From the
beginning, God reached out to mankind,
and had expectations for them. Here in
the first two chapters of Genesis, we find God giving Adam six
instructions--see Genesis 1:27-29, Genesis 2:15-17, Genesis 2:24.Only one of
these is a prohibition, the one described as a "command"--the one
that was eventually broken. There must
have been more instructions given to
them than what we have specified; Cain and Abel brought sacrifices according to
a known practice; and the judgment on the contemporaries of Noah implies known
standards of behavior.
This relationship
between God and mankind that we see developing throughout Scripture is first
described as a "covenant" in the story of Noah: "Behold, I, even I am bringing the flood
of water upon the earth… But I will establish My covenant with you; and you
shall enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife, and your sons’ wives with
you." (Gen 6:17-18) After the flood, this covenant is made more specific:
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply,
and fill the earth. …Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I
give all to you, as I gave the green plant. Only you shall not eat flesh with
its life, that is, its blood…And from each human being I will demand an
accounting for the life of another human being. (Genesis 9:1-5) Any good treaty has
requirements for both parties, and this is God’ s side “I establish My covenant
with you; and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood,
” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and
you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations;
I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me
and the earth. (Genesis 9:11-13)
By the time of
Jesus, the Law of Moses had become 613 laws that were binding upon Jews, but Jewish
tradition had also codified the covenant with Noah as the commandments that all
people on earth were obligated to obey. They
are given as seven by rabbinical scholars of the third century AD: The
prohibitions against idolatry, murder, theft, sexual immorality, blasphemy, eating the flesh of a living animal, and the requirement of maintaining courts
to provide legal recourse.
We see the question
of the relationship of Gentiles to the Jewish Law surfacing in the early
church, as more and more Gentiles were becoming part of the Christian
community. There were those who were demanding that all believers conform to
the full Mosaic law. At the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, probably 50AD, James'
decision was that Gentiles should obey four basic rules: "Therefore it is my judgment that we do
not trouble those who are turning to God from among the Gentiles, but that we write to them that they abstain
from things contaminated by idols and from fornication and from what is
strangled and from blood." (Acts 15:19-20) This appears to be similar to
the idea that the Noah Covenant is binding upon all descendants of Noah-- which
is everybody. This is another reminder that people have not changed over millennia—and
neither has God.
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