Category: Covenant

n.b. I recently preached a sermon on Belgic Confession 25. This Article deals with how Christ fulfilled the law. This doctrine is not well understood today and so I thought it was fitting to publish the sermon. I’ve divided it up into blog-sized sections for easier reading:

The basic institution in the Old Testament was the tabernacle or temple. This was the center of Israelite culture and religion. It was even their political center. David ruled from Jerusalem. This was the city where the ark was and later where the temple would be set up. The tabernacle was the place where God could dwell with his people. God set up the system of the law around the tabernacle in order to protect the people from his presence. God is a holy God. Out of his grace and love for mankind, God desired to dwell with his people. But his people needed to be protected from him, his power, and ultimately his holiness. So God gave his people the law so that they would protect themselves from his holiness.

The people of Israel were able to approach God through various washings, through sacrifices, and through keeping themselves clean when approaching the temple, or the tabernacle, of God. God even instituted levels of holiness in Israelite society. There was a division of labor. Everybody in society wasn’t able to keep the law equally rigorously so God gave Israelites a High Priest. He was required to keep the greatest level of Holiness; then Priests, then Levites and finally the rest of the people. The Holiest men were able to come the closest to God for the sake of the rest of the people. These are the ceremonies and symbols of the law, which the Belgic Confession is speaking of. These ceremonies allowed men to approach the God of heaven and earth. The coming of Christ brought an end to all of these.

Why? There is a host of aspects of Christ’s work that we could look at in order to see how he fulfilled every element of the temple, the sacrificial offerings and the various offices that God set up in and around the temple. I want to focus on two aspects. Christ’s fulfillment of the tabernacle itself and his fulfillment of the sacrificial system.

John 1: 14 gives us a hint as to how Christ fulfills the tabernacle system. We are told there that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word, God, came down and took on flesh. He was in a human body. Remember what we said the tabernacle was for? It was a place for God to dwell with his people so that, we could approach him. John gives us a further hint through the Greek word he uses for dwell. The word literally means tabernacled. God dwelt among us in the flesh.

But Jesus did more. He fulfilled the sacrificial system. The ancient Israelites and to repeat the commanded sacrifices again and again so that men could draw near to God. Jesus, by his death, offered a sacrifice that covers all sin; all sin. That means that all the laws of uncleanness no longer apply. We don’t need repeated sacrifices, we don’t need repeated washings. We all need one sacrifice: Christ’s, and we only need one washing: his baptism. This is why God tore the veil of seperation on the night of Christ’s death. Any man could approach God through Christ. There was no need for the institutions of the temple. As the Belgic Confession says, they are abolished.

Ultimately, what happens is that the spiritual geography of the Old Testament is changed. We have a New Testament spiritual geography. The tabernacle is no longer a building, but the flesh of Christ. Because Christ has gone to sit at the right hand of his father, our tabernacle is in heaven. There is more. Christ unites us to himself so that we also change. In Christ, we are a temple of the Holy Spirit.

That is why God destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. After Christ died and sat down at the right hand of God, the temple was no longer necessary. When the Jews, who had rejected Christ, continued to use the rituals and ceremonies of the Old Testament the temple became an abomination. According to Hebrews, Christ’s fulfillment of the Mosaic system means that we may freely and confidently draw near to the throne of Christ. Christ’s truly powerful sacrifice covers corrupt flesh with his blood. Those who defended the temple were now defending a false way to God. In a sense, it was a false Christ, claiming to continue the work that Christ had already accomplished. God’s dwelling was now in Christ and those who were, and are today, united to Him.

And yet the substance of these remain for us in Jesus Christ according to the Belgic Confession. The book of Hebrews gives us a way to understand this. We still have a sacrifice. We still have a tabernacle. Because of Christ’s work their nature changed.

But the Belgic Confession doesn’t stop there, the author adds these words, “We still use these testimonies taken from the law and the prophets.” They have two uses for us. They confirm the gospel to us. We can see a little bit of what that means in seeing how Christ fulfilled the tabernacle and the sacrificial system. The second use is that they help us “order our life in all honesty, according to God’s will and to his glory.”

How does the tabernacle system help us to order our lives? Surely this must refer to the Ten Commandments or maybe some of the civil laws might be helpful for the ordering of the church? Paul’s words to Timothy would suggest differently. He tells us that all scripture is inspired and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness.

How does the tabernacle system train us in righteousness? There is a lot to say, but I will mention a couple things. The tabernacle system teaches us about how holy God is and how sinful we are. Most importantly it teaches us that we may only approach God through the means he provides, namely Christ and his Spirit.

Further, it teaches us that we are to approach God with humility and with the desire to seek righteousness in Him. It teaches us that this is something that is lifelong. It teaches us about God’s desire for purity when we approach him. We can also argue from the law that in Christ we are sacrifices before God. That is what Paul suggests in Romans 12: 1. He tells us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. We do so with the same purity and humility that God called his people to in the Old Testament.

Did God make a Covenant with Adam?

By James

On November 18, 2017

In Covenant, Genesis, Hermeneutics, Uncategorized

In attempting to answer this question, I use the definition of the covenant I wrote of in the past. A covenant is a formalization of a personal relationship. This leads me to answer both “yes” and “no.” It depends on how you approach the Adamic administration. If you look at the creation of Adam in terms of paternity and sonship, the tendency is to say “no.” If you look at the creation of Adam in terms of Creator and creature, the tendency is to say “yes.”

