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Post by Admin on Mar 15, 2024 14:35:46 GMT -5
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Our New Covenant Old Testament
We should love the “Old” Testament because it reveals new covenant truth.
P. ANDREW SANDLIN
MAR 15
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Dear friends and supporters:
This Facebook post naturally captured my attention:
No Facebook post should be judged as a comprehensive statement on any topic. No post can fully avoid misunderstanding or convey all necessary nuance. In screenshotting this post, therefore, I am not so much criticizing the author as using this statement as a launching pad for a too-little-considered viewpoint about interpreting the Bible.
For most of my ministry I’ve argued for the substantial unity of the Bible, the canonical covenants, faith and obedience, Gospel and Law, and OT Israel and the NT church. The post above strikingly exemplifies one reason I've been compelled to embrace this unity. Think of the irony. No new covenant preacher or writer actually living in the NT era could have appealed to any written revelation except the OT. The first new covenant preachers were always preaching out of the OT. For them it was the Bible.
The “Old” and “New” Testament
The nomenclature of Old Testament and New Testament contributes to the irony. These are not biblical designations. The Bible speaks of the old (Mosaic) covenant and the new covenant (in Christ’s blood) but does not describe Genesis through Malachi as the Old Testament and Matthew through Revelation as the New Testament. A more accurate designation would be the Hebrew Scriptures (with a smattering of Aramaic) and Greek Scriptures. Jesus’ designation of the first 39 books is the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets (Lk. 24:44). There is no precise nomenclature for the Greek Scriptures since they were written after the events they record and original message they recount.
Because the word testament is used to designate the Hebrew Scriptures as Old and the Greek Scriptures as New, and because many Christians think testament is synonymous with covenant (it isn’t), they believe the OT is about the old covenant, and the NT is about the new covenant.
This is a seriously mistaken assumption that can easily lead to mistaken biblical interpretations and mistaken doctrine and living. A new covenant is prophesied to Israel and Judah on several occasions in the Hebrew Scriptures. Here’s a typical one in Jeremiah 31:31–34:
“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah — not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
A little thinking will alert us that several provisions of this projected new covenant were already at times a reality in the Hebrew Scriptures. The psalmist declared God’s law was in his heart — he wasn’t waiting for the new covenant for this to happen (Ps. 37:31; 40:8). Isaiah, likewise, commended the faithful “Old” Testament saints:
“Listen to Me, you who know righteousness,
You people in whose heart is My law:
Do not fear the reproach of men,
Nor be afraid of their insults. (51:7)
In addition, the promise that God would be a God to Israel and that they would be his people was hardly delayed until the new covenant era. The entire Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 17:4–8) and old covenant (Ex. 6:7; Jer. 7:22–23) are premised on it. There’s nothing new in the pledge that Israel would be God’s people and he would be their God, even though this was a promise of the impending new covenant.
Moreover, we read in Isaiah 43:25 this promise within the old covenant era that was also a provision of the new covenant:
“I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake;
And I will not remember your sins.
There was certainly nothing unprecedented in the new covenant era about God’s forgiving and putting away and not remembering the sins of his people. That was just as true in the old covenant era.
What, then, is exactly new about the new covenant?
What’s New?
The book of Hebrews provides the answer. The new covenant provisions exhibited during the old covenant era were all pointers toward and down payments on the one final, enduring covenant in Christ’s atoning blood:
But this Man (Jesus Christ), after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before,
“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them,”then He adds, “Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. (Heb. 10:12–17)
We are “sanctified” and “perfected” in the new covenant era by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, which subordinates all our sins and all powers and all enemies. The new covenant realities in the old covenant era were every bit as genuine as ours today, but they were all provisional and preparatory for the final fulfillment of the new covenant in Christ's sacrificial death.
The language of new covenant is often misunderstood. “New” in this sense doesn't mean “brand new,” unprecedented, a clean slate. Rather, it means renewed, as in “new moon.” Every monthly new moon God doesn’t create an actual new moon to replace the present one. New moon is a new phase of the existing moon.
