Fulfillments & Interpretations of Biblical Prophesies - The Abrahamic Covenant - Redemptive/Historical Interpretation

The Abrahamic Covenant:

Redemptive/Historical Fulfillment and Interpretation

• Promises
• Fame—God fulfilled this promise by preserving the name of Abraham even to our generation.
• Fortune—God has given Himself as our shield and reward, to everyone who believes: from Abraham to Paul (Genesis 15:1; 2 Samuel 22:31, 36; Psalm 3:3; 7:10; 18:30; 28:7; 59:11; Jeremiah 31:15-17; Isaiah 62:11-12; Matthew 5:12; Colossians 3:24; Hebrews 11:6; 12:1-2; 2 John 1:8).  While the people of God did in fact enter Canaan as God had promised (Joshua 21:43-45), fulfilling the temporal aspect of this promise(It is imperative to note here that the return of ethnic Jews to the land they now occupy in the Middle East, is not an explicit fulfillment of the promise of land that God made to Abraham (note Is. 65:17-25)—the New Testament reveals to us that the ultimate fulfillment of the land promised to Abraham is the New Heavens and New Earth (Psalm 37:11; Matthew 5:5; 2 Peter 3:11-13)—the connections the New Testament authors make between redeemed persons from the interadvental age and those of other ages will be considered later in the section on exegetical theology.
• Recipients— all who are counted righteous by grace through faith; all those counted “in Christ” as Paul so often puts it, are Abraham’s offspring; by virtue of our relationship to Christ (Abraham’s Seed) through faith, we are so related to Abraham (Galatians 3:29; Ephesians 2:11-22).  To put it another way, we who have been redeemed by God consider ourselves as being related to God through Abraham’s line, and that our simple faithfulness directly corresponds to God’s faithfulness to have made us His children—the children of Abraham—(Hebrews 11:8).  God uses Abraham as an example of the wheretos and whyfors of the relationship between grace and faith in our salvation (Romans 4).
• Sign—Covenant Theology is divided on this issue.
• Water Baptism—Paedobaptists claim that the continuity of the covenants (from the Old—all those covenants picturing the New—to the New) show us that, just as the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant was circumcision, and administered to the believer’s entire household—children included, the sign of the New Covenant is water baptism, and is administered to the believer’s entire household—children included (Acts 11:14; 16:15; Colossians 2:11-14).
• Circumcision of the heart—Creedobaptists claim that the continuity between the Old and New Covenants is circumcision, the difference being the sort of circumcision: the one of old was a type of the one which is new; the old was of flesh and the new is of the heart (Deuteronomy 10:12, 16; 30:6; Jeremiah 4:4; 31:33; Colossians 2:11).
• Commands—the Decalogue remains a summary of God’s Law, encapsulating in human terms the character of God, which has not changed (Matthew 5:17).  The essence of which has been reiterated in the New Testament (Matthew 19:16-19; Romans 13:8-10).  It is this Law to an inestimable degree that is commanded, not as a condition of receiving faith (see Romans 4), but as a means of measuring obedience for the Christian (Matthew 5:21-22, 27-28).