God Put Him to Sleep and Then Signed It on His Own

There is a running total in the back of a man's head and he has never once written it down.

It works like this. Good week, and he half expects things to go his way. Bad week, and he braces. Not consciously. He would deny it if you put it to him directly, and he would mean the denial.

But it is there. If something goes wrong he checks backwards for what he did. If something goes right he feels a small settling, like an account came into balance.

He has never said any of this out loud. He is not sure he had noticed it until recently, and what made him notice was praying for something and hearing himself, in his own head, quietly listing why he was owed it.

That is a trade. He has been in a trade with God for about eleven years and calling it faith.

He was asleep when it was signed

This is one of the strangest scenes in the Bible and once you understand what is happening it is hard to shake.

God tells Abram to bring some animals. Abram cuts them in half and lays the halves out opposite each other, leaving a path between them.

That was how agreements were made back then. Both parties walked between the pieces. Walking through was a way of saying: if I break this, let what happened to these animals happen to me.

So Abram lays it out and waits for the part where they walk it. And then:

And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. (Genesis 15:12, King James Version)

He goes under. He is unconscious for the main event.

And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram. (Genesis 15:17-18)

Read who walks. A furnace and a lamp. God, in two forms, going between the pieces on His own, twice, while the other party is asleep on the ground.

Abram never walks it. He never takes the oath. He is not a signatory to that agreement at all; he is the person it is made in favor of.

You are bound to Him by something He cut on His own. Genesis 15 has only one party walking between the pieces, and it is His Spirit who makes an ancient scene like that settle something about tonight.

He swore on Himself because there was nobody higher

The writer of Hebrews picks up exactly this and explains why God did it that way.

For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself. (Hebrews 6:13)

When people make a serious promise they appeal to something bigger than themselves. There was nothing bigger available, so He bound Himself to it instead.

And then the reason:

Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation. (Hebrews 6:17-18)

Willing more abundantly to shew. He went further than He had to, on purpose, because He wanted people to be certain.

He did not need to swear. His word was already good. He added the oath so that the people it was for would have something to hold that did not depend on how they were doing that week.

You are not in a deal that can be voided. Hebrews 6 says He bound Himself with an oath on Himself so the people it was for would be certain, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an oath like that reach the place where a running total is kept.

What a trade cannot do

Here is the practical difference, and it is not a system.

A trade is measured. Both sides are watching the balance. Either side can walk if the other one fails to deliver, and both sides know it, and that knowledge is in the room the whole time.

The arrangement in Genesis 15 cannot be voided by Abram's performance because Abram never made a promise in it. There is nothing for him to break.

Paul takes that all the way:

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

That is a list of everything he can think of, and it is deliberately exhausting, and the phrase any other creature is there to close off anything he missed.

You are named in that list, because you are a creature and the list was built to leave nothing out. Romans 8 runs the inventory to the end on purpose, and it is the Holy Spirit who is described a few verses earlier as the one bearing witness inside a person that this holds.

And Paul writes this to Timothy, which is the hardest and plainest version:

If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself. (2 Timothy 2:13)

He cannot deny himself. His faithfulness is not a response to yours. It is a fact about what He is.

You are held by something that does not run on your performance. Romans 8 and 2 Timothy 2 both put the weight on His side, and it is His Spirit rather than your record who makes that stop being a nice idea.

And He did it again, in front of everybody

The night before He died, Jesus picked up the same language on purpose.

This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you. (Luke 22:20)

Testament is the same word as covenant. He is saying what kind of thing this is.

And He is quoting something. Jeremiah had described this centuries earlier:

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people... for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

Count the promises and notice who makes every one of them. I will put. I will write. I will be. I will forgive. I will remember no more.

There is no clause in there about what the other side has to keep up.

You are bound by something He cut on His own, and you have never been the one holding it together. Jeremiah 31 lists His side and nobody else's, and it is the Holy Spirit who writes it in a person rather than handing them a copy to sign.