Have You Not Read S2E11 Two Kingdom Theology

Visible and Invisible Church as Theological Terms

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of Scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the Saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the.

Podcast. Thank you. I'm Dylan Hamilton and with me are.

Michael Durham, Chris Giesler, and Andrew Hudson. Today we are privileged enough to.

Have Chris in here with us to ask his question about two-kingdom theology. So this may be a little convoluted because I'm not clear on definitions, but I've heard the phrase two-kingdom theology thrown around, and I've also had discussions or heard pastors talk about the visible and invisible church, and I'm wondering if this is arising out of that, tied to that at all, or if that's.

Something completely different. Yeah, so when we talk about the visible and invisible church, these are theological terms that we try to use. They're not biblical terms, they're theological terms. Not that it means that they're anti-biblical, but they are terms that we are trying to use to talk about what the Bible says.

Not that we're going to naturally draw them from any particular text. So one way of trying to talk about the church is the fact that there are visible expressions of Christ's body, right, visible expressions of Christ's church in the local congregation, local churches.

You know, when you come to our church, for example, we're glad you're here, but we don't think that we're the entirety of Christ's church, right? We know that there are many other folks who belong to Christ who are also part of his church, and they may live far, far away, and we may not meet them on this side of heaven, but we know that they're part of Christ's church as well.

And praise the Lord for that. We praise the Lord for that, it's very encouraging. And also, as we read in Hebrews, we are brothers and sisters to Christians who have, well, they've finished their race, and now they're at rest with the Lord.

Absent from their bodies, they are present with the Lord, and enjoying a Sabbath with him, and rejoicing in him. And we cannot see them, they're not with us, we don't pray to them, but we're certainly all a part of the same church.

We're all together in Christ, thus we're all part of Mount Zion, we're all part of the the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and we have a sharing and a unity there, a communion there, that is not perfectly visible and apparent, right?

We may also acknowledge that there are people, by the grace of God, who come to faith in Christ, and believe in him, and are born again, and are saved, and have not yet, you know, found a church to become a member of, and they don't, you know, their names are not known to people, they're not in covenant relationship with people inside of a local church, and we're not saying they're not part of Christ, simply because they are not an official member of a church somewhere, right?

So we don't, we're not in agreement with the Roman Catholic persuasion on that. So when we talk about the church, visible and invisible, those are the kinds of distinctions I would be using when I use those terms.

There's a way of talking about the body of Christ, the church, that is very large, so big it's hard to wrap our heads around, and you can't see all the aspects of it, and so there's a real genuine church, and then the visible church would be the one that I'm a member of, you know, that I fellowship with and blessed through.

Covenant Theology and the Visible Church

Now that's not the way that others may use those same terms. So if somebody is coming from a covenant theology perspective, particularly a paedo-covenantal perspective, a paedo-baptist perspective, and their understanding of the way to read the scriptures is to see a covenant of grace which covers the majority of the biblical witness, stretching all the way, you know, back, and that those within God's covenant people, okay, some of them are going to be born again, some of them are going to be circumcised of heart, some of them are going to be regenerate, and others aren't.

And they would say in the older administration of the covenant, which I would call the first covenant or the old covenant, you would have a remnant who believed, a remnant who was born again, a remnant who were righteous and grieved by all the sin they encountered, and in the newer administration of this same covenant, as they would say it, it's almost the reverse.

You know, there's a remnant who don't believe, there's a remnant who are not faithful and really truly born again, but the majority are indeed saved. And they see a difference between the older and newer administrations of the covenant in this sense, and they see a superiority to the newer administration of the covenant in that the quality is so much better.

But they would still maintain that in the newer administration of the covenant that you would have people who should be labeled Christian, labeled as Saints, labeled as genuine church members. In fact, genuine members of the covenant, members of the newer covenant, or even members of the new covenant, they would be fine with saying that.

And yet these people would not be necessarily born again, not necessarily regenerate, not necessarily of the elect. Okay, so in that regard, they would be making distinctions between the visible church and the invisible church as follows.

They would say that the visible church entails all of those who are baptized, who have received the sign of the new covenant, those who have been baptized and are members of the local church, that they would be considered part of the visible church.

And that this is not to be equated perfectly with the invisible church, because the invisible church is those who are actually elect, those who are actually born again, so on and so forth. So they see like two groups of people within the covenant?

Yes, yes. And they would repeal to a variety of scriptures, not only patterns that they would see in the older administration of the covenant with Israel, but they would see analogous materials in the New Testament in which the church would be spoken of and dealt with, they would see in basically one-to-one correspondence with Israel.

