Covenant Theology VS Dispensationalism | Theocast

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Many of you listening to this podcast grew up in dispensationalism, or maybe you weren't trained in it, but you grew up in a context where by default you absorbed it.

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We get a lot of questions here at Theocast about the differences between our perspective and that of dispensationalism.

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So we thought it would be a good idea to sit down and record an episode where we talk about the distinctives between covenant theology, which is what we hold here, versus dispensationalism.

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What are those differences, major ones, and why do they matter? That's the topic of today's conversation.

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Stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism. You ever felt like the

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Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy, that you wake up worrying about how well you're gonna perform instead of thinking about what

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Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes

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Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

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And we have a little book for you. It's free. We want you to download it, and we're gonna explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism,

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Reformed theology, really, how it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

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Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it on our website.

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Just go to theocast .org. I love you. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

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Christian life from a confessional, Reformed, and pastoral perspective. Our goal at Theocast is to clarify the gospel.

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Or another way to frame it is we want to take the clutter off of it. We wanna be pointedly against anything that obscures

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Christ from our view. So we're about here, and we are hoping, in all of that, to reclaim the purpose of the kingdom of Christ.

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We hope you're encouraged by today's episode. Glad you tuned in. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reform Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

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That's just south of Nashville. And I am Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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John and I do not record from the same location normally. We are dependent upon technology, which sometimes is interesting.

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We think we've got some things figured out. We've had some fits and starts lately in trying to get episodes recorded, but today's gone smoothly, so we're grateful.

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Really quick announcement on my end before I throw it over to John to tee up our episode for today.

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April 19th and 20th of this year, my church, Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, is hosting what we're calling our

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Covenant Conference, and this year our guest is Chad Byrd. He's a friend of Theocaste, a really dear brother in the

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Lord, writes and speaks beautifully about Christ for us and how the Lord is with us in discipleship and all of these things, about what it's like being a sinner saint living life in this fallen world.

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And Chad is going to be our keynote speaker, and we're going to do some panel discussions with him and our pastors.

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Again, that's Friday, April 19th, Saturday, April 20th. Registration is live and open. If it's not already filled up by this point in time, go to covbap .org,

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and we'll try to put a link in the show notes for you to be able to register for that event. We'd love to see you there. About this point, we've got like a month before registration?

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Yeah, about a month out, and if you want to make a weekend of it and stay for church on Sunday, I'll be in the pulpit. There you go. You do with that what you will.

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In the pulpit? The pulpit. The sacred desk, John. The sacred desk. Good times.

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Good times, Justin. All right, man. Well, we just did an episode. It came out a couple weeks ago, and we record these in advance, so just bear with us as we try and figure out announcements and all of that kind of stuff.

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But today's an interesting subject. Two years ago, I think, Justin, you and I got together in the

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Knoxville area, and we recorded a podcast called Leaving Dispensationalism, which is a - It's been probably longer ago than we realized.

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Yeah, probably. And that particular episode is one of our top episodes that people still listen to, and we wanted to just kind of have the conversation because in the conservative evangelical space, it is housed by two sciences of interpretation, one of being covenant theology and the other being dispensational.

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And I don't want to get technical here, so if you're already like sciences of interpretation, John, what are you talking about?

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John, you lost me. Yeah. Hermeneutics is the science - Herma what? Herma what? Mount Hermon?

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Where the angels came down? What are you talking about? So hermeneutics is the science of interpretation, how you interpret the

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Bible. Some people might say, John, I just read it and believe it, which I'm like, praise God, good for you.

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But there is so much in Scripture, and there's so many genres, and there's a lot that's happening theologically that there has to be some structure to your interpretation of Scripture, and the structure comes from the

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Bible. We do not impose it on the text. And so throughout history, there's always been disagreement, and that's fine, and that's totally okay.

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There's been disagreement on how one should do that. And as we refine our theology, we get better at interpreting

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Scripture, and this is why we have creeds and confessions, and we're thankful for them so we don't fall back into the same mistakes as we've had before, right?

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And so today we want to talk a little bit about two really popular positions on how to interpret the

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Bible, both of them evangelical, and both are taught by godly men and women.

