The Kingdom of God | w/ Dr. Jeffrey Johnson

The Apologetic Dog

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So especially with the Church of Christ, I'm sure this is true of other kind of cult -like groups, is they would say, well, this is a kind of work, a meritorious work that's in view here.

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It's only talking, Jeremiah, to the Jews that are saying no longer are the works of the

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Mosaic Law of what we should be looking to, you know, presupposing kind of radically two distinct methods of salvation.

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So I didn't know if you had any thoughts for those people that say, well, this is just merely talking about works of Mosaic Law.

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Yeah, that's ridiculous. Well, today we have a very special guest with us who is returning back to the

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Apologetic Dog, and it is none other than Dr. Jeffrey Johnson. How are you, sir? I'm doing great.

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Man, it's great to be back with you. Well, thank you. You just keep cranking out good books, and I keep reading them, and I think, man,

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I just gotta interview him again. So before we dive into a lot of that, do you care to tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do?

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Yeah, my name is Jeff Johnson. I pastor for 25 years, or coming on 25 years, same church.

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It's a wonderful church, so thankful to be a part of it, Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas.

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I'm also the president of the Theological Seminary attached to our church, Grace Bible Theological Seminary, and I am a father and husband and like to write, like to do things outdoors, ride bikes and things of that nature.

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Now, if I recall, you were on the dividing line maybe not too long ago, and you like to ride bikes, but you had a little incident,

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I think. Yeah, I broke my collarbone, cracked a couple ribs.

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I flew out of the Superman over the handlebars, and so for a few moments I flew, and then

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I crashed and burned in the ER, and it was great. Well, you seem better.

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Yeah, good. Good, you're recovered at least well enough to do this interview, so I thank you so much for coming on.

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I want to talk about this book, The Kingdom of God, A Baptist Expression of Covenant in Biblical Theology.

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Dr. Johnson, this book has helped me out a ton. Now, I'm gonna—hopefully this doesn't make people upset—I come out of the

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John MacArthur premillennial dispensational paradigm back there. You like my commentary set? Oh, yeah, nice.

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So, you know, the more I've been studying church history and the Reformed heritage, man, really,

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I had to rethink how God covenantally relates with man and his covenant people, and it has been your book,

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The Kingdom of God, here that's been so instrumental to me. I hope to have you on in the future to cover some more books that you've written that have been very helpful, but please tell me, what prompted you to write this book about the

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Kingdom of God and how it relates to the covenants? Yeah, well, it's a lifelong study, really.

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It started 20 years ago, maybe even earlier than that. I was in my early 20s.

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I'm 48 now, and I was in my early 20s, and I had a young man—actually, he's older than me, but at the time we were both young—and

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I was pastoring the church. He was a member. He was going off to seminary, and he went to a

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Presbyterian seminary, and even before he went to seminary, he had some questions about baptism and infant baptism, and I give him all the answers that normally you would give, and he seemed to pacify them.

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Then later, he would write me letters or emails and ask me more questions, and then soon enough, he went

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Presbyterian on me, and so that led to me to really study, and I started writing a letter, and my letter just grew and grew, and it turned into my doctoral thesis, and then it ended up in a book for him called

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The Fatal Fall of the Theology of Infant Baptism, and that book was an academic work, and I wanted something that wasn't just polemical in nature, so I wanted to write another book that dealt with the same topic but would introduce people to the subject and not focus center around infant baptism but focus on the relationship between the

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Old and New Testament, focus on the covenant of redemption, the storyline of scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, and show the continuity of God's plan, that God had an eternal plan, and it's a beautiful story, and it's built around the covenants, and so that led to me writing

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The Kingdom of God, and so that's probably a 10 -year project.

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Hmm. Well, you actually just mentioned a few key terms. I'd like for you to continue to talk about maybe help define for us what covenant means biblically, and then please relate that, too, because early on in your book,

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I don't want to give away the chapter names and all that. I want people to buy your book and understand that it is truly a blessing to the church, but you talk about covenant, and then you bring up this idea of continuity and discontinuity between the

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Old Covenant and New Covenant, so do you care to speak to that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, in the study that I did,

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I read hundreds of books on covenant theology, and I say hundreds. I mean, you count the

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System of Theology books I worked through, and just all the definitions of covenants.

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There's a lot of technicalities of what a covenant is, and who's the administrator, and who's the recipients, and the cutting of covenant, and it gets a lot of little, like seven things are included or six things are included, but in my study, especially studying the scriptures,

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I can come to the conclusion a covenant's not that hard to understand. A covenant is like—think of marriage as a contract.

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So a covenant is nothing more than a contract, a legal contract that's related to relationships, and if you go get a loan from the bank, you don't just say, hey,

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I want some money, or here's some money. There's some type of contract. This is what your obligations are.

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Here's the bank's obligations. Here's the terms. Here's the penalty if you don't meet your terms, and so then you sign it, and then it's ratified, if you would, if it's legal, and a lot of people don't like the idea that our relationship with God is legal in nature, but you've got to understand marriage, the most intimate and personal relationship in the world, that God's design is meant to be a covenant relationship, marriage, that God in heaven—it's not just that we have the state ratifying marriages.

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It's God in heaven who certifies a husband and wife coming together, and what

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God joins together. It's not what the state joins together, but what God joins together. That's a legal binding contract, and so the husband and wife are making promises that they're going to keep, and God is in heaven.

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He's kind of notarizing the marriages, and he's writing it down, and it's a legal covenant, and men might get divorced, but God says,

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I don't recognize that in some cases, though I do believe there are legal cases for divorce, biblical cases for divorce, but some divorces are not legal in the eyes of God to the point that if you go get remarried, you're committing adultery because your first marriage is still enacted.

