The comfort we find in Christ is not a passive repose in our favorite recliner. Even in the English language, comfort is an old word hearkening from the Middle Ages and referring to needed moral and physical strengthening. Comfort is active. God gives us comfort because we are too weak to go on, and his comfort enlivens us. God’s comfort is power. It’s not meant merely to make us feel better. It’s meant to make us more like Jesus.

But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. (Luke 6:27–28)
Over two decades ago, on an unusually hot July evening in Syracuse, New York, I stood on Pastor Ken Smith’s porch and knocked on the door. I had been doing this for months, dining with my enemies.
I was a lesbian feminist activist English professor at Syracuse University. I thought I was doing research on this odd tribe of people called Christians, people who stood in the way of full civil rights for gay people like me. Ken was the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. On that July night, Ken opened the door and warmly embraced me and welcomed me inside. Dining with my enemies was a fascinating experience. It made me feel like a bona fide liberal.
I knew I was on enemy territory. But I didn’t believe that I was the enemy. How could I be? I was on the side of social justice, reparations for the disempowered, racial reconciliation, and equitable inclusion for all.
Identifying the Enemy
For years — and before I became a believer and Ken became my pastor — I enjoyed the company of the Smiths’ table fellowship. I sat under Ken’s family devotions and joined in the Psalm singing. And then, at this July dinner, I realized it. I wasn’t the victim dining with my persecutors. I wasn’t at the enemy’s table. I was the enemy.
I thought I was on the right side of history. It was my undoing to finally realize that it was Jesus I was persecuting the whole time. Not some historical figure named Jesus. But King Jesus. The Jesus who was this world’s sovereign King and would become my Lord. My Jesus. My Prophet, Priest, King, Friend, Brother, and Savior. That Jesus.
I don’t like thinking about the fact that I was the enemy who hated, the enemy who cursed, and the enemy who abused. But it’s true. And instead of hating me back, Ken Smith assembled such a wide team of prayer warriors that I likely won’t meet all of the believers who prayed for my salvation until heaven.
From Cursing to Cursed
As soon as the Lord claimed me for himself, I had the opportunity to model what had been given to me: to love, do good, bless, and pray for those who curse me. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.
Everyone from the lesbian partner I broke up with, to the graduate students in Queer Theory whose Ph.D. dissertations I could no longer supervise, to the LGBTQ+ undergraduate student groups I could no longer support felt the stunning betrayal. I had changed my allegiance. Were their secrets still safe with me? I was disappointing almost everyone I loved because I believed in Jesus — the real Jesus who reveals himself in the Bible. My treachery to my lesbian community was only bearable through my union with Christ.
In such circumstances, union with Christ is the source of a Christian’s love that overcomes hatred: spiritual, unbreakable, irreplaceable, and eternal. It springs from the power of Christ’s resurrection, in which every believer abides. Conflict with others is never pleasant. It is disarming, disillusioning, and depressing.
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Written by Don Fortner, C.R. Carmichael |
Wednesday, June 14, 2023
The fall of Adam is an historic fact; and, the fall of the human race in Adam is the only satisfactory explanation of human history. These are facts which cannot be denied: man is a fallen creature. Since the fall of Adam, all men are sinners by birth, by nature and by practice. Fallen man needs a Savior.

During the days of the Great Depression, there were soup kitchens in large cities all over America. People were hungry, poor, jobless and homeless. The only way they could eat was to be fed at one of those soup kitchens.
One day, as a man was working at a soup kitchen in Chicago, Illinois, he spotted a man in the line who stood out from the rest. At one time, this man had obviously been quite wealthy. Even though his suit was ragged and dirty, it was a well-made suit. It fitted him so well that it had to have been tailor made. His hat was soiled; but it was a handsome, well-formed hat. Though they were ragged, the man wore a matching tie and handkerchief set.
The person serving the soup could not help looking at the man questioningly, as if to say, “I wonder what your background is?” When the man held out his cup for soup, he said, “Sir, I’ve seen better days.”
That is a pretty good description of humanity. Like the poor beggar in that queue, man has a stateliness even in his fallen state. Even though he is now ragged and soiled by sin, he still declares, “I have seen better days.” We are not now what evidently we once were (Ecclesiastes 7:29). There is no way to explain the universal condition of the human race except by the account of the Fall given in Genesis 3.
What Genesis 3 Teaches Us
This much is evident: if Genesis 3 is true (and it is!), then both the science and the sociology taught in our day are wrong. The evolutionary scientists tell us that man is slowly, but surely, evolving into a perfect being, that though he began very low, he has climbed very high. God tells us that he made man perfect; but man has ruined himself. God tells us that he made man very high; but man has fallen very, very low.
Leading sociologists, psychologists, educators and philosophers have been telling us for a hundred and fifty years that man’s problem is his environment. Religious leaders tell us that man has great potential. His problems are outward. God tells us that our problem is our heart. The fact is, man is a fallen, depraved creature, under the wrath and curse of the holy Lord God, in need of redemption, regeneration and grace. That is the message of Genesis 3.
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Why is it that God is so patient with the hard-heartedness of mankind after the flood? In short: the Noahic covenant! Yahweh is clear that post-flood mankind still has the same heart problem that has wreaked havoc on the earth since the original transgression in the Garden. So, the fear and dread he puts in the animals towards humanity, combined with the death penalty for murder,[9] as well as the command to be fruitful and multiply, are all concrete expressions of God’s common grace, whereby he promises to not wipe out humanity again in his wrath, and he curbs the effects of sin so that humanity does not destroy itself (see Gen. 9:1–7).