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So let's just start there. Well -intentioned. I have to say that because I used to be a dispensationalist, and I think

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I had good intentions when I was one. I'll briefly add in on that, just the spirit of this conversation before you even get us going maybe in a more pointed direction.

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Yeah, we assume well of our dispensational friends and sincere, have a tremendous amount of reverence for the

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Scriptures, which we greatly appreciate and admire in them, and none of what we say today is meant to be pejorative or condescending or anything like that.

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We are only speaking in the interest of clarity and trying to demonstrate why it is that we hold the position we do and to convey with, we hope, grace and that same precision and clarity, the concerns that we would have with a dispensational framework.

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So that's really it. And we know that there are many people out there listening that have either grown up in a dispensational -by -default kind of context or maybe in a very self -consciously dispensational context, and we hope this is helpful.

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That's right. I'll make a couple of acknowledgments here because what I'm about to say might need some clarity.

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So in the Reformed world, Reformed theology throughout the history has also been sharpening itself.

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A great example of this is, on the simplest level, you have the Westminster Confession of Faith, and after the

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Westminster, you have the Savoy, which I think sharpened it up a little bit. And then from that, you have the 1689.

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Guys, when I say sharpen up, to my Presbyterian brothers and Westminster brothers, I love the

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Westminster Confession. So this is not a dig. We're going to do more on that coming soon. But the point of it is that throughout history, we can challenge each other and create clarity.

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This is why creeds and confessions have been so helpful. And I would say in the dispensational world, this has been happening as well.

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Where dispensationalism was and where it is today is completely different, which is good, and it needs to change.

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And those changes have been refreshing to see. Some areas, not so much. But we want to explain why

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I was in a very heavy dispensational background. Justin grew up in it but not trained in it.

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I was kind of more in that by default, but theology didn't matter kind of thing. I went to a dispensational college and seminary, and so I was well trained in it.

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But the distinctions matter because a lot of why you love theocast is based upon the theological position that we are leading you towards.

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Sometimes when you can point out like, oh, okay, now I know why a dispensational preacher at times might sound different than someone who's covenantal.

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Yeah. If I may really quickly, and I know this is one of the things we're going to talk about, and maybe the first thing we do in one sense.

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If you, the listener, have been helped by the ways that we talk about Jesus and His sufficiency and how the

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Bible's about Him, then that is because of how we understand the

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Scriptures covenantally. I mean, those things are inherently linked together. And why don't we just maybe run with that one,

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John? Yeah. One of the concerns, right? With dispensationalism, Christ and all Scripture. Yeah, amen.

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So both practices are going to hold to biblical theology. Biblical theology, you believe that the

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Bible has theology, but it's not. It's the practice of looking at all of Scripture and then understanding how all of the themes and all of the parts of the

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Bible fit together into one cohesion, and ours would be the redemption. It's a story of redemption.

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It's how Jesus redeemed sinners by God's decree. I mean, that's basically what the story of the

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Bible is. So redemption. And we would preach through Christ. We would preach that Bible, understanding that arc, right?

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No matter where we're at in the story, we understand that Christ is the Redeemer from beginning to end.

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From Genesis 3, He's a creator in Genesis 1, and He is restoring the world at the end of Revelation, right?

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Everything in between. Before the world began and eternity passed, there was this plan to save a people, and it was always determined that God the

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Son would be the Savior. He would do the work required. Then, like you said, once time and space are a thing, God the

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Son is there. He's the agent of creation, and then even immediately upon human sin, He is the promised

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Redeemer who's going to come. And like you said, we preach every text of Scripture in light of that major overarching point and theme.

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It informs our preaching, and that is also true for our dispensational brothers and sisters, though they might not want to acknowledge it in the same way.

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Because a lot of times, one of the charges against us is that our biblical theology, our covenantal framework, how we understand all of Scripture, is too important to us and then causes us to force things on individual passages that we shouldn't.

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To which we would say, well, you also have a framework that you bring with you to every passage of Scripture, because we all do, and then we just need to evaluate our frameworks as to whether they're good or not.