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That means there's no other relationship that is that intimate than the marriage relationship, and so God's made us to be in relationship with him, and it's to be very personal and intimate and loving, built around love, but that's also the very nature of love.

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It's legal, and so every relationship that God has entered into is based upon a legal foundation, and it's based upon his law, the very essence of who he is, and so when

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God made man, he made him in a covenant relationship, and it's built around love, and the essence of the law is love, so a covenant is a legal relational contract between God and man, and God's promise in love to sustain us, preserve us.

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We're promised to obey him and to love him, but there's a penalty because God's holy, because God's just and holy that anyone who does not uphold their end,

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God's going to injustice a judge, and the law, therefore, or the covenant is built around the moral law of God, and it promises blessings and curses, so there's no covenant—there's no relationship with God without it being a legal, binding, covenantal relationship.

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What do you say to some of those people out there that say, well, I don't see the word covenant anywhere in Genesis 1 or 2, and that verse in Hosea, chapter 6, that just is a little bit obscure.

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We can find other interpretations for that, but what do you think is the best way to express how it's inescapable that there is a covenant of works in Genesis 1 and 2?

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Yeah, it's the word concept fallacy, where just because the word's used, the concept's not there, therefore, we can't say it's there.

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An illustration I use a lot with my students is, I don't have to use the word baseball or baseball game to communicate that we're going to play baseball.

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I could say, hey, bring your gloves and get a bat, bring your bat, we're going to go to the field.

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Run around the bases. Run around the bases and have a good time. I didn't use the word baseball, but everybody knows all the ingredients of baseball was mentioned, therefore,

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I didn't have to use word baseball. When you have all the ingredients of a covenant mentioned, then apparently there's a covenant there.

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If it smells like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, okay, it's a duck. Yeah. Now, early on in your book, you talk about continuity and discontinuity between the old and new covenants, and this is really good because you kind of had a spectrum, and what's interesting is kind of here in Jonesboro, Arkansas land,

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I'm very familiar with dispensational theology and Presbyterian theology.

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So, can you kind of speak where they're at on the spectrum when you start talking about the continuity and discontinuity between old and new covenants?

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Yeah, I mean, I think trying to figure out the continuity and discontinuity between the

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Old Testament and New Testament is one of the most important theological or biblical questions that we need to wrestle with and determine because it shapes our hermeneutics, it shapes how we understand the scriptures.

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So, it's a fundamental question, and it's a question that everyone has, even if you don't realize you have it.

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I remember giving a Bible to a Romanian student who came over to study at the university, and he'd never read the

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Bible, never had a Bible, so I gave him a Bible, and he was excited to receive it. The very next day, he came back to me and says, what's this

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Old Testament? What's this New Testament? You know, so even he, just cracking open the Bible for the first time, had the most simplest questions.

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Why is there two testaments? Why are they, why is the Bible divided up? Why is it not just one book?

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I guess he could understand why there's multiple books or chapters. He can understand that, but what's this great division between them?

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And if you have that question, then it's obvious to ask, well, what's the relationship between the Old Testament and the

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New Testament? So, that's really the question. What is the relationship, and how do they work together? And we, you don't have to be a brain surgeon to read the

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New Testament. A lot of things in the Old Testament no longer is applicable. I mean, we're, especially here in the

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South, we like eating barbecue and pork, and catfish.

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My goodness. And so, that's legal now, or that's permissible in the

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New Covenant, but it wasn't in the Old Testament. And then you go and see that there's a lot of things in the

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Old Testament that the nation of Israel was not prohibited doing, you know, and things that they did that we don't have to worry about.

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And the question is, why? Why is there this distinction? So, there's obviously a distinction.

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There's a separation. There's some type of difference. But then the question is, how far does that difference go?

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Some go as far. You know, there are some Church of Christ people who, though they read the

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Old Testament, they don't really preach from it or teach from it because they think some of them, not all of them, some of them is like the whole

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Old Testament is completely done away with, and we don't really need to look at that. Some have said we need to unhitch ourselves from the

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Old Testament and things of that nature. So, this is like pushing the discontinuity, the distinction, so far away that really we're just New Covenant Christians, and the

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Old Testament is really not practical for us. It has no lessons for us to learn. It has nothing to do with the

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New Testament. And so, that's one form of extreme. The other form of extreme is some form of Zionism where you're trying to maintain all the

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Jewish customs and laws for Christians today. They did that in the early New Testament period with the

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Judaizers saying, hey, you got to be circumcised. I mean, okay, Gentiles can come in, but if they're identified with the

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Jewish people because God's people is the Jews, in order to be one of us, then you have to basically identify with the

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Jewish people through circumcision, and there's no salvation without circumcision. And of course, the

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Apostle Paul fought against that and said circumcision no longer mattered.

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And so, you got two forms of extremes. Those who want to take the two

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Testaments and divide them where the Old Testament means nothing, and then the others who want to make the unity or the continuity between the

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Old and New Testament so similar that everything in the Old Testament is still binding for the

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New Testament believer. And I think both of those are two far extremes. Now you got Presbyterian on one side, that stress, the continuity, and they'll see discontinuity, but they're heavily stressing the continuity.

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Then you got the Dispensationalists who are stressing the discontinuity.

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And so, the key is both of them can't be right. So, exactly where do we draw that line?

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To what degree are they unified? To what degree are they distinct? And my book is simply trying to explain the unity and the continuity and the discontinuity, or the relationship between the

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Old and New Testament. That's where Reformed Baptist covenant theology, we say, strikes the balance of continuity and discontinuity, right?

