the mourner, yet there may be many pregnant causes assigned why mourners lack comfort in regard of God and also in regard of themselves.

1 In regard of God: He sees it fit to withhold comfort that he may raise the value of grace. We are apt to esteem comfort above grace, therefore God locks up our comforts for a time, that he may enhance the price of grace.

2 That God’s mourners lack comfort, it is most frequency in regard of themselves.

(i) Through mistake, which is twofold. They do not go to the right spring for comfort. They go to their tears, when they should go to Christ’s blood. It is a kind of idolatry to make our tears the ground of our comfort. Mourning is not meritorious. It is the way to joy, not the cause.

(ii) God’s mourners sometimes lack comfort through discontent and peevishness. David makes his disquiet the cause of his sadness. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within me?’ (Psalm 43: 5). A disquieted heart, like a rough sea, is not easily calmed.

(iii) The mourner is without comfort for want of applying the promises. He looks at sin which may humble him, but not at that Word which may comfort him. The mourner’s eyes are so full of tears that he cannot see the promise

(iv) The mourner may lack comfort through too much earthly-mindedness; by feeding immoderately on earthly comforts we miss of heavenly comforts.

(v) Perhaps the mourner has had comfort and lost it.

In his book The Pleasures of God, John Piper uses this quote from a 1976 John Kilby lecture on keeping alive to God’s glory. Kilby said:

“I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the, child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder.”‘

One of the tragedies of growing up is that we get used to things. It has its good side of course, since irritations may cease to be irritations. But there is immense loss when we get used to the redness of the rising sun, and the roundness of the moon, and the whiteness of the snow, the wetness of rain, the blueness of the sky, the buzzing of bumble bees, the stitching of crickets, the invisibility of wind, the unconscious constancy of heart and diaphragm, the weirdness of noses and ears, the number of the grains of sand on a thousand beaches, the never-ceasing crash crash crash of countless waves, and ten million kingly-clad flowers flourishing and withering in woods and mountain valleys where no one sees but God. I invite you, with Clyde Kilby, to seek a “freshness of vision,” to look, as though it were the first time, not at the empty product of accu­mulated millennia of aimless evolutionary accidents (which no child ever dreamed of), but at the personal handiwork of an infinitely strong, creative, and exuberant Artist who made the earth and the sea and every­thing in them. I invite you to believe (like the children believe) “that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course you shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the Architect who calls Himself Alpha and Omega” (note 11, resolution 10).

I’ve found the same sort of familiarity with God’s grace had seeped into my Christian life. I have discovered the need for the freshness of vision I had at the outset, as an adopted child of God through pure unclouded faith in Christ as Saviour.

In yesterday’s excerpt, Thomas Watson highlighted something of the promises of God. I need to be like him as minister of the word of God. If not, I am what John Bunyan called a promise clipper. Bunyan described promise clippers as enemies of the kingdom of Christ and worthy of public disgrace!

John Phillips explains where Bunyan’s analogy came from in his commentary on Genesis:

Toward the end of the thirteenth century, Edward I of England commissioned a colony of artists from Italy to coin currency for the English mint. The Florentine artists took sheet gold and silver, divided it up with shears, and hammered the pieces into the proper shapes. But, for all their skill, the workmen could not give each piece an absolutely equal weight. For one thing, the hammered coins had no carved rims around their edges. So it was not long before thieves discovered it was easier for them to clip a sliver or two off the rim of a shilling than it was for them to do an honest day’s work. Coin clipping became a profitable enterprise of crime.

To avert the crisis of confidence, coin clippers, who sadly included the Reverend Robinson of Huddersfield, were publicly executed. Public confidence was only really restored once “armies of statesmen and financiers and king’s counselors and Parliamentarians” had done all they could to ensure coins represented a true and constant value. Phillips again:

…The coin of the kingdom of God is the promises of God. John Bunyan saw that. In his famous allegory The Holy War he tells how Mansoul, having long been under the power of Diabolus, was at last emancipated by Prince Emmanuel. One of the first acts of the king was to arrest Clip-Promise, the traitor. He was a notorious villain, says Bunyan, “for by his doings much of the king’s coin was abused, therefore he was mode a public example.” Alexander Whyte, in commenting on that phase of the story, said:

“The grace of God is like a bullion mass of purest gold. Moses and David and Isaiah and Hosea and Paul and Peter and John are the inspired artists who have commissioned to take that bullion and out of it to cut and beat and smelt and shape and stamp and superscribe the promises and then to issue the promises as currency in the market of salvation. It is these royal coins, imaged and superscribed in the Royal likeness, that Clip-Promise so mutilated, debased and abused.” [Alexander Whyte, Bunyan's Characters, Third Series (London: Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier, 1895), pp. 95-105]

It is one of the hallmarks of contemporary evangelicalism, certainly in my experience and my own life and preaching, that many evangelicals clip the promises of God. We speak casually or use catchphrases or slip into jargon mode and so devalue the coin by clipping its edge. Armies of bishops, vicars, pastors, writers, intercessors, Christians must speak expansively and passionately on God’s promises before public confidence will be restored in their value.