And so they would see that there would still be this group that are not saved, a kind of mixed multitude, people who are in the covenant but not really born again. And there's a variety of parables that they may look to, but they especially lean on the warning passages, as they're called in the New Testament, which speak to those who are apparently part of the Christian community, but then are warned about being cut off from everything that they have been enjoying so far, and warned against the sin of apostasy, and so on.

And they would point to these warning passages and say, see this is members of the visible church being warned that they will be cast out of the covenant, just like the covenant breakers of old, they have covenant breakers in the new.

So that would be a way that I would say paedo-covenantalists would be using the language of visible church versus invisible church.

Romans 11 and the Olive Tree as Israel and the Gentile Nations

One of the verses that comes up, I guess this would be one of the warning ones, is Romans 11, where he talks about the natural branches being broken off so that the Gentiles could be grafted in, and he gives that warning, starting in verse 17 of Romans 11, but if some of the branches were broken off and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches.

If you remember, it is not you who supported the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in. That is true, they were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith.

So do not become proud, but fear, for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. And so I guess their argument is, well, if you're part of the tree, you're part of the covenant, but here, you could be removed from the covenant or be removed from the tree.

And so they would probably say, you're a covenant breaker, just like in the Old Testament or Old Covenant. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it?

Yeah, so what we have to do is, again, and I would say that those who are paedo-covenantalists would absolutely agree with what I'm about to say, that the need is to interpret Scripture with Scripture, and we trust that there's no contradictions in God's Word, and that God is a good communicator, that he is plain in a way that we can understand.

And there are some things that are harder to understand, but it's not a matter of him being confusing to us, we just have some things to learn. Now, when we look at Romans 11, and again, paedo-covenantalists would absolutely agree, I would think, you know, faithful brethren would absolutely agree with the sentiment that we ought to, you know, carefully read the context and then see what it actually says, and then compare and contrast with other passages of Scripture.

So, given this particular warning, I can see the point that they're trying to make. But, you know, what's the burden that Paul is dealing with? Let me go back a little bit in chapter 11, even at the end of chapter 10, he says, you know, verse 21, but to Israel he says, all day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.

So he's looking at Israel as a whole, as a people, okay. I say, then, has God cast away his people? Certainly not, for I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away his people whom he foreknew.

Or do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel, saying, Lord, they have killed your prophets and torn down your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.

But what does the divine response say to him? I have reserved for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Even so, then, at this present time, there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

And if by grace it is no longer of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace, otherwise work is no longer work. Okay, so the question is about the branches that remain, that he did not cut off, why do they remain?

Why are they there grafted into the root, the root that supports? Early in the chapter you'd say it's because of grace, you know, not because of work, right? So the reason why they are supported by the root and remain in the root is because of the grace of God, because of the electing grace of God that we read about, right?

Okay, so others were broken off because they were not of the elect, so you could kind of deduce that. But so then we read verse 7, what then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks, but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded just as it was written.

God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see, and ears they should not hear, to this very day. And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a recipients to them.

Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see and bow down their back always. I say, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not. But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles.

Now if their fall is riches for the world and their failure riches for the Gentiles, how much more their fullness. For I speak to you, Gentiles, inasmuch as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are of my flesh, and save some of them.

For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? For if the first fruit is holy, the lump is also holy, and if the root is holy, so are the branches.

And if some of the branches were broken off, and you being a wild olive tree have rafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches.

But if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root, but the root supports you. You will say, then branches are broken off that I may be grafted in. Well said, because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith.

Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God does not spare the natural branches, he may not spare you either. Therefore, consider the goodness and severity of God on those who fell. Severity, but towards you, goodness.

If you continue in his goodness, otherwise you will be cut off. And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in. For God is able to graft them in again. For if you were cut off out of the olive tree, which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree?

For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has it happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.

And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written. The deliverer will come out of Zion, he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. For this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins. Now, what we're reading here is Israel and Gentiles.

What we're reading about is nations and people groups. We're looking at very large-scale gospel, you know, big-view issues. What we're not talking about here is like something from, you know, Jesus's parables saying, you know, I have my flock of sheep, you know, I am the shepherd and I have my flock of sheep, and in my flock there are some that are not really my sheep, even though they're in my flock, right?

And over time we're going to discover who are really my sheep and not. So I have those who are actually my sheep and there are some who are not my sheep but are still in my flock, right? And then I'm gonna kick those out and it'll be clear who's who, right?

We don't have that language, right? No. Jesus doesn't talk that way. And yet we're reading here in a way that if we were going to read this in terms of the distinction between a visible church and an invisible church, where there are individuals who are members of the visible church and the invisible church, and there's individuals who are members of the visible church but not the invisible church, right?