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And so, as I read your book, I've read your book at least two times, and a few chapters were head -scratchers, so I read it multiple times, but it started to click, you know what

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I mean? And so, as we're talking about continuity and discontinuity, Reformed Baptist theology says both have to be true in some way, right?

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Not to the Presbyterian that we would argue, you know, gently, is say there's an over -realized continuity.

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That's why they baptize babies, that they see the covenant of grace containing unregenerate members, right?

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And we'll get into a lot of that, but we're saying that's a result of an over -realized continuity that actually, now, we can just talk about this, but that turns law into grace.

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Do you want to touch on that, Amy? Yeah, I mean, I think our Presbyterian friends overstress.

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They do overstress, from our perspective, the continuity, and they do that because, you know, in my understanding, they do that in order to justify paedo -baptism, and they see the

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Old Testament as ministrations of the covenant of grace, and the New Testament, the new covenant, as just the latest version, the greatest, the newest, even the final version of the covenant of grace, but essentially, it's the same covenant.

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It's unified, essentially, in all the foundational marks of what the covenant of grace is.

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The new covenant just does it a little bit better, and the way I think of that is, think about the iPhone over the years, every year that we get a new version, a new update, but if you think of the iPhone, it's got the same basic concept.

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You look at it, and there's apps, and there's improvements, but there's a lot of continuity with the different versions of the iPhone.

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Well, Presbyterians will say, look, the covenant of grace was given in the garden. It was built on grace, not works, and every covenant that comes after that is building off of that, and new information is revealed, but the old information remains tacked, so it remains essentially the same.

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The core covenant is the same, and the New Testament is just the latest version of it, and so what was true in the

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Old Testament is going to remain true in the New Testament unless the New Testament says it's no longer valid, but it's to be assumed that it remains the same unless otherwise noted, and so there's this continuity of the covenant of grace with each covenant progressively revealing more and more about that nature of that covenant.

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Dispensationalists don't see the covenant of grace in the Old Testament. They like to think of God's got two plans, one with the physical people, one with the spiritual people.

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He's working with the Jews, and He has a particular arrangement in which He works with them, and then

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Christ comes and presents the fulfillment of all the promises of the

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Old Testament, but the Jews rejected that, so He says, time out. Put the on it. Let's put that plan on hold, and it's like me.

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If I'm building a storage shed in my backyard, I'm working on that, and all of a sudden,

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I run out of money, or something comes up, and I can't do that anymore. I just stop it, and it freezes, and I say, well,

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I can't do that. I'm going to go over here and work on my backyard for a minute, and I do that until I get the money, and then

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I get the money. I'm going to go back and finish the original project, and so God has two projects, two plans.

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They're separate, distinct, especially classical dispensationalism. It says there's two separate plans.

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They don't overlap. God's got one plan with the Jews. He put that on hold for the time being.

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He's working with the church, and once He's finished with the church, He's going to rapture the church out of the world to get us out of the way, and then

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He's going to go back and finish the original plan, plan A, at the last day, and so that's a bifurcation, you know, stressing the discontinuity, and Reformed Baptists don't do either one of those things.

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Now, a second ago, you mentioned the Church of Christ. It's interesting, because my platform, I evangelize the

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Church of Christ, the Restorationist movement from the 1800s, and you know, something that they press is justification happens in the watery graves of baptism, and something that I really try to point out,

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I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, if you make someone their obedience to a list of commands, to a list of conditions, and that's a part of the means of justification, in principle, you are returning back to the old covenant, which is a covenant of works that only condemns.

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Is that a good way of trying to frame it? Yeah, yeah. It's a works -based salvation, which is essentially another gospel, and there's no salvation through that method.

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Paul had to deal with that with the Judaizers. I mentioned them. They wanted to add circumcision to the equation, and that this is necessary for salvation.

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It's like, yeah, it's faith in Christ, we'll grant that, but yeah, in addition to that, or with that, or attached to that faith with Christ, you have to be circumcised, and basically,

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Paul says, no, this is another gospel. If even an angel from heaven came and preached something of this nature, let the angel from heaven be cursed, and so this is the line that Luther, I think rightly says, this is where heresy starts, and orthodoxy begins, with this doctrine of justification by faith alone, through grace alone, and Paul put it this way about grace, it's either all of grace, or it's not grace.

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Grace can't be tainted, or mixed, or diluted, even to the slightest degree.

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If you just 1 .000, or 0 .0001 bit of water, or works, put into grace, it's no longer grace.

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It ceases to be grace, without it being 100 % sovereign, free, and unmerited, and so this is the key of the

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New Testament. This is the key of the Old Testament. Really, this is the key of the whole Scriptures, is salvation is by grace alone.

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Yeah, Paul here in Romans 11, 6 says, but if it, essentially, the remnant of right relationship with God, one that's by faith or justification, but if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace, and I believe in the book,

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Dr. Johnson, you did a good job of saying, look, the covenant of grace is not a covenant of conditions in our doing, right, or working, and when

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I evangelize the Church of Christ, and bring up that, you know, baptism is a ceremony that you partake in, and they say,

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Jeremiah, but you're passive. I'm like, yeah, but you have to respond to the command, and be obedient to it, and I'm saying, if you make that the means of justification, then you're returning back to the

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Old Covenant, one that is a covenant of works, but that you emphasize in your book, rightly, quoting

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Paul in 2 Corinthians, says that's a ministry of death. That is a ministry of condemnation.

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You don't want, in principle, to return back to the Old Covenant, because that essentially shuts the mouths, and no one is made right before God.