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And we're going to talk about some of those issues, related issues, today. Jon Moffitt Yeah, there you go.

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I would say modern dispensationalists that I talk to, I know a couple of professors that are at the

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Master's Seminary who are very sympathetic to our position of a redemptive historic understanding of Scripture, and they would even understand

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Scripture to have that narrative. And it's hard to argue that Jesus is the point of the

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Bible. It's just kind of hard to... Justin Perdue He says it. Jon Moffitt And dispensationalists would agree with that.

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They would agree with the statement, but in practice, we might see some differences in the old. That's where we're going to talk about. Justin Perdue Yeah, and there are just some inconsistencies in how it plays out in their teaching and preaching.

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Jon Moffitt In our opinion. I'm more than happy to be corrected here. I want to represent my brothers well.

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You are my brothers. And listen, I've heard some of your criticisms of covenant theology, and I appreciate them.

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Justin, have I thought through them? And how can we say this better? Or do we need to adjust this here or there? So we're not closed our ears off either.

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We appreciate the loving feedback. But this is for our audience. Why don't you know the difference?

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So the overarching, if we were to look at their biblical theology, Justin, I say this, and I cringe when

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I say it, but I just feel like it's the best way to describe dispensationalism in my experience, and even still modern day dispensationalism, is that the overarching story is really broken up into two.

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We would say the Bible is Christocentric. It's about Jesus, but it feels like in the dispensational world, the

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Old Testament is Israel -centric. It's about Israel, and then Israel fails, and then it's kind of like Jesus' plan

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B in the second part. I know that's a really bold statement, but let me try to explain to you why.

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When you look at the dispensational perspective, they would hold to what's called a grammatical historical interpretation, a literal grammatical historical interpretation of the

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Bible, where they're going to start in Genesis, and they're going to look at the grammar history, and they're going to take everything literal as it unfolds, which we would agree.

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And as they do that, they come across passages of scriptures that make promises to Israel concerning the land, the land promises and the nations and what's going to happen.

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And as they continue to read scripture, those land promises become extremely important because in their mind, if God makes a promise,

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He has to keep the promise. He cannot fail to keep the promise. Where covenant theology is going to come in and kind of help a little bit here is that there's a concept that Paul and Peter use often called the mystery of Christ.

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And what they mean by this is that multiple times do the apostles say in scripture that what was hidden in the old is now revealed in the new, which means they had partially understanding.

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And Paul flat out just says this in Corinthians. He's like, look, it was withheld so that the rulers of this age wouldn't know what's going on, so they could try and stop it, right?

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I mean, flat out, we didn't want Satan to know what was happening. So they had enough to proclaim to the people what they needed to know, the advancement of the gospel and the covenants that are there.

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But the mystery of the fulfillment of Christ is that Christ came and fulfills all of the covenant. All the promises of the

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Old Testament have their yes and amen in Christ. And that Israel was always a vehicle to bring us to the

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Messiah and the true Israel, which is Jesus and the church, right? No, I'm going to let you pick up.

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No, I was going to say, and that all of the saints, even in the old covenant, were saved through trusting the promises of God realized in the

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Messiah. That's right. Now modern dispensationalists agree with that. They do. Historically, from the jump, there was kind of a dual covenant or two covenants in terms of historic dispensationalism.

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Now we understand, yeah, our modern friends don't say that, thank God. I mean, praise the Lord. But it still obscures this reality as to how

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Christ is the point and He's the Redeemer of all. And that was always the plan, always the case.

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Continue on. We would look at it as that there's a promise in Genesis 3 .15 that God's going to restore the original and make it better.

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But He's going to restore the relationship between humans, God's creation, and Himself. And that restoration is coming from the seed of Eve and ultimately being in Christ.

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Whereas in dispensationalism, there is like this restoration of Israel, and it's a really high point. Yes, they talk about the new heavens and the new earth, but there is a really heavy emphasis on the restoration of Israel, specifically, not only in the land, but the nation and the temple and the temple sacrifices.