In the same way, the new covenant is the new (and final) phase of the old covenant. The old Mosaic covenant has been rescinded in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and it was always meant to be rescinded, since it contained a built-in expiration date. It was designed from its inception to be provisional. The new covenant is not God’s panicky rush plan to cover for the apostasy of old covenant Israel. All along God had planned to phase out the old covenant and phase in the new covenant.
The Law-Gospel Controversy
These days we are hearing more and more about the Law-Gospel distinction. We are informed that the Bible consists of two foundational “words” or messages — Law and Gospel. We are told that the entire Bible can be divided into these two messages. We are led to believe that these two messages, though each is God’s Word, are antithetical to each other. We are apprised that the Law-Gospel distinction is the standard, historic Protestant view. We are warned that to mix Law and Gospel is to undermine salvation by grace and diminish God’s ethical standards for man. We are given to understand, to put it most starkly, that to deny the Law-Gospel distinction will lead to “a blasphemous assault of the religious integrity of Jesus himself.”
This booklet is written to show that properly understood, law and gospel are fully compatible and that the traditional Law-Gospel distinction cannot pass serious biblical muster.
Get the hard copy and digital copy here.
The Old Covenant for a New People
You might have noticed the OT pledges the future new covenant to Israel and Judah, the Jews. But when we actually get to the NT, we discover that the new covenant is fulfilled with all the people of God who trust Christ, both Jews and Gentiles. Paul designates himself the “minister of the new covenant” (2 Cor. 2:6), and his specific audience was the Gentiles (Rom. 15:16). To those who know the OT, this expansion of the people of God should come as no surprise.
Isaiah had already prophesied that when the Lord restores his people (new covenant), he will equally include Gentile nations. In fact, not only include them, but place them on even spiritual par with the Jews. Specifically the Egyptians and Assyrians, traditional enemies of the Jews, will be brought into the true faith and will constitute 2/3 of the people of God. The metaphorical point is that the people of God will include more than just Jews:
In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will serve with the Assyrians.
In that day Israel will be one of three with Egypt and Assyria — a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the LORD of hosts shall bless, saying, “Blessed is Egypt My people, and Assyria the work of My hands, and Israel My inheritance.” (Is. 19:23–25)
All who savingly trust in Jesus Christ are members and recipients of the promises of the new covenant, not just Christian Jews.
This also explains the new covenant promise that “they [Jews] all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.” This might seem perplexing, since every individual within the visible people of God in the new covenant era is no more converted than in the old covenant era. But this perplexity is lessened if we understand that the newness of the new covenant based in Christ’s final atoning work breaks down the middle wall dividing Jew and Gentile (Eph. 2:11–22). All will know the Lord, not just Jews. “All” in this context means all the people of God — the unity of Jew and Gentile that God intended from the beginning.
“Old” Testament Truth for the New Covenant Era
All this leads to certain practical consequences and benefits. For one thing, because the OT contains new covenant realities, it is an entirely suitable revelation for the new covenant era, even today. Paul makes this point abundantly plain when he writes famously to Timothy:
All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16–17)
The only Scripture to which Paul and Timothy had access was the Hebrew Scriptures, and it was this “Old” Testament that was “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” Timothy was to learn his doctrine for the new covenant era by examining the “Old” Testament. He was to reprove and correct the church from the text of the “Old” Testament. He was to learn how to live righteously by reading and heeding the “Old” Testament. This is possible only because the “Old” Testament contains new covenant realities.