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Yeah, yeah, the desire of God in giving Israel the law was not in order for them to go, hey,

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I can do this. It's kind of like when Jesus dealt with the rich young ruler, what must

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I do to inherit eternal life, and well, he gave him the law. It's like, well, is

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Jesus preaching works? No, he gave him the law not so that he would think that he could be saved by the law.

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He gave him the law so that he might be condemned. The problem with the rich young ruler was his self -righteousness.

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He says, I've done all this from my youth up. What else do I lack? I'm a pretty good guy, and the Lord saw his self -confidence in his self -righteousness.

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The rich young ruler was a sinner, and he was already condemned by the law, but he didn't realize it.

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It's like the apostle Paul in Romans 7. Paul, looking back, says, hey, once I was alive.

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That is, in his mind, in his consciousness. He was spiritually dead. He was dead in Adam. There was never a point that he was spiritually alive in a relation with God, but in his conception of himself, his own evaluation, he thought he was good.

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I'm alive. I'm right. It's until the law came, that is, until he saw the 10th commandment.

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The first nine commandments, he says, hey, I'm pretty good at that, but once he evaluated, thou shall not covet, and the coveting dealing with the heart.

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I think all the law deals with the heart, but that one particularly, you can't get around it because it's not just an observable thing.

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It was a heart issue. Once he contemplated coveting, he realized, wait,

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I've done that. Then when he realized that he has broken the law, that's when he says, sin revived and I died.

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That's where he became a dead man in his conscience. That's when he realized that he needed a savior. He couldn't do it on his own.

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That's a central part of salvation. The law is a schoolmaster.

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It's designed. It's helpful. In evangelism, we don't go preach just the gospel. We have to preach the law before we preach the gospel, not so people can obey the law, but so people can see the need of a savior.

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They need to see that they're dead. The law condemns them, that they're hopeless, that they have no other hope other than a free gift.

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The problem with the Jews, especially in the time of Christ, but throughout their history, especially the scribes and Pharisees, they were upset with Christ because he was merciful to the harlots and the tax collectors and sinners.

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They couldn't understand that. They thought themselves to be the good people, the people with the white hats.

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Then here's Christ not even hanging out with them, but going out and being merciful, walking the highways and the hedges and employing the riffraff to come to him.

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The riffraff are coming to him. If you would, the sinners were knocking down the kingdom of heaven.

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They were knocking down the door of the kingdom of heaven. They were rushing in. All the while, the children of the kingdom, the one who originally got the promises, they were been offered all day long.

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They've been offered the gospel, but they never wanted to come because they thought themselves to be already just and righteous.

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This is why the law is necessary and important to be given to Israel, not to save them, but to condemn them.

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Sadly, the very thing that was designed for their good, that is to bring death to them, they misapplied in their pride and used it as a means of trying to gain salvation.

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It only led to pride and arrogance and more sin in their life. Yes, and as we continue to talk about the new covenant, exclusively the covenant of grace,

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I have a question. You did tell me you're open for any and all questions, and so I do a lot of debates and stuff online.

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This is one passage scripture, Romans chapter four verses four and five, where you read about the relationship between faith and works.

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A lot of times, I just say, look, they're separate things. I a lot of times say that faith, pistis, believing, this is inward and of the heart, in the last couple of verses of Romans chapter two, be a

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Jew inwardly, but works are external and things that you do that go from the spiritual inward to outward that's displayed in front of everybody else.

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And so when I read this verse, now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due, and to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

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So especially with the Church of Christ, I'm sure this is true of other cult -like groups, is they would say, well, this is a kind of work, a meritorious work that's in view here.

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It's only talking, Jeremiah, about to the Jews that are saying no longer are the works of the

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Mosaic law of what we should be looking to, you know, presupposing kind of radically two distinct methods of salvation.

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But what gets thrown back at me is this is talking about the works of law, not all works that, you know, we would look to.

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And so what I want to kind of submit to people is in the context of Abraham here, he comes before the

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Mosaic law, so that's not specifically what's in view, but you're working and you're doing the things that you are participating in.

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That would seem to fall under this principle that Paul is trying to call out, is saying whatever kind of works, obedience to a list of commands, that cannot be the means of our justification.

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So I didn't know if you had any thoughts for those people that say, well, this is just merely talking about works of Mosaic law.

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Yeah, that's ridiculous. Yeah, this verse undermines that objection, this verse that you're looking at.

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If you work, no matter what the work is, if it's walking three steps down to the altar or praying a prayer or saying the rosary or even, you know,

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I believe in repentance. But even if you have to repent, you know, like you got to like you say this, this and this and this, and therefore you're justified.

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Well, this is saying works equals justification. Then justification is due to your works.

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Like you earned it. Even if I work for two seconds and someone gives me a million dollars,

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I'm like, wow, did I really earn that million dollars? It doesn't seem like I earned a million dollars because I only did two seconds worth of work.

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It's still a wage paid for labor. And that undermines grace.

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It undermines this verse that faith is not a works because it's a rejection of self.

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And it's a complete looking to the works of Christ.

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And it's not the works of Christ plus a little bit of what I do. It's his finished work in entirety.

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It's like it's that is the works of salvation that brings self. That's the works that merited salvation. And therefore, faith is relying upon that and not upon baptism or paying the rosary or any other ordinance that they may participate in.

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Now, I think at this point, so I'm backing up to Romans chapter three, verse 27. I think we can relate this back to the kingdom of God and understanding the continuity and discontinuity of Old Covenant and New Covenant.

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But Paul is trying to take away the boasting of the Jew who are trusting in their own self -righteousness,

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Jesus taught in Luke chapter 18 in his parable. And so I love what Paul says here. I'd love your thoughts. He says, then what becomes of our boasting?

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It is excluded by what kind of namas, what kind of law? By a law of works?