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In the sacrificial system, yeah, sacrificial system, right. Where they are taking the text, in their opinion, literal, which

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I understand and I appreciate. Here, we're talking largely like the latter chapters of Ezekiel. We've done an entire episode on this.

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I'm not going to spend on that today. I've done sermons on this, so we're not going to get into that. But if you just go to Theocast type in Ezekiel, you can see an episode that we've done on it.

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But what I would push back here, and this is where biblical theology from a reformed perspective is helpful.

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And again, Justin and I are coming from a 1689 Federalist position. That's super nerdy. You can look up on our website for all that kind of stuff.

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But what we're looking at is that, yes, take the text literal, but literally as it was intended, specifically in Ezekiel.

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They take the restoration of the temple portions of it literal, because there's other parts they don't.

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And this is where we want to challenge our hermeneutics, where they'll take the reinstitution of the temple and the reinstitution of the sacrifices literal.

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But then Ezekiel says that out of the temple flows water, and as the water flows, it flows out into the desert, and the desert brings forth trees and a new garden, and everything is restored.

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Well, right. They're not taking that part literal. No, and then the striking parallel of Ezekiel 47 and Revelation 22 is undeniable in terms of the stream, the river that flows from the throne of God, and the tree of life is on either side, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations and all that.

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And so, a brief interjection here. In my punchiness, I would be inclined to say, look, don't interpret the

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Bible literally in every case. Interpret it correctly. But in a less punchy way,

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I would say the question we must ask of any passage is, what is the appropriate way to interpret this text?

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Taking it seriously with all reverence to the Scriptures, acknowledging its inspiration and its inerrancy, acknowledging all of that, how should this text be interpreted?

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Because not every passage of Scripture occurs in the same genre of Scripture. Now, I'm not trying to nerd out here either, but this really does matter, given that you've got –

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I mean, the listener can understand this. You've got historical narrative. You've got poetry. You've got what's referred to as apocalyptic literature that is obviously prophetic about things that are going to be – that are happening and are going to happen.

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You've got accounts of Jesus' life. You've got letters, propositional truth in the epistles. So, of course, we would not approach those various kinds of writing the exact same way and call that faithful.

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And so we have no dispute when it comes to the historical grammatical interpretation of Scripture.

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We're all about the historical piece. We care a ton about the words on the page and the syntax and everything else.

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Yet there is also this redemptive historical piece of it and the question of, what was

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God's intention? Given that God is the author of Scripture, the Spirit of God is the one who inspired all of the forty -ish humans who wrote the

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Scriptures. The humans who wrote it, we trust, had a true understanding of what they were writing, but not an exhaustive understanding of what they were writing.

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So what we're asking is, what did the Lord intend for this to communicate? And so, getting kind of at the heart of the matter here in the beginning,

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Christ in all of Scripture, Jesus as the Savior, Jesus as the point of it all, the one plan of God from before the foundations of the world to save a people through the work of God the

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Son that the people would receive by faith. That overarching point, from our perspective as covenantal theologians, is the thing that drives all of the

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Bible, and we're going to preach every text in light of it. And what does that do? It makes it very clear, whether we're looking in the

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Old Testament or the New, that Christ is supreme, so we're not going to obscure His supremacy by confusing people, potentially, with the reinstitution of the temple or the sacrificial system.

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Okay, well, was Christ sufficient? Was what He did enough? Our dispensational friends will say, absolutely.

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He was enough. This is not about diminishing the work of Christ, but we would say, ah, but friend, does it not obscure the sufficiency of Christ?

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And it does, and so we unashamedly will say that Christ is always enough.

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His work is sufficient, and I know we're going to get into some other ways that a covenantal framework makes that more plain when we get into Christ's obedience and the covenant of works and some of those things.

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But that's where we want to start. Is Christ in all of Scripture? How do you understand that? Hey guys, real quick, some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

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So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

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Theocast Community, and we're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there, and you can share it and ask questions.

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You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. Right, and so now we're getting into, now listen,

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I don't want to start debating covenant theology with dispensationalism. This is more just kind of defining the differences, and I know that what's hurled at covenant theologians is like, well, the covenant of grace and covenant of works language isn't in the text.