Then that would have to be the case about how Jesus deals with with sheep and flock. He doesn't do that though. In fact, he says to, you know, the Pharisees and Sadducees and scribes or whatever, you know, you are not of my sheep.

You're not, you know. Here, this is not dealing with individuals, it's dealing with people groups. So I had a question on that. We were just reading it. It doesn't automatically jump in my mind Israel church.

It's Israel versus the Gentiles. Yes. Wild olive tree doesn't immediately mean a corollary to church, just like how cultivated olive tree was Israel proper. Correct. Again, the the root is Christ, right?

And you read Isaiah. Okay. The root is Christ being grafted into him is the question. Again, when you go back to the beginning of Romans, Paul is saying, I'm a debtor to all kinds of people. I'm gonna preach the gospel to all kinds of people.

The gospel's got to go to everybody. Here, the old age old question that he's dealing with is the Israel Gentile question. He deals with it in Ephesians. He deals with it in the book of Acts. They deal with it in Galatians.

This is the age old question. You know, what about the Gentiles? Israel versus Gentiles. Okay. This description that we have here is about nations, is about people groups. Okay. And who is it who is Lord over the nations?

To whom has been given the nations as his inheritance? Over whom he rules? And what will he do to nations, what will he do to them when if they rebel against him and rage against him? What will he do?

I think there's some dashing to pieces. Right. So he's got a rod of iron. He rules over them like clay pots. Okay. And then what are the kings of the earth called to do? The judges of the earth called to do but to pay homage to him and find refuge in him.

Okay. So this is, you know, large-scale seeing Christ as king over all a very big kind of picture because the promises made to Israel had really big pictures in them about how it all turns out in the end.

And so when we read this in continuity with the Old Testament promises of, you know, ten men grabbing the sleeve of a Jew take us up Mount Zion. Okay. We can understand this a little bit better. And and what is the warning?

I'll be careful here. The warning is that you should not place your nationalism above Christ. That's exactly what they were doing in this text. That's what Israel is doing. They pushed their nationalism above Christ himself.

They sought it in themselves. They sought salvation in themselves because of who they were because I were special. And the warning is to these Gentile nations that they not do the same thing. It's the exact same problem.

It's the exact same scenario. Don't you get cocky. Don't you get prideful. Hey look we're in the olive tree now because he can break you off too. Okay. So this is talking to this is talking to two nations.

Okay. Isn't it a blessing when the gospel of Jesus Christ transforms a culture within a nation and and the people are turning to the Lord. Isn't that wonderful. And then people can get really arrogant about it.

Careful. Don't take so much pride in your nation that you're not humbly clinging to Christ. Right. So there's these are large general warnings. This is not dealing with individual members of a visible church and whether or not they are part of the invisible church and whether Jesus is breaking off branches out of local churches.

Okay. This is this is much larger in scale. And I think just kind of reading it out loud helps and I know I probably bored some people reading it out loud but that helps me when I have tough questions in the Bible.

I have to read it out loud to myself and then you.

Know just trying to hear it. Especially with Paul who's like here's a thought.

That's like forever long. Dependent clause, dependent clause, dependent clause. But.

It's beautiful. It like that's actually he writes beautifully. It's a layered cake. Yeah and you're able to see the image laid out very clearly. And then when he was reading it I was actually like no this needed to happen.

We needed to read.

This out. So no I'm glad you did that. Yeah and so these are these are important questions but we should not again if if the paedo-covenantalist is going to kind of assume the conclusion in their question by coming at this with the assumptions already baked in about the nature of the covenant.

Okay. I can see why you would end up interpreting it that way. But this is not about individuals. This is about nations. If we want to know what it looks like about individuals there are a lot of passages in the Bible that we could go to.

One that often gets misread by paedo-covenantalists is the parable of the wheat and the tares wherein an enemy comes and sows tares among the wheat and they grow up and the servants see that there's tares among the wheat and Jesus says that the master says leave them both so that you don't uproot the wheat along with the tares and we're just gonna wait to the harvest and when the harvest comes the tares and the wheat are harvested the tares are gathered and burned but the wheat are safely gathered into the barn and this parable is set with many other parables about the same thing about Judgment Day and how God sorts out you know the sheep and the goats the good fish and the bad fish the wheat and the tares and many times paedo-covenantalists will interpret that parable and say the field is the church and you see the church has wheat and tares and it's not going to be sorted until Judgment Day and when you read it out loud again when you read it out loud it says at the very beginning the field is the world and then when you read paedo-covenantalists commentaries on it they actually say one use of the word world means the church.