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No, but by the namas, the law of faith. And so what I would ask Church of Christ and people is, what is a law of faith?

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Is it law or is it faith? Kind of like, you know, Paul says, we'll receive spiritual bodies.

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And we say, is it spiritual or is it a body? Well, what's being communicated here is the law of faith is the principle of faith, right?

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Because the Church of Christ will immediately take this and say, well, you see, the law of faith is the law of Christ.

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It's this new method of salvation. And I try to pump the brakes and say, no, no, no. Salvation, our justification, which goes back to your book, has always been by the principle of faith and not by a system of works, which

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I want us to get into. That's the old covenant. That is the historic covenants that contained conditions, right?

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So salvation, membership into the new covenant has always been by the principle of faith.

32:59

What do you think? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That was what Paul makes his point in Romans 3 and 4 about Abraham.

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Look at Abraham. If you want to understand how salvation works, and it's always worked this way, New Testament, Old Testament period, is through faith.

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And Abraham's the case study of us. He's the father of faith. He's the one to look at. And the question is, was he justified pre -circumcision or post -circumcision?

33:29

And see, this is where our Presbyterian buddies, friends, kind of look at that text and use it as a case study to go, look, here's circumcision.

33:40

Baptism replaced circumcision. So Abraham circumcised his children. We should circumcise our children.

33:45

And they use that text to do it. But it's like, that's the wrong text to use because the point of that—

33:50

Dr. Jeffrey, we're in the same covenant as Abraham. We're in the covenant of grace together, right? Yeah, well, look, it's the wrong text to use because the point of that passage, according to the

34:01

Apostle Paul, is showing you that there's something unique about Abraham's circumcision that's not true about infant circumcision.

34:10

You know, he had creedal circumcision, and that's a very important distinction. And Paul is not just—that's just not just true.

34:18

Paul was highlighting that truth to make a point of why Gentiles can be in the covenant, why

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Gentiles can be included in salvation, though they're not circumcised, because it's not dependent upon circumcision as evidence of Abraham, who was justified prior to being circumcised.

34:36

And therefore, he's the father of not just—he's not just the biological father of Jews, but more importantly, he's the spiritual father of all who believe, both

34:44

Jews and Gentiles. And so he was saved not through circumcision or not by the act of circumcision, not through the ordinance of circumcision, any more than we could be saved through the ordinance of baptism.

34:56

And so here, it's not the waters of baptism that justifies us, any more than it was the cutting of the flesh of circumcision that justified

35:04

Abraham. And so Abraham was justified without works, completely by God giving him a promise, and Abraham said,

35:12

I believe that. And the promise was to Abraham that in your seed, which was—Abraham seeing that seed was his offspring, namely

35:21

Jesus Christ, which we know that was one seed plural, not seeds in the—it was one seed in singular, not seeds in the plural.

35:33

So Abraham, by faith, saw Jesus' day, and he was glad. Abraham saw

35:38

Jesus and believed that Jesus would be the promised Messiah. And in that one descendant,

35:45

Jesus Christ, nations would all be blessed. The gospel would go to all the nations. And Abraham received the promise, believed it, and he was justified without works.

35:55

And that's the same way we're justified. 05 .02 .15 Amen. So this does go back to our book.

36:02

You see how I snuck myself in there with your book? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's meant so much to me, and once again, thanks so much for your—what did you say?

36:10

10 -year project, you know? Something like that. So a lot of the book revolves around unpacking, understanding the covenant that God made with Abraham.

36:24

Something that I want you to touch on is explain to us why is the Abrahamic covenant so central to understanding the kingdom of God in relation to covenant theology as a whole?

36:35

Yeah, because God promised Abraham a kingdom. In the end, He promised him three things, and the three things are all the ingredients of a kingdom.

36:43

He promised him a people. So if you're going to have a kingdom, you need a people. Yeah. You need a citizenship.

36:51

So He promised him—and it wasn't just the Jews, because He said the nations. You're going to have the nations.

36:59

So He promised him a citizenship. He promised him a king, a seed, and that king is

37:05

Jesus Christ. And He promised that He would be their

37:11

God, that He would be the God of His people, and Abraham believed that, and this is when

37:19

Abraham had no children. This is crazy. This is when Abraham only had slaves and no offspring, and his poor wife was barren, and she was old, and they were past the age where they could have children.

37:32

And it's like this is not natural. This is not a young man and young wife, newlyweds.

37:38

This is someone that couldn't have children, and God says, You're going to have children, and not just any children. You're not just going to have children, but you're going to have the kingdom of God flowing out of you, and Abraham believed that, and he was justified.

37:53

But what's unique about the Abrahamic covenant is that it's a single covenant that has two dimensions.

37:59

Mm -hmm. By the way, this was the hardest concept for me to kind of think about and work through, so please explain this, because when it finally made sense, it was like a eureka moment.

38:10

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think of it as like a coin that has two sides. It's one coin, but yeah, you got to understand that the sides, they're opposite of one another.

38:19

So you can have something that has two sides, and the two sides have unity because they belong to the same coin, but if you look at it, it's like one's up, one's down, and you couldn't be any further apart from being up and down, and so the

38:33

Abrahamic covenant is a single covenant that has two opposing sides to it. One side is grace.

38:39

The other side's works, and you can't be any more diverse than that, and so here God promised

38:44

Abraham. He gave him a promise, and Abraham believed it and was justified, but here's the kicker.

38:53

He says not to Abraham. He didn't say, Abraham, in order for this to come about, you got to do some things.

