What Christians Were Not Promised

A Proviso

As a preface to what will be discussed in this article, this author would like to make it clear that he is ever grateful to God for all of the blessings that we enjoy that will be described. This is not meant to disparage or to make light of these blessings, but instead to provide a realistic, spiritual perspective.

What God Has Promised

God has promised mankind truly wondrous things. The greatest promises are ones found within His Son: the promise of eternal life, the forgiveness of sins, of spiritual family and fellowship, and of a restored relationship with Him. Because of that restored relationship we can worship God, we can bring petitions before Him, and we can stand before Him blameless because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Taking Things For Granted

However, it is possible, especially for Christians living in the “free world”, to take for granted many of the blessings that we enjoy as also being de facto promises. Examples would include:

Freedom of worship

A foundational blessing of the United States makes such freedom an unbreakable right. Not every nation on earth has such protection.

Material wealth

Wealth is a very relative thing and should be understood as such. Many who could be considered “poor” in our nation would be considered “rich” in others.

Peaceful and ordered lives

The foundation of this comes from the projection of military power and from a strong legal foundation. Many nations face continual war and corruption as every day challenges.

Choices Have Consequences

These origin of these blessings for our present state is from God, while the cause for them is primarily from a national history which general has conformed itself to His moral definitions of right and wrong. However, our nation has been steadily drifting away from much of God’s moral definitions and has in many ways turned away from God as originator and benefactor generally. Is there not a consequence for such a choice? God is in control of the nations; He always has been and always will be (Rom. 13).

If there was to be a change in our nation, and if these great blessings were to ebb away from us, would that change our relationship with God? Just because we enjoy this blessings now, especially as Americans, are they something promised to us, or have they just been a temporal blessing? If these things were taken away tomorrow, would they remove the most important blessings: The promises found in Jesus Christ? The answer is that God never promised these things, He only granted them to us.