In last month’s theme on Genesis 1–11, I dealt with the Noahic covenant in some detail by engaging David VanDrunen’s teaching on it in relation to the covenant of creation/works/human nature/law. I made the case there that I found his interpretation and application of the Noahic covenant to be far too modest, insofar as he teaches that it holds out no hope of attaining the new creation and is merely a stopgap for sin which preserves the first creation. In essence, he singles the Noahic covenant out so that it alone accounts for how God rules over creation universally post-fall until new creation, and in so doing he is guilty of counting the limited word count of the Noahic covenant, without weighing its role within the larger narrative of Scripture.
In this essay, I aim to briefly highlight the Noahic covenant’s placement and role within the larger metanarrative of Scripture from a Progressive Covenantalist perspective. I believe VanDrunen would largely agree with the first three points to be introduced in this article, but would have significant reservations on points four and five, which I will unpack in part two. This is because he sharply demarcates common and redemptive grace and sees the Noahic covenant as non-redemptive. I however believe it brims with the promise and hope of the protoevangelium (“first gospel” promise) from Genesis 3:15.
As I stated in the previous essay, we must read each biblical covenant on its own terms and in keeping with its placement within the biblical storyline. In the words of Stephen Wellum, “By tracing out the covenants in this fashion, we are able to see how the entire plan of God is organically related and how it reaches its culmination and fulfillment in Christ . . . we will rightly see how the parts of God’s plan fit with the whole.”[1] To that end, I contend a proper understanding of the Noahic covenant is that it: (1) reaffirms the creation covenant, (2) reminds God and man of Yahweh’s promise to never destroy the earth in judgment again, (3) remains in force until Christ’s return, (4) renders two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man, and (5) reveals Yahweh’s covenant faithfulness while anticipating the greater glory of the new covenant. Again, in today’s essay I will discuss the first three points, and in tomorrow’s followup essay I will unpack points four and five.
The Noahic Covenant…
…Reaffirms the Covenant of Creation
The word covenant does not appear in the opening chapters of Genesis until Noah enters the scene (Gen. 6:18; 9:9). Peter Gentry has highlighted the important difference between “creating a covenant” (karat berit) and “renewing/establishing a covenant previously created” (heqim berit). He also rightly observes that only the latter phrase heqim berit is used for the Noahic covenant (Gen. 6:18; 9:9, 11, 17) as opposed to the normal expression for the creation of a covenant (karat berit). For example, karat berit is invoked when Yahweh initiates the Abrahamic covenant, but by using the language of heqim berit in the Noahic covenant God’s means “to affirm (verbally) the continued validity of a prior commitment—that is, to affirm that one is still committed to the covenant relationship as established or initiated previously.”[2]
This logic raises the question: if the first time(s) the word “covenant” is used in Scripture is Genesis 6 and 9, how can God speak of reaffirming a previous covenant? It is here that the Reformed tradition has rightly affirmed an original covenant of works/Adamic covenant, or what we Progressive Covenantalists would rather call the Creation covenant. A crucial prooftext for understanding the Noahic covenant to be a reaffirmation of a creation covenant is Hosea 6:7, which reads: “But like Adam [Israel and Judah] transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me.” Passages like this one give sound biblical and theological grounds to conclude God made a covenant with Adam as the vice-regent of creation, one that Adam failed to keep.[3]
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