39:02

He didn't say that. He did say, though, your seed is going to have to do something, and this is crazy because God's, it's like me telling you

39:12

I'm going to give you a million dollars. No, no, I'm going to give your grandchild a million dollars, okay, and you go, wow, that's awesome, and I promise you he's going to get it, but your grandchild is going to have to work for it, and you're like, wait a minute.

39:32

How can that be? How can I make a, I promise to you that it's unconditional for you but conditional for your child.

39:41

Now, you don't have to do anything because I've already said I'm going to do it, but your child's going to have to do something, and you believe it, and for Abraham's sake, he believed it, and he was justified and saved, but his child, his seed is going to have to do something.

39:58

Now, that seemed like it's impossible. In fact, it would be impossible if God the

40:04

Father wasn't speaking about Jesus Christ, and so it's only because God knew and foreordained that the seed of Abraham would carry out the law perfectly and end by obeying the law, which is what circumcision signified.

40:26

In fact, Romans 4 tells us that, that, you know, the law, the circumcision is of the law, and that one who does it's got to do all the law, but if someone keeps the whole law but is not circumcised, he has circumcised himself even though not in the flesh because he's done all the law, and so in Genesis 17,

40:48

God's given this promise in Genesis 18, that condition that was placed upon all the children of Abraham, not just Jesus Christ, but every physical child that came from Abraham was required to be circumcised, and that circumcision is emblematic of keeping the whole law of God, the moral law, and Jesus Christ comes in his day, and he was circumcised, of course, but he didn't do away with the law.

41:21

He didn't say, hey, I'm going to bring salvation through another means. He actually fulfilled the law.

41:26

He fulfilled every commandment perfectly. He loved God with all of his heart, mind, and soul, and loved his neighbor as himself perfectly, and by obeying the law, he brought blessings and salvation to the world, to the nations.

41:43

So, Jesus Christ was under the law, while those who believe in Jesus Christ are under grace.

41:51

Yeah, I think it was you. I can't remember if it's this book we're talking about here, or if it was more of the next interview we're going to have over the fatal flaw, but my understanding of the old and new wineskins was greatly challenged by what you were saying, because I think

42:07

I had more of the Presbyterian understanding of, well, the old wineskins are the

42:13

Judaizers, the Pharisees' abuse of the old covenant, and twisted it into law keeping, but really, and correct me here, but you're saying the old wineskins that represents the old covenant, that is works, and works is not compatible with grace.

42:34

We need Jesus to fulfill all of the old covenant and inaugurate a newer and better covenant, which he mediates to the uttermost.

42:42

So, am I understanding rightly what Jesus was talking about with the old and new wineskins?

42:47

Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, the Judaizers went beyond the law and added layers of human traditions to it, but in Galatians, when

42:56

Paul was correcting the Judaizers, they were just upholding circumcision. That wasn't layers of tradition on top of the law, that's just carrying out what was commanded to the nation of Israel and the

43:11

Mosaic covenant, and so they were carrying out the various demands that the law required of them and keeping those commands and maintaining those, and Paul's like, no, those commands have been fulfilled in Christ, and we move on with faith.

43:33

Here's the thing, Abraham was justified by faith, because what people want to say, one of their objections they have, and some of your listeners may already have this objection in their minds, like, well, are you saying

43:43

Old Testament saints were saved by works? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. Abraham wasn't saved by works, and every descendant of Abraham, all the

43:51

Jews in the Old Testament should have realized that they weren't the promised seed. The problem was they thought they were.

43:59

They thought they could keep the law, so he's like, your seed has to obey, and remember at the base of Mount Sinai, Moses went up to the mountain because the

44:09

Jews were too scared to do so. You go and represent us. Moses goes up there, gets the law, he comes down, he rehearses the law, reads it to the people, and the people all in one voice says, everything he says, all these commands we will do, and the commandment was like, do this and you'll live.

44:29

Here's the method. Do this and live. Curse it if you don't do it, and the Jews are like, hey, we can do that.

44:34

We'll do it, and so they're thinking that they could do it, and there were a few, the remnant, according to divine election throughout the

44:44

Old Testament, they're like, I can't do it. They realized they couldn't do it, and they didn't view themselves as little messiahs to keep the law.

44:53

They were looking to the promised messiah to come. They knew the seed hadn't yet arrived, and that there would be another prophet like Moses, that new prophet, the messiah that was prophesied through Isaiah that would be born from a virgin, that this messiah would be their savior, and he would keep the law.

45:13

He would be able to obey it and fulfill it, and so they were saved by looking ahead to the messiah.

45:20

We're saved by looking backwards at the messiah, so we're all saved by faith through grace through both

45:26

Old and New Testament eras, but the law was given to Israel, and they were the natural descendants of Abraham, and the bulk of them,

45:39

I don't know what percentage, but I would say 60 to up to 90 percent of them. In fact, 99 percent of them in the wilderness died in unbelief.

45:49

That whole generation that came out of Egypt, how many regenerate souls were among those who came out of Egypt?

45:56

Well, God swore in his wrath, they shall not enter my rest. They died in unbelief, and that's a lot of Jews that weren't

46:06

Christians or weren't believers, and throughout their generation they were stiff -necked, rebellious people, and the law condemned them, and they should have by faith, but they were blind.

46:21

They were blind by their pride, and so the law was given to Israel, and the problem was they thought they could keep it when obviously they couldn't.

46:33

Yeah, so we've talked a lot about the Abrahamic covenant that contains both conditions and promises, if you will.

46:42

Conditions, sanctions, obey, receive blessing, disobey, receive cursings, but then there's an unconditional promise, so that's all contained in the

46:52

Abrahamic covenant. You ready for this loaded question? I want you to speak to the other covenants and how it relates to the covenant of Abraham, but we have other major covenants like the

47:04

Adamic covenant that we touched on earlier, but explain how that relates to the

47:10

Abrahamic covenant, and then try to tell us why the Mosaic covenant is important to the

47:15

Abrahamic covenant and the new covenant that was to come. All right.