This question would be very easy to answer if the Adamic administration was referred to as a covenant in scripture. It is not. There is the possibility that Hosea 6:7 refers to a covenant with Adam. It may also refer to a more general covenant with mankind, such as the Noahic covenant. It is more responsible to prove that the Adamic administration fits the concept of the word covenant before we argue for one interpretation or the other in Hosea 6:7.

I want to argue first that the Adamic administration is revealed as a father-son relationship. Though this relationship is covenant-like, it is not necessarily a covenant. For this, I use the arguments of Jason Van Vliet in his graduate work.

He draws from a number of places in scripture to prove that the image of God is revealed in Adam’s sonship to God. Luke is most explicit. In the genealogy that Luke gives for Christ at the end of Luke three, Luke refers to Adam as a son of God, just as Seth was the son of Adam.

Where did Luke get this from? It is likely that Luke got this from his understanding of the image of God in Genesis 1. God makes Adam in his image. When the genealogy of Adam is given in Genesis 5, we are told that Seth is made in the image and likeness of Adam. The image of God seems to be about a father-son relationship.

Is a father-son relationship a covenant? I’ve already suggested that it is hard to call it a covenant. I believe that an adoption can be properly termed a covenant. Adoption is a legal process, which allows two individuals to act as Father and son. This is what happens in the covenant made after sin. By Christ, God worked it so that we may have the relationship of son and father that Adam had lost. There is no formalization to the relationship of a natural-born son to his natural father, however. If it is a covenant, it is one that springs from the way things are and does not need a legal creation. We could employ the distinction between nature and culture here. The father-son relationship springs from nature. Covenants are cultural, they build on natural bonds.

Compare it to marriage. In marriage, there is a creation of a new type of relationship, which the two type of individuals did not have before. In the case of a son or daughter, there is not a moment of the son’s existence, where he does not relate as a son to his father. One is natural. One is cultural. The father-son relationship is covenant-like. Marriage is a covenant.

Father-son relationships are covenant-like in that the relationship can be broken. The father or the son may forget their natural duties toward one another and betray one another’s trust. The father is called to rule well and the son to obedience and submission, at least in his growing years. Again, there is growth in that relationship, but there are also duties according to what we might call the created order. Thinking about Adam and God in this sense would suggest that covenant is not the best way to describe their relationship.

However, we must understand that this is an analogy. This is obviously true. God is God. Adam is a man. Adam is in the image of God. The children of Adam may even be referred to as gods, as they are in Psalm 82, but that means that they share the character of God, not the substance of God. This means that there is another legitimate way to think about the covenantal character of the creation of Adam.

When we begin with Creator God rather than Father God, a dramatic distance opens between God and Adam. God is eternal, infallible and unfailingly holy. Adam is none of those things. God grants Adam the image of God. God is intentionally creating a relationship between himself and Adam, which is formalized by sharing his image with Adam. From this perspective there is a covenant between God and Adam.

It is natural, or informal, in the sense that it springs from God’s imprint of his image upon Adam. But it is also formal in the sense that God chose that this should be the nature of his relationship with Adam. It is formal in the sense that God ordained that Adam should be in his image. When men have children they do not choose to have children in their image.

It is ultimately because God is not bound by his own created order, that we can understand his relationship with Adam as a covenant.

How should we speak of the Adamic administration then? Is it a covenant or is it not? It depends. Those theologians who wish to speak in Biblical terms as much as possible will be suspicious of calling it a covenant. I would count myself as one of those. However, it is important to recognize that there is a legitimacy in calling it a covenant as well, according to our philosophical understanding of what is happening in scripture. Such a way of speaking is not anti-scriptural. My preference is that covenant would not be the primary category for speaking of God’s relationship with Adam. Instead, we should think of that administration in terms of a father and a son. That is how God chose to teach us about his creation of Adam.

n.b. I’m not sure if the nature and culture distinction I mentioned works that well. The problem is Marriage is not merely cultural, it has a grounding in nature. If culture builds on and is rooted in nature, however, that is not a huge problem. The problem is with the popular understanding of culture today. We see culture as added to nature, not grounded in nature.

What is a covenant?

By James

On October 27, 2017

In Covenant

Theologians make a lot of the covenant. Ministers always talk about the covenant. But there doesn’t seem to be a clear definition of what a covenant is. God makes a covenant with his people. Marriage is always a covenant and friendship is sometimes a covenant, though not always (In the Bible, Jonathan makes a covenant with his friend, David). Is God’s relationship with Adam properly termed a covenant? Is a man’s relationship with his son properly termed a covenant?

I want to suggest a definition: A covenant is the formalization of a personal relationship. The covenant may begin the relationship, but the relationship may also have existed before the covenant. A covenant formalizes that personal relationship. If that personal relationship continues there are blessings and if that personal relationship ends there are curses.

I hope to write more on this in the future by both defending this definition and applying this definition to some of the arguments that exist in the Presbyterian and Reformed world.

Reflections on order

Category: Covenant

Christ fulfills the law: Christ changes spiritual geography

Did God make a Covenant with Adam?

What is a covenant?