Where do they get that? Because that's how they make sense of the parable itself because they assume the nature of a mixed multitude in the New Covenant contra Jeremiah and Hebrews and so on because they assume that to be the case they say lexicographically obviously the word world means church in this context.

It just imports that definition. Okay that.

Makes sense. Sounds like a good word study for someone. Yeah now these warning.

Passages. Ryan Nadell baby. These warning passages such as Romans 11 and Hebrews has some as well. These warning passages are not to be avoided. They are to be read very carefully. Again read them out loud.

Read them thoroughly and applied. Yeah just as we have them but I don't think that they're saying hey members of the New Covenant you know you beware lest you get kicked out of the New Covenant. I think that's a very not only very difficult.

I think it's impossible to maintain that conclusion given the plain reading of the New Covenant promises in the Old Testament and how those are preached and expounded.

Upon in the New Testament. Well I think that about wraps up our discussion of that subject for today. We'll move on to what we want to recommend to our listeners for for content this week. What do you think.

Michael? I'm gonna recommend a book by Brian Rosner it's called Paul and the Law and again Paul and the Law is a very large topic. Many people have commented on how much material is there and how overwhelming it all is but Brian Rosner does a great job of making clear careful observations and just kind of bypasses all of the more technical and useless academic debates to observe what he does not say and what he does say and it's very helpful.

So Brian Rosner Paul.

And the Law. Chris? I've been working through a book I haven't quite finished it on most of the way through it's called Dominion Theology Blessing or a Curse. It's an analysis of Christian Reconstructionism and it's it's kind of against it's a critique of it and it's been very helpful for me as far as learning even definitions and terminologies.

He's very fair about it. I thought I was just gonna come in and say well it's wrong because of this. He actually outlines kind of what that even means what is it talking about and he does it in a very fair way.

And even his use of scripture and I guess how Reconstructionists would define things he quotes them using the Bible the way that they would use the Bible so it doesn't seem like it's straw manning anything and he has concerns and critiques that I think are valid that you know I'm gonna have to work through in my thinking and so I found it very.

Helpful. Andrew? I'm gonna be starting school again to complete my bachelor's degree in January in preparation for that a something I would advocate since we are to be laboring unto the Lord and those labors are not in vain.

Do things well. And where I'm going with this is there are a lot of online academies who offer the ability to provide you with let's say training on Excel if you're in the business world doing desk work and stuff like that.

So I would advocate places like Udemy and Coursera and to get some skills and to make you a more efficient laborer for his sake whether that's for your boss or for yourself and.

Your home economy. All right. Great recommendation there. I am going to recommend the human action podcast put out by the Mises Institute and the host is Jeff Deist. He invites a lot of interesting viewpoints on his show to analyze current economic atmospheres and implications of what you might see on television but not know how to define or not know how to take in.

These guys have definitions and they can really bring it down to layman's terms. That way you can understand it and understand the incentive structures behind a lot of what's going on. It's a very interesting short podcast to consume during the week so I'm going to recommend them at the human action podcast.

Thanksgiving for the New Covenant, the Choir, Family, and Scripture

We'll move into.

What are we thankful for this week Michael? Well I am very thankful for the new covenant. Thankful that in the new covenant all of our sins are taken away that were brought into relationship with Christ filled with the Holy Spirit that we are put safely into the hand of Christ and the Father's hand and that no one can ever snatches out of his hand.

Thankful that those for whom Christ died upon the cross are his and safely his forever and ever and that as the better mediator he is perfect in and how he administers and mediates the new.

Covenant. I'm very thankful. Amen. Chris? I have been involved with the choir here at Sunnyside and I have just been extremely blessed by all of the people and just to see how God is using them in my life and how he's working through things.

And just to see different personalities and preferences and how people have this kind of working together towards a common goal despite personal preferences and it's all coming together and it's just exciting to be glorifying God in that way with these particular people.

Amen. We're glad to have you here for that too. We greatly appreciate you and all your work there.

Thank you. Andrew? I'm grateful to God for my Zoe, my Eve, Esha, Emily the helpmate that God knew that it was not good for me to be alone that I would have her. I don't know another way to say that. You know being one flesh is a blessing.

The labor that she faithfully does every day with her children in our home in obedience to the scriptures. I thank God. Amen amen. Well I am very.

Thankful for the beauty of the word the way that we just went through and read most of I think all of Romans 11 just now well you saw it on display before your eyes as you're reading and listening at the same time.

And that type of that type of beauty is seen nowhere else and he has given it to us and he upholds it and he uses it to sanctify us and make his bride clean. And we are so grateful for that. And I'm I'm very thankful for the beauty of scripture each time my eyes rest upon it.

And that wraps it up for today we are very.

Thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read?