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And I'm not here to debate that. What I do want to point out is that a matter of emphasis here.

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What ends up happening, I think, if you read the text from beginning to end and understand that this is the unfolding story of the

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Messiah who saves sinners, and that's how you should read it, then the work of Christ becomes the emphasis.

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That's the North Star, right? That's what you're keeping your focus on. Not the faithfulness of Israel. Right, and that's where they would say, yes,

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Christ is the point, but when you ask someone what's the purpose of the Bible, they'll say the glory of God, typically in the dispensational world.

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Like the glory of God is really the purpose of the glory of the God in the kingdom. And I would agree with him that ultimately it's

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God's glory, but the story is kind of broad. The story has a little bit more focus to it, a little bit more narrowing to it.

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That's like saying, where do you want to go eat? And I say food. You're like, right, but what kind of food did you want to go eat?

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When I'm thinking about when a dispensationalist is working through the text, Justin, this is where eschatology comes into play.

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Because of their view of Israel and the way in which they interpret

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Israel, it changes how we look at the New Testament and it changes how we look at our eschatology.

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It becomes more about what America and Israel are doing, and that's how we end up reading our

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Bibles as the news in one hand and our Bibles in the other. In my opinion, it misses the point of what's happening.

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I'm sorry, you've been trying to jump in and I've been trying to finish my thought here. Justin Perdue No, you're good. Yeah, I mean,

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I didn't want to derail your train either. I think that, like you're saying, I think from a covenantal perspective, it's very obvious, and you use the language of the unfolding story of the

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Redeemer who saved sinners. Exactly right. And even to the question of God's glory, what's the point of the

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Bible? The dispensationalist would say, well, it's the glory of God, to which we would say amen. But what we are trying to do is put some handles on the glory of God through describing the story itself.

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How is it that the Lord has determined to glorify himself?

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And it is through, most pointedly, it is through this plan of redemption that God the

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Son would accomplish. It is through bringing many sons to glory who don't deserve it, but who will be there because of the work of God the

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Son. And that, I think, does more justice to the Scriptures. Of course, the

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Lord is glorified and vindicated in his righteous judgment, but the plan for maternity past regarding his people is laid out plainly enough in the

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Scriptures for us to understand that this has always been in the mind and heart of God, even as it pertains to his glory.

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I'm thinking, of course, of a passage like Ephesians 1, 3 -14 that makes that as obvious as anywhere else in the

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Scripture. If you're good, let's move on. We've talked about one of the differences between covenant theology and a dispensational framework.

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From our vantage point, covenant theology does more justice to the Scripture in making it plain how

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Jesus is the point of it all, regardless of whether you find yourself in the Old Testament or the New. It is about Jesus ultimately, and so we're going to preach and understand the

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Scriptures in light of that. Jon Moffitt I'd like to add one thought under that. My brothers, I don't want you to be covenantal.

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I just want you to understand the power of preaching Christ in all of Scripture. Amen, dude. We'll come back to covenant of works and active obedience and word concept fallacy stuff maybe, but let's talk about the law and the gospel.

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This is big. So I'll say this from my kind of dispensational by default upbringing where doctrine didn't matter, and then you can talk more technically because you were trained in it.

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I think a common interpretation or a common understanding of many Christians in the pew because of a dispensational framework is that the

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Old Testament is law and the New Testament is gospel. So confusing. Right? That there was a dispensation or there was an era where God was—I mean, it kind of even feeds this narrative that God used to be harsh and uncompromising, and it's all law.

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It's frightening. It's scary. It's Sinai. It's smoke and thunder and lightning and fire and all the things.

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Then it changes with the coming of Jesus, and then we're now in the era of the gospel, and God operates differently, and His posture is certainly different.

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That, from our vantage point, is a massive confusion, and we're going to talk about why here in just a minute.

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But John, do you want to unpack that a little bit more briefly for the listener? That kind of Old Testament is law,

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New Testament is gospel misunderstanding? Yeah, and it's kind of morphed over time. If you ask dispensationalists what the seven dispensations are, you're probably going to get seven different answers.

