Far as the Curse Is Found: The Covenant Story of Redemption

by Michael D. Williams

Book Overview

The Christian religion is the historical unfolding of God's covenantal involvement in this world, the culmination of which is God's coming into this world in the person of Jesus Christ. Far as the Curse is Found is a retelling of the biblical story of God's unfolding covenant from creation to new creation. Readers are led to wonder anew at the redemptive work of God in our own history, in our own human flesh. Pastors, students, and those interested...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0875525105
• ISBN13: 9780875525105
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: P & R Publishing
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Reflection on Michael Williams' "Far As The Curse Is Found"

Michael Williams' book, "Far As The Curse Is Found" is packed with vital insight into covenantal thinking into. What makes it interesting for the reader is the unpacking of the contents; and there is plenty to unpack--from God's redemptive plan to God's working in history and how this ties to his covenant relationships. Where does one start to organize all of the concepts and ideas presented here? The book itself walks through the Old and New Testaments presenting the covenants in succession along with Israel's failures to keep each of them. Another way to approach this material might be to lump content into the four key categories of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. This pattern works not only as an outline of "Far As The Curse Is Found" but can be seen as the overarching storyline for the Bible itself. How I found myself organizing the ideas presented in this book was lumping things into key thematic ideas, such as: Jesus, creation, fall, mission, name, blessing, identity, land, God. Jesus - Williams begins with Christ. Why? Because "Jesus is the key to the story." (2) Jesus is the context upon which the rest of this book hinges. He is the fulfillment of the promise. He is our new covenant representative. He is the one who lets us in. He is a real man with a real history who also had real relationships with real people; in fact, he continues to have real relationships with real people today because he really is God. He is the fulfillment of the promise that "God would come to his people, that he would come and dwell with his people, that he would come and stay." (7) Christ is the connector that links the Old Testament with the New; and the covenants of old with the new covenant. Creation - Creation is that which gives us the means of understanding our identity as image-bearers. What we see is that God longs for relationship with Adam. Just as God longs for relationship with us. I like how Williams talks about sin as an invader, something unnatural that enters into the picture. This provides context then for the preservation of creation that comes out of the Flood; and enables the restoration of that creation and God's relationship with it which will happen on the occasion of the 2nd advent of Christ. Fall - With the creation of humankind God bestowed upon them the freedom to obey or disobey. (50) What we sometimes fail to see through the first sin is how radically our response to God impacts other creatures. Williams shows us how the whole episode involving the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil warns of the most serious penalty for covenant unfaithfulness (51). "God's creation did and can not exist without evil of sin. To recognize that something is wrong with us presupposes an order of right, a way things out to be." (65) I had never really though of the fall in this light. Scripture passages such as Genesis 3:15 "I will put enmity between you and the woman" show how the relationship betwe

God's Promise To Reverse The Curse

'Outside of God's gracious redemption, we will not read aright His revelation in His creation.' p 21 We have had a lot of time to reflect on the drama of redemption and comment on the work and Person of Christ, the lead role in this amazing true life story. And yet many have failed to give due attention to the nature of God's verbal word, His promises deployed throughout the drama, and the measures God took to ratify His covenants with various biblical characters - as a commitment of His faithfulness to His word, and as a display to the vast array of His divine attributes. In this book is revealed the plot of that story line that has been the glue of covenant theology. It secures for us the knowledge that this story has One divine author, and one progressive story line, one time-space context, one redeeming purpose and one future grand finale - all culminating in glory, as the Bible reveals to us how God acts in our world, and on our behalf. We are, as much as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were, all participants in a covenant initiated by God. What we fail to grasp is that God enters into world history to do His saving acts, because of His covenant He cut with men in which He said to them He would. Here we must part ways with many modern and relatively recent interpretations of how a faithful God has been pleased to reveal Himself. 'The events of biblical history can become redemptive history only through the witness of the Spirit to the believing community as it responds to the biblical story.' p 18 Professor Williams connects the three relational offices, within the time frame of the Edenic covenant as: that of created man to Creator God, man to creation, and man to other humans. He furthers: 'The image of God does not make man unique from the created order, but rather unique within the created order. Man bears God's image for the sake of his calling to rule over and steward creation. Should we miss man's calling, we will miss the purpose of his being in the image of God...for the sake of the whole earth. That God has placed us here in this world and called us in service both to Himself and to His creation means that we can be comfortable with our creaturely status, our undeniable links with the creaturely. Man is made for earth. This world is our home.' pp. 60-61 Williams presents yet another catena of Israelite history by looking at the theocracy, and especially the initial 200 year-period of the judges after Joshua's conquest of the promised land is filled with insights into Israel's dismal failure to keep covenant with her God, as 'this cycle of sin-servitude-supplication-and-salvation' repeats itself. 'Upon entering the land, Israel begins to worship other gods, especially fertility deities of its neighbors. Israel had known many generations of slavery and then one as a nomadic people. Now Israel is becoming an agrarian people.' p 173 How Israel forsakes the sovereign Yahweh thinking that He is impotent to provide agriculturally, and turn

Elegant Biblical Theology

Williams writes in the theological line of John Murray and Palmer Robertson. The treatment is thorough and balanced, but the virtue of the book is the elegance of Williams' style. This is delightful reading as well as fine biblical theology.

Great Overview of the Biblical Story

I'm currently using this book with my weekly small group Bible study and everyone is enjoying and learning from the study. If you've ever read the Old Testament stories and asked yourself why these stories matter, then this book is for you. It's very readable! I got the chance to speak with the author last summer and he told me that this book was not designed so much to be a text book, but rather a book that you could give to your mother ... I gave her a copy for Christmas and she's already buying copies to give to her friends.

A well written introduction to the Biblical-Theological understanding of Scripture

I just finished reading this book and must say that I am quite pleased with it. Michael Williams has done an admirable job of making a Biblical Theological model of understanding the Scriptures (i.e. redemptive-historical, in the line of Geerhardus Vos) accessible to a broad audience. I read a lot of this genre of literature, and most of it is fairly technical (i.e. a knowledge of Greek and/or Hebrew a must); however, Williams' book manages to retain both readability and an appropriate scholarly depth. The average reader will be able to pick it up without any problems. Regarding the contents of the book: I was happy to see that Williams structures his book around the story of redemption. He draws the reader nicely through creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. In doing so he explores the richness of the Biblical narrative. Overall, this is a fine introduction to the Covenant Story of Redemption. I think that it would make an excellent text book for a college Theology class. Note: this book is not intended as an exhaustive scholarly treatise. So for those of you who have read a good deal of Dutch Neo-Calvinists or followers/sympathizers of Reformational thinking, you may find it to be repeating many things that you've heard before.