For another thing, the “Old” Testament, even seemingly obscure passages, speaks authoritatively to new covenant saints. Paul exhort the Corinthians that he and other faithful ministers are worthy of getting paid for their ministry. And he invokes Deuteronomy 25:4 to prove his point. He uses the Jewish version of argumentum a fortiori (from mild to severe): if we pay oxen for their work in the form of food, we certainly should pay ministers for their work:
Do I say these things as a mere man? Or does not the law say the same also? For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it oxen God is concerned about? Or does He say it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he who plows should plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should be partaker of his hope. If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things? (1 Cor. 9:8–11)
For our interest, however, observe Paul doesn't say Deuteronomy 25:4 is an old covenant truth from which we can learn “practical application,” a frequent way the OT is appropriated by many interpreters today. No, he asserts this old covenant passage was written specifically for our sakes. In other words, Deuteronomy 25:4 is a truth God inspired for the very purpose not only that oxen would be remunerated but also that the new covenant church would pay its faithful ministers. How is this possible? It is possible because the “Old” Testament contains new covenant realities.
Conclusion
We should love the “Old” Testament and should never tire of new covenant preachers expounding it in Sunday worship or at other times. Nor should we tire of theologians exegeting it to discover doctrine in the new covenant era. Nor should we tire of parents mining it for divine information on how to rear their children. Nor should we tire of legislators examining it to learn the basic moral truth for law and politics.
The old covenant has been rescinded by the new covenant in Christ’s blood. But provisional realities within the old covenant transcend — and were always meant to transcend — the Mosaic covenant itself. The new covenant is actually the renewed covenant which God fully accomplishes in the multi-national, multi-ethnic church of Jesus Christ.
We should never tire of the “Old” Testament, because it contains the truth for us new covenant people of God.
Personal
I hope you friends in Birmingham and northern Alabama will join Sharon and me for an evening dinner event and talk next Thursday, March 21. Please contact me privately for specifics.
Please pray that we'll be able to release the following works later this year: John Frame’s collected sermons Widen Your Hearts. The reprint of my New Flesh, New Earth: The Life-Changing Power of the Resurrection, and The Sanctified State: Politics in the Christian Worldview.
I am deeply grateful for your friendship and persevering prayer and persistent support.
Yours for the King,
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Post by Admin on May 2, 2024 13:25:56 GMT -5
Dear friends and supporters:
We live in a time when it seems as though a record number of children reared in Christian families are departing from the Faith as they reach adulthood, some of them even “deconstructing” their Christianity.
In 2019 Barna Research discovered that “the percentage of young-adult dropouts [from the church] has increased from 59 to 64 percent [since 2011]. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. 18–29-year-olds who grew up in church tell Barna they have withdrawn from church involvement as an adult after having been active as a child or teen.” And you can be sure they aren’t leaving the church to grow in their faith, as if that were possible.
Responsibility for this widespread departure and often subsequent apostasy is often laid at the feet of the parents, and there can be no doubt that in some cases the charge is accurate. But by no means all. God himself reared the children of Israel, yet they rebelled against him (Is. 1:2–3). God is not a failed Father. Adam and Eve led the entire human race into sin while cocooned in a flawless environment and lacking a sinful nature, so a Christian heritage, while invaluable, is no guarantee against apostasy.
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There can be no question, however, that a Christian environment, though it can’t prevent apostasy, disincentivizes it (as the Garden of Eden did). This fact is one of the great God-designed benefits of not only the devout family and church but also Christian culture.
By Christian culture, I mean a society whose institutions, laws, and mores reflect Christianity. It is a society in which a large number of the population, perhaps a large minority, is either Christian or indelibly stamped with Christianity, even if most citizens are not existentially regenerate. (By “existentially regenerate” or “existentially Christian” I denote genuine Christian believers, God’s elect who have trusted Christ for salvation. A secondary definition of “Christian” is possible: those who profess Christianity and conform to its external morals and ethics, even if not a genuine Christian.)
Christian culture is, for example, a society in which the arts display the reality not only of a sinful world but also a redeemed world. It is a society in which civil law is grounded in the unchangeable moral law of God. It is a society in which the church of Jesus Christ is free to preach the gospel, and in which Christians are free to practice their existential faith as well as the Christian Faith.