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And I'm not trying to be rude here. There's some clarity that the covenant theologians need to process as well.

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Sure. So we're not monolithic in our understanding of ours either, so we'll throw that out there. But yeah, there is this perspective that God deals with people in different stages in the era, different dispensations.

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The Old Testament would be the dispensation of the law, and then when

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Christ resurrects, it's the dispensation of grace, and this is how He's dealing with us now. This is where I think some confusion came in.

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They were saved by the law under the Old Testament and saved by grace in the New, or God is angry in the

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Old and He's nice in the New, or however you want to present it. When I was being, I'd never even heard the concept of law -gospel distinction, and the reason why that has to happen is that there was a law -gospel confusion.

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Sometimes things don't exist because there's not a confusion. So to say that the concept of the law -gospel distinction is not in Scripture, which dispensationalists will say, you guys are imposing that on the text.

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We're only imposing it on the text because there's a confusion that has happened where we're not allowing the gospel to be the gospel and the law to be the law.

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We've conflated those two, and when you have a grammatical -historical understanding of Scripture and you're just going to flow through the text, you're going to take everything literal, and you're not going to look at everything as a whole, like when the rich young ruler walks up to Jesus and says, what must

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I do to inherit the kingdom of heaven? People think Jesus gives them gospel, but He doesn't.

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He gives them law, and it's important to understand the distinction. Well, in the law -gospel distinction, and we're going to get into the covenant of works in a minute.

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Effectively for us as covenant theologians, we see the law as a covenant of works, is what we mean by law.

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It means do this and live, obey, and be saved. Then gospel is a covenant of grace.

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Jesus did it for you. Trust Him. That said, the law -gospel distinction, just like the covenant of works and covenant of grace stuff, is not, from our vantage point, something that we impose on the text.

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Rather, it is something that is clearly revealed in it as we survey it, and then we do pull that out, and we can systematize it a little bit and talk with precise terms about what a law -gospel distinction is or what covenant of works is or what a covenant of grace is.

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But then what we do, having pulled those things out of the Scripture rightly, having refined them appropriately, we then go back to the

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Scripture with those tools and are better able then to interpret passages. We have categories, like you just gave the illustration of Jesus, a rich young man, what do

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I need to do? Or the lawyer before the parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, what do

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I do? Jesus says, what's in the law? How do you read it? Well, love the

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Lord your God, basically with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus says, you've spoken correctly. Do this and live.

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We've got categories for what is going on there, that this is law here.

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I guess I'll jump in here for the sake of time because we're going to have to wrap this up eventually. One of the things that I think dispensationalism misses, that I think covenant theology and a law -gospel distinction get correct, is that in the

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Old Testament, there is gospel, and in the New Testament, there is law. Because in the

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Old Testament under a dispensational framework, it's just law. There is no gospel properly understood.

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Then in the New, according to a dispensational framework, there's no law anymore. It's just grace. So that confuses people because in the

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Old Testament, you have law and gospel, and in the New Testament, you have law and gospel. What I think we're able to do is go to any passage of Scripture, old or new, as covenantal law -gospel guys, and we're able to look at this and say, okay, well, what is

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God revealing here? Is he revealing his standard for righteousness? Is he revealing what he requires of us?

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Is he revealing even his own holy character to us? Because if those things are going on, those are messages of law. Law is good, but those are laws nonetheless.

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Or is God telling us, is he making promises about what he will do? Is he making promises about how he will save?

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Is he reminding us of his steadfast love that transcends and is greater than our sin? Is he telling us of what the

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Messiah will accomplish in the place of his people? Because if he's telling us those things, that's gospel. It doesn't matter where you read it.

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It doesn't matter what page of your Bible you find it on. Those are words of good news. We want to keep those things appropriately distinct and clear in our minds, and we're going to be able to better handle the

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Scriptures and help people understand them. Historically, this is not a dispensational hermeneutic.

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This is not something dispensationalists would use in a text, and it's helpful because you have to understand when

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God demands something, and there's a whole other podcast on this, but this goes down to the three uses of the law.

