Promises To God

For as many as are the promises of God, in Him they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us. (2 Corinthians 1:20)


I spent years making promises to God. I would promise to read my Bible more, to pray more, and to witness more. I'd promise to sin less. My life was filled with promise after promise which I would always end up breaking. Consequently, I constantly felt like God must be disappointed with me. I just couldn't seem to get it right, no matter how hard I tried.

If I had only understood then what the Bible says about the subject, I could have saved myself a lot of stress and strain. We're never told in Scripture to promise anything to God. In fact, the Bible is full of promises that God has made to us. That's the part of grace that people find so hard to accept - it's one sided. He gives and we get. He promises and we believe. We have nothing to offer in return nor is there anything He wants or needs from us. Our only role is to believe Him.

Paul said that the promises of God are all "Yes!" in Jesus Christ. That means He is the embodiment of God's promises. What's our part? Again, Paul says it is simply to say "Amen!" That's a word which, in the southern lingo of my roots, means "ain't it the truth!" The bottom line is that there's never a need for us to promise anything. It is to the glory of God that we simply rest in the finished work of Christ and know that in Him God's promises to us have all been fulfilled.

Whatever God has promised us, we have it in Christ. We are "children of the promise" (Romans 9:8) and as "heirs of the promise" (Hebrews 6:17) we can relax and know we don't have to do anything to gain God's blessings in our lives. Everything He has ever promised to do on our behalf has been accomplished and given to us in Christ. (Ephesians 1:3)

When God got ready to enter into covenant with Abraham, Abe went to work to prepare for the ratification ceremony. (See Genesis 15) He prepared the sacrificial animals by filleting them and laying the halves on two sides with a bloody path down the middle. Normally, when two people entered into covenant together they would walk arm in arm down that bloody pathway together. In so doing, they were promising that they would each keep their part of the covenant, even if it meant shedding their last drop of blood to do it.

But when the time came for the covenant to be ratified with Abraham, God caused him to fall into a deep sleep and God walked alone down the bloody pathway. What did that mean? It meant that there was no need for Abe to make any promises. The only thing he would have ended up doing was breaking them anyway. So God walked the path alone, and in so doing, proved that He would keep the terms of the covenant for both He and Abraham. The only thing Abe had to do was believe it. When it was all said and done, Abraham did believe it and "it was counted to him for righteousness." (Romans 4:3)

That's all we have to do too. Just believe God. Legalism insists that we "do our part" by making promises to Him about how we'll do better and try harder, but grace tells us that He has done it all. We don't have to promise anything. In fact, when we do we are insinuating that the finished work of the cross wasn't enough to seal the deal (ratify the covenant) and it was. So let's rest in what He has done and give a loud and hearty "Amen!" to Jesus. That and that alone is what brings the highest glory to God.