It is a society in which science and scientists recognize that the order, stability, and predictability of the physical universe are due to God’s creational norms. It is a society in which sexual immorality is pervasively censured.
Christian culture itself is a strong deterrent to public sin, particularly sins that are not crimes (since most sins are not in fact crimes): for example, premarital sex, illicit divorce, profligate debt, profanity, rebellion against parents, and abandonment of the church.
In a Christian culture, when an individual clearly and publicly and intentionally jettisons God’s basic moral law, he is not applauded and rewarded, but censured and penalized — not by the state, but by the apolitical society.
In a Christian culture, apostasy isn’t easy.
This “apostasy disincentivization” has always been the case historically. It was true in ancient Israel, in the medieval world, in Christian Europe, and in early America. Although Hester Prynne’s character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fictional The Scarlet Letter was subject to state enforcement of adultery laws in Puritan New England, it testifies to a critical fact: a chief deterrent to flagrant sin in a Christian culture is not in fact the state or politics but society itself. Adultery in a Christian culture is socially disapproved and censured.
If you sin bigly and publicly, you can expect social disapproval and disgrace. You might not be forced to wear an A on your sweater if you’re an adulteress as Hester Prynne was, but you’ll wear social stigma.
And what is true of adultery is also true of easy divorce, talebearing, laziness, avarice, rebellion against parents, refusal to financially support one’s family, abandonment of the church, and the multitude of other sins not punishable by the state.
When Christian culture erodes, the apostasy disincentivization mechanism erodes with it. And when obvious public sins are no longer disincentivized, not only is the barrier to those sins removed, but also the road ending in apostasy is cleared for travel.
Contemporary culture is a textbook case.
How Christians lost Christian culture, the high price we've paid for losing it, where we stand today in our own culture, and finally what we can (and must) do to create Christian culture today and tomorrow.
Get the book here.
Our Pre-Christian, Post-Christendom World
Almost everywhere we hear the lament that we live in a “post-Christian” world. This nomenclature is incorrect. We live in a pre-Christian world (the greatest Christian culture is in our future). But we do in fact live in a post-Christendom world, a different matter. What we have abandoned is not so much Christianity (which is actually thriving in notable places globally) but Christendom, created by a Christian culture, and this post-Christendom has wiped away the disincentives to apostasy.
There is plenty of global Christianity; there is no Christendom left anywhere. Therefore, there are few disincentives to apostasy, even in many Christian families and churches.
Far from Hawthorne’s Puritans who heaped guilt and stigma on Hester Prynne, pastors in even most conservative churches rarely preach against premarital sex. Youngling hormones being what they are, promiscuity among unmarrieds is one battle too many to fight in a culture engulfed in the LGBTQIA+++ agenda.
If prohibition of almost any divorce in the church was (wrongly) common 50-100 years ago, today permission of almost any divorce is (very wrongly) normal.
Churches and Christian families seem to accept as a matter of course an entire generation of young adult males who’d prefer gaming to working.
Teenage and young adult females dress as street prostitutes (excuse me: sex workers) did just 30 years ago and the churches (except leering men) turn a blind eye.
Same-sex “marriage” hasn’t been just socially normalized; it’s now being ecclesially normalized: “If you’re a practicing homosexual, come to Jesus; he’ll enrich your homosexual partnerships.”
In this climate, apostasy is incentivized and faithfulness is disincentivized. This is likely the chief explanation for the widespread apostasy of Christian young people.
Cultural Reformation, Not Just Ecclesial and Familial Revival
This is also why calls for revival in the family and church, while necessary, are not sufficient. The devout Christian family and church create an environment that disincentivizes apostasy, but when everything in the surrounding culture is combatting that fidelity, the flowering of a majority of the devout will wither over time.
It is, of course, wrong to say it’s impossible to live a faithful Christian life and rear godly children in a depraved culture. Noah and the apostolic church prove that. But over an extended period the cultural depravity, if unreversed, erodes the Faith gradually and generationally, and in the end, there is a little Faith left.