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Understanding that we as believers will still use the law for guidance. That can be confusing where some people say we're under grace and not under the law.

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Justin Perdue Which it's not a mystery, John, as to the fact that easy believism and legitimate antinomianism,

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I'm thinking like Zane Hodges and others, where does that come from? It comes from a dispensational seminary.

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Jon Moffitt It does come from dispensationalism, which is what lordship is trying to fight. The covenant theologians are saying lordship isn't the solution.

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Three uses of the law. Justin Perdue Exactly. Law and gospel is the antidote, and covenant of works and grace is the antidote.

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That's another podcast legitimately for another day. Jon Moffitt But where the covenant, where this law gospel distinction comes from is our understanding of the first and second

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Adam, right? So 1 Corinthians 15 is speaking about how the first Adam failed.

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Well, what did he fail to do? Because they say, well, there's no word in scripture that says covenant of works. Fine. I agree with you.

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No one in the Bible says the word trinity. So as long as you believe in a triune God, you can deny the word trinity all you want, but you've got to believe in a triune

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God. Deny the word all you want. Deny the covenant of works all you want. But you've got to admit that it is

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Christ's active, obedient righteousness on our behalf is how we gained glory.

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What does Romans say? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. That means they fell short of obeying to the point of receiving glory, to receiving glory.

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Jesus receives glory on our behalf, or we receive glory on Jesus' behalf. Justin Perdue Well, Jesus earns it.

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Jon Moffitt That's right, because he earns it. This is what 1 Corinthians is talking about. Where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded.

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If Adam would have succeeded, he would have earned for himself and his posterity, all those who follow him, glory.

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Jesus did that for us. We gain it by faith alone. That's where the law gospel distinction comes from.

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The law says do the law and you gain glory, or believe the gospel and you receive glory.

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Law gospel distinction. By faith versus by doing. Jesus is the end of the law for righteousness for everyone who believes.

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You've already gotten into this, the first and second Adam piece. Here is where, like you said, covenant of works.

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This is important. Whether you acknowledge the term or not is secondary, as you already said. What does matter is you acknowledge two things.

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I'm just going to kind of rearticulate a little bit and say some more. It matters that you would affirm biblically that Adam, as the first human being, as the covenant head of the entire human race, in this sense, he represents us all.

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That's right. He's the representative of humanity. He's the representative of humanity in the covenant that God makes with him.

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Even if you don't like that word covenant, the arrangement, the agreement with the sanctions and the whole thing, where the

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Lord gives Adam a purpose, the tree of life stands before him, but then he also says you're not to do this.

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He gives him a tripwire, a test of his obedience. You shall not eat of this tree. In the day you eat of it, you'll surely die.

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That arrangement, I mean. You have to acknowledge that. Which Paul confirms. Right, and that Adam represents us all in that when he ate of the fruit, it wasn't just that he and Eve physically would die.

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It's that we now inherit his corrupt nature. That's right. Something happened to humanity, and we inherit that now.

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So you've got to at least acknowledge that Adam was our representative in that sense, and that's what we're calling a covenant of works because it was a covenantal arrangement.

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It had sanctions. There was blessing. There was curse. There was all the things. There were terms. It was God. It was

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Adam, and it was contingent on Adam's obedience. Now, why does it matter that we would affirm this, that Adam could have earned righteousness through obedience?

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Well, because when the second Adam shows up, it helps make plain the sufficiency of his work.

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Because if the second Adam comes to fulfill all of the obligations that the first one failed to fulfill, which is what

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Jesus did. He came to fulfill the law. He came to obey perfectly. And he came to pay the penalty that the first Adam has plunged us into and that we all have doubled down on.

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So that's what he came to do. And so this affirmation of a covenant of works leads us inevitably to Jesus and how he fulfills all of the requirements of God in the place of his people.

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And so then we're able to affirm not just that Christ died for us, as great as that is, but that he lived for us, too.

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So this is that active obedience piece. It's not just his obedience in his suffering, passive.

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It's also his obedience in his living, where he fulfilled the law and where he becomes the righteousness of his people as our representative.