47:23

Let me, before I do that, let me explain the difference real quick between moral law and positive law, because I think it's a huge conceptual thing.

47:37

If we can understand this, working through the covenants will make way more sense. Okay, the moral law of God is a reflection of the very nature and the essence of who

47:48

God is. God is a God of love, and what does love look like? Well, love by its very nature is a pouring out of self, a giving of self.

47:57

It's the opposite of pride and selfishness, and this is who God is, and if you want to explain what love looks like in everyday life, then you look at the

48:07

Ten Commandments, and this is don't make idols, and don't take the Lord's name in vain, and this is what it looks like loving your neighbor.

48:14

Don't steal from them. Don't kill from them. Don't kill them. Don't steal their stuff. Don't covet their stuff, which is idolatry, which brings us back to loving

48:24

God with all of our heart, mind, and soul, and so here, this is what love looks like, and that moral law, because it's a reflection and a revelation of the very nature of God, is unchangeable.

48:36

It's something that can't alter, and it's always the same. It's always been there because God's been there, and so it's immutable.

48:46

It's unchangeable. That's the nature of the moral law of God. That's essential.

48:54

Then positive law, like don't eat pork or circumcision, is built off of the moral law, but it's something that can be abrogated or changed or altered or done away with, and think of it as a father raising kids.

49:13

Young kids, you don't play with the light sockets. They actually don't put anything in there. You can get hurt, and so it's based on love because you love your kids.

49:24

You want them to obey you and love you, and they're not mature enough to play with light sockets, so you give them a command, but that command doesn't stay the same when they get 13, 14, 15, 16.

49:36

Soon enough, you trust them to plug in the lamps and the alarm clocks, and they can plug things in and unplug things because they're old enough for that, and so the moral law stays the same, but the positive law can be changed or adapted with maturity, and so here in all the

49:57

Old Testament, you've got the moral law that stays the same through both Old and New Testament because God's character doesn't change, but then you have something like don't eat of this particular tree.

50:07

Now, God said that because there was a particular arrangement, a particular covenant that he made with man, the

50:14

Edemic Covenant, and the Edemic Covenant was built off of because you can't have a covenant that's not built off the moral law of God, so the moral law of God is the soul in which the covenant springs out of, but as the covenant is built or as administration of the moral law, and I call the moral law is the foundation of the

50:36

Eternal Covenant that cannot change, and people in heaven are there because Christ fulfilled the moral law, the

50:44

Eternal Covenant for them. Those who are in hell are still being punished because of this Eternal Covenant, so the

50:50

Eternal Covenant cannot be altered, and it goes from the beginning, and it never ceases to exist, but from the soul of that Eternal Covenant comes the administrations of the covenant, and each administration has positive law, laws that are uniquely in place to a particular people for as long as that covenant stands.

51:14

Think of this, like if I go to the local bank that says I need to borrow $30 ,000 to buy a car, once I pay that debt off, that bank has no more demands on me.

51:29

It's done. It's taken care of, and it's not eternal, and it has my name on it.

51:34

It's not your name, and so it's situated for me, where Adam and Eve, especially

51:40

Adam was the covenant head of all humanity, was given a particular arrangement of the covenant.

51:46

I call it basically the moral law. We can call that the covenant works if we want to.

51:56

From the moral law, which is based upon God's very nature, you have positive law that's built on it, but it's only good as long as that covenant is arranged, but once Adam broke it, and they were expelled from the garden, the rest of his descendants didn't have to worry about what tree they ate from.

52:15

The tree wasn't around anymore. We don't have to worry about that. We can eat from any tree we want.

52:20

We don't have to worry about that. Yeah, thank the Lord. So the

52:26

Adamic covenant was built upon this covenant of works. Don't eat of this. The day you eat of this, you'll die.

52:33

So death is the result. If you obey, you live. If you disobey, you die. So that's the essence of the covenant works, but it has positive law that's limited to that arrangement.

52:45

So here comes this moral law, and it's the foundation of the

52:51

Abrahamic covenant. So it's underneath the Abrahamic covenant, God's moral character and his law based upon love, and he gives

52:59

Abraham a promise that his seed is going to obey it, and the positive law there is circumcision.

53:09

Circumcision is not the moral law, but it's built off of it, but it's time sensitive, and it's only applied to the

53:15

Jewish people for as long as God has that covenant enacted. And so they're under that, and here comes the

53:22

Mosaic covenant 400 years later, and it's going to say, oh, I'm going to give more positive law, and it's going to explain the severity and the full meaning of circumcision.

53:35

Here's the Ten Commandments. Here's all these other commandments, and attached to the

53:41

Mosaic covenant is hundreds of positive laws that is limited to the

53:52

Jewish people. The Gentiles were not underneath it. The Gentiles were underneath the moral law because it's written in their heart, in their conscience, but they weren't underneath the don't eat pork and have to be circumcised and all the other positive laws that were given, and to disobey any of the positive laws because it's built off the moral law, to disobey circumcision or to eat pork, you've disobeyed the moral law because that's the foundation of it, and therefore, if you break any law, you broke them all, and so every

54:27

Jewish person born under the law was guilty, not just because of Adam, but because of their own sins in addition to that, and here comes

54:37

Jesus, and he obeys all the, not the human traditions that were man -made, but all the positive laws that God enacted.