This is precisely why Jehovah required the ancient Jews to expel the depraved pagans from the land they were to inhabit (Jud. 2:1–3), and why Jesus commissioned his apostles to peacefully subjugate the nations to his gospel authority (Mt. 28:18–20). It takes the most intense intentionality (as the Amish do) to resist in the long run normalizing in one’s own life and family and church the norms of the surrounding depraved culture. “Only God Gets to Decide What’s Normal.”
Christian Culture and Common Grace
Three days after I started this post, my colleague Dr. Brian Mattson released this superb article. I’m amazed at how often our minds are simultaneously pondering the same topics. Brian wrote about how young FBI agent Eliot Ness of The Untouchables fame was harassed by the gangster Al Capone, whom Ness and his team eventually brought to justice. Brian is making the point that even in that harassment, there were some actions that even Capone deemed off-limits. I’m including here a citation much longer than usual because Brian’s point is so pertinent:
This, my friends, seems to me a fruit of Christian culture. When even ruthless and murderous mobsters refrain from killing innocent people. What is that? Is it fear of God? Is it the prospect of the electric chair? Or is it an act so wildly outside the bounds of social mores and values—is it so utterly taboo—that the murderer stays his hand? Is it God’s common, restraining grace?
In my view, it is that last explanation by means of all of the other ones. God often restrains wickedness and vice, but he uses means to do that. Among those means are social taboos, censure, and shame, all of which shape and form the consciences of men. It is why in the Old West shooting a man in the back was considered “yellow” — a disgraceful and cowardly thing. How does that make any sense at all in a dog-eat-dog world where life was otherwise so dirt cheap? Because consciences (however seared) were still shaped and formed in a Christian atmosphere, where the taking of innocent life or “lying in wait” to commit murder is uniquely wicked. I would argue that it is Christianity that uniquely makes these sharp moral distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, legitimate and illegitimate targets, judicial and extra-judicial killing; and in a Christian culture those distinctions (sometimes, but not always) serve to restrain even the most brutal of men.
What happens when that moral atmosphere fades and, with it, some of the powerful common grace means by which God restrains evil? Compare the relative restraint of Scarface Al’s cartel versus the various cartels we have today in our increasingly post-Christian societies. Do you think the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico would hesitate to murder the families of law enforcement officers who get in their way? I daresay that is their very first order of business.
I am suggesting that Christian ethics (the value of human life, guilt and innocence, judicial process, etc.) is not simply for the benefit of believers or the institutional church; God’s revealed standards (special grace) serve also to bolster and buttress his common grace in wider society. To the extent a culture and society becomes less Christian, evil and wickedness become more evil and more wicked.
Al Capone was a wretch. A self-aggrandizing, greedy, violent, murderous, perverse and promiscuous man. But apparently murdering the family of his nemesis was a bridge too far.
Thank God for that.
Brian understands a key point even many knowledgeable Christians fail to consider. Christian culture is one critical aspect of God’s common grace. Common grace isn't just for the individual. It can (and should, and will) encompass an entire culture.
Christian culture exudes common grace. Christian culture and the common grace it bestowed prevented even Al Capone from being as depraved as he might otherwise have been. In this way, it maintains a continuity of ethics and morality, sometimes hanging by a mere thread, but still vital to the survival of a law-abiding culture.
The Boon of Nominal Christianity
It should, therefore, come as no surprise that Christian culture necessitates nominal (“in name only”) Christianity, because many, perhaps a majority of, citizens living in a Christian culture are not existentially Christian. Christian culture does not demand a society populated by Christians, but only a society shaped by Christianity. This means that a number of citizens will be genuine but not particularly devout Christians, and many might be Christian in name only: nominal.
Actually, more than in name, in that in their external lives they maintain Christian standards: diligence, dignity, truthfulness, honesty, sacrifice, kindness, respect for the Lord’s Day, and so on. None of these, of course, make them existentially Christian. But they do help preserve a Christian culture. Only Spirit-indwelled Christians can manifest the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23), but unbelievers “who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, [and] these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves who show the work of the law written in their hearts. . .” (Rom. 1:14:15).
