People love to make promises. Political leaders make promises. Companies declare promises in their mission statements. Husbands and wives enjoy their mutual promises of faithfulness in marriage vows. Children claim promises to parents.

You get the idea.

Promises are embedded in the fabric of our lives. There is no doubt that promises have great value and purpose. A promise is a commitment by someone to do or not to do something.

A promise is also the means or capacity for good. It represents the value that is to be realized by it. When a child promises not to lie to his parents, if kept, the relationship between parent and child will experience trust, honesty, and integrity.

So, we should all love promises. Yet, as Christians, have you ever thought deeply of what God’s ultimate promise to us is? Yes, God does make promises. 

As a confessing evangelical, I believe the church for many hundreds of years has declared and defended God’s biggest promise in their confessions and creeds.

In the London Baptist Confession of 1689 it is found in chapter 3, God’s Decree. It is God’s big-time promise.

To begin our understanding of this amazing promise, we have to understand the nature of God Himself. Then and only then, does His promise make a bit of sense and become more relevant and extremely important.

Knowing Him, we begin to understand and comprehend who this unique God is and how His promise is so amazing. It is a lofty thing, to know and comprehend the incomprehensible God!

In fact, Stephen Charnock advises that when we think about God, we should say to ourselves, “This is not God; God is more than this; if I could conceive him, he were not God; for God is incomprehensibly above whatsoever I can say, whatsoever I can think and conceive of him.”

So, with a bit of humility, we begin to truly know this God who has revealed Himself in Scripture. God is utterly perfect, infinite, independent, immutable, and impassable.

Sure, that is a theological mouthful, but necessary for us to begin to understand so that the greatness of His promise might have its necessary first place in our lives.

Therefore, our God has decreed (fancy term for the word for promise) within Himself, with no variations or possible changes in Himself, without any help from other persons (us), things, powers or events, that this promise will happen.

This promise is as safe as God Himself. It will never change or fail. So, what is this promise?

To be as brief and simple as possible, God from all eternity, has promised to bring about, by his sovereign choice and eternal power, in its absolute and full completion forever, the salvation of His elect souls (people) from sin and eternal death through His Son, Jesus Christ, the God-Man!

God promises to redeem sinners in Christ, by His predestination and His work in time through His Son (the Good News), and applied by His Spirit, by faith alone through His sovereign grace. Ephesians 1: 3-14 captures the essence of this eternal and magnificent promise.

We must know God’s promise. 

His promise, unlike any other promise, declares the glory of God and the exaltation of Jesus Christ. Any and all sinners who repent of their sins and believe in the Lord (Acts 17:30), receive this promise! Praise be to God, who cannot and will not change this promise that only He can make and accomplish.

The London Baptist Confession of 1689 has many more details about God’s promise in chapter 3. I encourage you to read it again and again and be encouraged to worship the Lord because of His great promise.