Thursday, May 7, 2015

Take an Oath


Deuteronomy 6:13You shall fear the Lord your God and serve Him, and shall take oaths in His name.”


We are familiar with the customs of taking an oath of office (so help me God), exchanging wedding vows (in the sight of God), making campaign promises (in the name of God), swearing a faithfulness covenant in the Lord, and pledging our allegiance to the flag (under God) or to our children (in the eyes of God). The reason why these oaths, vows, promises and pledges are necessary has to do with our fallen condition in original sin. I read an interesting article that explained that in a perfect creation, we would not need to call upon the Lord in the presence of many witnesses in order to have a tangible means of holding us accountable to our word. Genesis 1:31Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.” We would, by nature, always keep our word. We would need to offer nothing besides our word in order to give others confidence that we will keep it. And there would be no danger that we would fail to keep our word, so we would not need anyone outside ourselves to call us to account for breaking a promise. We all know, however, that we do not live in a perfect world.

Romans 3:23For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

 

Though God originally created everything “very good”, creation no longer exists in that state. Creation is fallen, and that fall has affected everything, including the truthfulness of our words. Broken oaths, vows, promises and pledges have damaged human society. Psalm 116:11 “All men are liars.” It indicates that none of us has told the truth on every occasion and that we remain prone to bend the truth, tell half-truths, and to lie. Therefore, God in His grace instituted oath-swearing to help our fallen state. Swearing oaths and vows, promises and pledges establish a system whereby there is an external restraint on lying and a way to hold us accountable to the Lord. Our Creator demands that we keep all lawful oaths. To try to give oneself an “escape clause” for breaking an oath or vow, promise or pledge, by allowing for them not made  directly in God’s name to be broken denies the intent of His law. The Lord tells us that we should swear oaths only in His name, thereby forbidding us from making oaths or vows in the name of any created thing. To swear an oath in the name of something created is to impute incommunicable divine attributes to that which is not divine. It is, to put it bluntly, to commit idolatry.


Numbers 30:2 “If a man makes a vow to the Lord, or swears an oath to bind himself by some agreement, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.”

The article clarifies that in an oath, we are calling upon someone greater than ourselves to hold us accountable to our word. Nothing else in creation has the omniscience and omnipresence necessary to know perfectly when we have and have not kept our promises, and no one else has the omnipotence required to hold us perfectly accountable to our word. We can hide our violations from others, but not from the Lord. Other people may witness our taking oaths in order to remind us that we have made a promise in God’s name, but it is God himself who will hold us finally accountable to our word. We are accountable to God.

 


In Christ, Brian 

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