While, consequently, it might be the job of pastors to overturn nominal Christianity in the church, it is their job to support it in the culture. In fact, supporting it in the culture might help them overturn it in the church — the appeal to bring one’s heart into line with one’s (externally virtuous) actions.
In the 70s I heard a prominent Christian leader loudly castigate Jerry Falwell, Sr.’s Moral Majority because it would cause unconverted, nominal Christians to become self-satisfied in their external religiosity and thus harder to evangelize. This is false. Hypocrites are easier to evangelize because they are very aware of the deportment Christianity requires and that they try to imitate, while non-hypocrites have no interest in Christian ethics or morals. Carl F. H. Henry makes this point eloquently:
The Christian life must be lived out, among the regenerate, in every area of activity, until even the unregenerate are moved by Christian standards, acknowledging their force. The unregenerate are not, on that account, redeemed; nevertheless, they are more easily reached for Christ than those who have made a deliberate break with Christian standards, because they can be reminded that Christian ethics cannot be retained apart from Christian metaphysics [biblical beliefs about God]. To the extent that any society is led with Christian conviction [as in Christian culture, PAS], it becomes a more hospitable environment for Christian expansion.
External religiosity is far preferable to external depravity, and no matter what one may claim, he would much prefer to live in a Christian society with many self-satisfied but existentially unbelieving Christians adhering to external Christian moral standards than in a society of overtly unrestrained unbelievers, like the social horror that was Noah’s day.
Should Christians Pray for Persecution?
In fact, when we see a society with a proportionately high number of nominal Christians or externally moral unbelievers, we are almost certainly looking at a Christian culture. Why? Because Christian culture incentivizes the kind of external morality that marks nominal Christianity and outwardly ethical unbelievers. It also fosters genuine, existential Christianity, of course, but its potency extends far beyond genuine regeneration. Christian culture is so powerful that it helps create not only existential Christians but also nominal Christians and ethical non-Christians.
Alternatively, when you view a society in which the set of professed Christians largely overlaps the set of existential Christians, you are indisputably observing a non- or anti-Christian culture, likely a society in which Christianity is actively suppressed and even persecuted. Why? Since there is no incentive for nominal Christianity, existential Christians are almost the only ones left.
If you consider this situation desirable, let me remind you that it hinders evangelism, missions, Christian education, and nearly every other aggressive, kingdom-advancing activity. This is why those who pray for the persecution of the church in order to purify it are not only praying unbiblical prayers (1Tim. 2:2). They are also praying that God’s kingdom not come on earth as it is in heaven, that the Great Commission not be fulfilled, and that the Christian Faith as a global phenomenon be hindered, not advanced.
Beware of opposing nominal Christianity in the culture. It is a prime example of not loving one’s neighbor and attempting to hinder the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.
Conclusion
The current apostasy epidemic among Christian youth (and others) won’t be countermanded merely by a revival of a vital, robust faith in the family and church, though this revival is imperative.
If Christians neglect to address the surrounding depraved culture, they will incessantly be fighting — and losing —battles against an all-engulfing culture that incentivizes apostasy and disincentivizes piety.
Therefore, if Christians wish to restore a society in which a large number of Christian young people persist in the Faith throughout their adulthood, they should work to establish a Christian culture — Christian influence in education, music, literature, entertainment, politics, technology, science, and every other aspect of culture. It’s a long-term project that must begin modestly, right at home and in vocation and in one’s local situation, but begin it must if Christians expect over the next 100 years to start turning the tide against apostasy disincentivization. In other words, restoring Christian culture.
That culture should never claim to prevent apostasy, but it will indisputably disincentivize it by re-normalizing Christianity.
It is this task to which CCL has been committed for almost 25 years. Will you join us?
Let’s make apostasy hard again.
Yours for the King,
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