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And historically, now, again, some of our progressive dispensational friends, some newer versions of dispensationalism get this much more correct in terms of the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus.

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Yeah. One of my professors in seminary got fired because he denied the active obedience of Christ. Praise the

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Lord. But originally, my understanding, John, is that Darby, the father of dispensationalism, denied the active obedience of Christ and the imputation of Christ's righteousness.

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And so this is significant that we would affirm a covenant of works and thereby that Jesus fulfills one and that we get his merit and it's given to us by faith.

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Yeah, I graduated from the Master's Seminary, and I am thankful one of my classmates really exposed this in one of the professors.

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And thankfully, John MacArthur read the paper and fired the guy and said, no, we believe in the active obedience of Christ. So praise the

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Lord. And that's where I'm saying a lot of dispensationalism is growing. It's changing. It's developing.

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And I just want to, one, point out the distinctions. If some of those of you guys are like, well, it sounds like, you know, you guys are not pado -baptists.

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You're credo -baptists. Are you dispensational? What's the distinction? There is a distinction. We're confessional, covenantal, law gospel distinction guys.

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This is why theocast leads people to rest in Christ while still believing in holiness, just to clarify.

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And why we sound a lot different than some of the preaching and teaching that comes from the historical dispensational background that tends to be more law -based and exacting in the lordship area.

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So we just kind of wanted to define, not in all ways, but I will say the dispensational world is starting to be influenced by this, and it's great, like in a positive way, and I'm all for it.

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Justin Perdue I'll just briefly say this as my final parting shot, and then I'll land it if you're good with that, John. You know, it's not just the dispensational world where it's a law kind of preaching.

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There are many people, evangelicals, who would not understand themselves to be dispensational at all.

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They would understand themselves to be new covenant theologians or progressive covenantal theologians, but here's the issue.

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They also collapse the categories of law and gospel, which is really what does the damage.

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On the one hand, we'll say that Jesus is the Savior and he's sufficient, he was always the plan, but then you'll take the words of law and the words of gospel and confuse those categories and collapse them, which is where all of this erosion of assurance and all of the kind of edgy, threatening stuff really does come from, and so this is not us singling out dispensationalists.

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That said, we realize the influence that dispensationalism has had and how many people have been either taught and trained in it or have absorbed it by default, and so it seemed good to sit back down and have this conversation.

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So just really brief, Christ in all of Scripture, we think that covenant theology makes that really plain.

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The law and gospel distinction, we think covenant theology makes that really plain, and lastly, the active obedience of Christ and how exactly not only he died for our sins, but how he is our righteousness.

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He is our merit. We would understand that covenant theology gets that right as well, and dispensationalism, at least historically, has not affirmed those things.

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Jon Moffitt That's right, and I'll add because people ask us all the time, what about new covenant theology? We would add them in with dispensationalism only in that they deny the covenant of works, and that's kind of why we're saying we would not hold to that theological system as well.

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There's a lot of confusion around the law, too, in terms of the moral law and what it is and is it binding, etc.

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We may record another one on that at some point. Well, thank you guys for listening and tuning in again to another episode.

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Jon Moffitt Be nice to your dispensational brothers. Jon Moffitt Yeah, please do. Be charitable, be warm, be gentle. Listen back to an episode we did a few weeks ago on some of those things.

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We should be charitable in the ways we deal with each other. Jon Moffitt Always. Jon Moffitt We hope the Lord returns and that we're with him.

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But if he does not, we trust that we'll be coming back to you on your podcast platform of choice or however you listen to this, on YouTube or something.

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You'll be hearing from us again next week. Go on the app, theocast .org. You can find all the information that you need there.

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Register for the Covenant Conference, all those things. We leave it with you. Until next time, grace and peace. Jon Moffitt Hey, everyone.

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Before you go, Justin and I first wanted to say thank you, and if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it.

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But we also need your support, and it's when you give that it really helps us financially reach more people.

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So the next time you consider giving to a ministry, we hope that you would pray about Theocast and partner with us as we share the gospel around the world.