The promises of God: what they actually are (and what they are not)

In 1952, a retired English schoolmaster named Everek Storms finished a project he had been working on for years. He had gone through the entire Bible, verse by verse, and counted every promise he could identify that God had made. His final tally: 7,487.

The number has been cited in sermons and devotionals ever since. It is a comforting figure. But it raises a question that Storms himself acknowledged: what counts as a promise, and who is it for?

Not every promise is to you

This is the uncomfortable starting point. When God tells Abraham "I will make of you a great nation" (Genesis 12:2), that is a promise. It is also a promise made to a specific person, in a specific context, for a specific purpose. You are not Abraham. You may or may not be called to found a nation.

When God tells Jeremiah "I know the plans I have for you, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11), that is a promise. It is also a promise made to Jewish exiles in Babylon, assuring them that the exile will end after seventy years. It is not a promise that your job interview will go well.

This does not mean these verses are irrelevant. It means they are relevant in a different way than a wall plaque suggests. They reveal God's character. A God who makes promises is a God who binds himself to his word. A God who promises restoration to exiles is a God who does not abandon. These truths are universal, even when the specific promise is not.

Calvin was characteristically blunt about this. In his commentary on Jeremiah 29, he wrote: "We must be careful not to snatch at promises which were given to others in other circumstances, and apply them to ourselves without discernment. God is faithful, but he is not our personal courier."

The structure of biblical promises

Biblical promises fall into several categories, and knowing which category a promise belongs to changes how you read it.

Unconditional promises are commitments God makes without requiring anything in return. The Noahic covenant (Genesis 9:11, "never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood") is unconditional. God does not say "if you behave." He says "I will." The rainbow is the sign of a one-sided commitment.

Conditional promises depend on the response of the recipient. Deuteronomy 28 is a long catalogue of blessings (for obedience) and curses (for disobedience). "If you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments... all these blessings shall come upon you" (Deuteronomy 28:1-2). The "if" is load-bearing.

Character promises reveal what God is like rather than what God will do for a particular person. "The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love" (Psalm 145:8). This is not a promise that God will do something specific. It is a declaration of who God is. And because God does not change, it functions as a kind of permanent promise about the nature of reality.

The ones people misquote most

Jeremiah 29:11 is the most popular, and the most frequently decontextualised. On its own, it sounds like a personal guarantee of prosperity. In context, it is a promise to a displaced nation that their suffering has an endpoint. The promise is real, but the "you" is plural, and the timeline is seventy years. It is a word about corporate faithfulness, not individual convenience.

Philippians 4:13 ("I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me") is routinely applied to athletic competitions and business goals. Paul wrote it from prison, about learning to be content whether he had plenty or nothing. The "all things" is endurance, not achievement.

Romans 8:28 ("all things work together for good") is perhaps the most comforting and most dangerous verse when removed from its context. The "good" Paul has in mind is conformity to the image of Christ (verse 29), which may include suffering, not elimination of it. The promise is that suffering has meaning, not that suffering will stop.

Matthew Henry, commenting on Romans 8:28, wrote: "God does not promise to make all things pleasant. He promises to make all things useful. The difference between the two is the entire distance between a comfortable religion and a true one."

How to read the promises honestly

Reading God's promises well requires three habits.

First, read the context. Who is God speaking to? When? What has just happened? A promise made to Joshua before crossing the Jordan ("I will be with you," Joshua 1:5) carries a military context that a promise made to frightened disciples in a boat ("Take heart; it is I," Mark 6:50) does not. Both promise God's presence. They promise it for different situations.

Second, distinguish between the specific and the universal. Some promises are both. "I will never leave you nor forsake you" (Hebrews 13:5, quoting Deuteronomy 31:6) was spoken to Joshua and reapplied by the writer of Hebrews to all believers. The author of Hebrews is doing the interpretive work of saying: this promise has a wider application. Not every promise does.

Third, let the promises reveal character before they promise outcomes. If you wonder what the promises of God tell us about his nature, the answer is more important than any specific promise: God is a being who makes commitments and keeps them. That is the meta-promise beneath all the others.

Storms counted 7,487 individual promises. The number is impressive. But the point is not the quantity. A god who made one promise and kept it would be more trustworthy than a god who made ten thousand and kept nine thousand. The biblical claim is not that God makes many promises. It is that God does not break any.

Whether that claim is true is, of course, the question that matters. The Bible spends sixty-six books making its case. The evidence, for those willing to examine it, is not thin.