54:47

Jesus perfectly fulfilled, and he fulfilled the moral law which they were rooted, and in so doing, established the new covenant, and that's how, you know, and so that's how the new covenant is built off of the

55:01

Abrahamic covenant and then built off of the Mosaic covenant, and one of the questions

55:06

I'll often get, and I think you was going to ask it for me, but I'll go ahead and ask it later in the interview, but I'll go ahead and address it now, if you don't mind.

55:16

Oh, absolutely. Go for it. That, well, does the Mosaic covenant offer, did it promise eternal life?

55:24

And the answer is yes and no. A lot of people represent my position. I see it online that I say, yes, the

55:30

Mosaic covenant promises eternal life. I'm like, well, that's kind of true. It's kind of my position, but it's not articulated to the, it's not representing me fully.

55:41

The Mosaic covenant is, technically speaking, all this positive law, and the positive law is dealing with temporal life, and it's typologically pointing to spiritual realities of the new covenant, but it promised longevity in the land.

55:57

It promised that their fruit would be on the vine, that they would have a lot of crops, there'd be rain, and, you know, prosperity, human prosperity, and, but underneath that Mosaic covenant, the

56:13

Mosaic covenant is not just setting in thin air. The Mosaic covenant is rooted in God's moral law.

56:20

It's rooted and built off of the eternal nature of who God is, and that moral law underneath the surface of the administration of the

56:29

Mosaic covenant is a law of do and live, and cursed is the one who doesn't live, and that moral law is not just dealing with, it does deal with temporal blessings and temporal curses, but the very law by its very nature is threatening hell.

56:49

It's threatening a more permanent consequence. It's not just, hey, you're going to die.

56:57

The Jewish people who died in the wilderness didn't just die, they went to hell.

57:03

God swore that they would not enter into his rest, and the author of Hebrews is saying, hey, that God has promised another rest to come, and the rest that they got in Judea wasn't the rest he was speaking of, or he wouldn't later in the

57:18

Psalms speak of another day of rest. Therefore, the Jewish, all the Jewish people haven't entered into that rest because the real rest is eternal.

57:28

It's eternal. So the real rest we're looking at is eternal life, and not just on temporal blessings, because the moral law is eternal.

57:37

It's not just dealing with temporal blessings, it's dealing with eternal blessings, and so, yes, the

57:43

Mosaic covenant merely dealt with external things and temporal things and time -based things that could be abrogated and done away with, where the eternal law cannot be done away with.

57:55

It cannot be abrogated, and it can be fulfilled, but it can't be, even when it's fulfilled in Christ, Christ didn't take the law and throw it in the trash.

58:07

He didn't say, it's done with, now we can do what we want. No, we still believe in the third use of the law, not in the order to earn salvation, but he saved us to obey.

58:18

He saved us unto good works, and because the law is eternal, and when we get to heaven, it's going to be glorious.

58:26

We're going to all be living the law perfectly, so this law cannot be abrogated or changed.

58:34

In spirit, spiritual bodies, meaning that our glorified, resurrected bodies will be completely spirit -controlled, you know what

58:43

I mean? That's how I've understood that, and so what I've heard Presbyterians say is, you know, you had the covenant of works with Adam the garden, very shortly lived, and then you had different administrations of the covenant of grace that pops up in these historic covenants and the new covenants.

59:00

Would we say, well, really, God's moral law, transcendental, right, eternal, a reflection of what

59:07

God always has been and will be, and so really, these historic covenants are not different administrations of the covenant of grace, but they are administrations of the covenant of works.

59:19

Is that really more of a proper way of understanding? And then the new covenant is exclusively the covenant of grace.

59:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how I understand it. It's like, there's only one way of salvation.

59:31

There's not two ways, and you have to be 100 percent perfect, and there's no other way.

59:36

There's just no other way. God's a just God, and He's not going to allow anyone in heaven that's not perfect, and they're like, well, that puts us in a dilemma.

59:46

We're all failed. How can this be? How can we be saved? Well, God can't say, I'm going to try another way.

59:52

He can't do it. He's just, so the moral law is binding, and in one sense, you know, it's binding on God because God's just.

01:00:01

It's not something outside of God that binds Him. His own character binds Him, you know, His own essence.

01:00:07

He's true to Himself. He cannot deny Himself. Therefore, because He can't deny Himself, He cannot be unjust.

01:00:12

He can't just throw the law away. So the law is still telling man, even after the fall, though they can't do it, is still commanding them to do it.

01:00:22

Even in hell, no one can obey, but the law is still there demanding them to obey.

01:00:27

They just can't do it, and just because you can't do it doesn't mean the law is going to be quiet. The law is going to keep yelling at you, do it, do it, do it, and you can't, and it's still saying curse, curse, curse, and then so the law can't just be stopped.

01:00:42

It can't just say, let's shut the mouth of the law. It can't do it until there's someone that can do it on our behalf, and so we're saved by works.

01:00:52

R .C. Sproul would say that. We're saved by works. It's just not our works. We're saved by works of Christ. He fulfilled the moral law perfectly, so we're saved by the law.

01:01:01

So that law is demanding and yelling out on humanity, obey, obey, obey, threatening eternal death, and it is hypothetically promising that they can't do it, eternal life, except there was one man born without depravity, came into the human race through the incarnation of the

01:01:22

Holy Spirit, who represents the members of the new covenant, and only the members of the new covenant.

01:01:29

He represents us as our names are written in the palms of our hands, not the non -elect, but only the elect, if you believe in the limit of atonement, were given to him in this legal transference where God says,

01:01:42

I'm going to give you these sheep, and Jesus says, okay, I'll take the sheep, and the sheep are now his legal possessions, so he represents them on the cross, and so his works become our works, his righteousness becomes our righteousness, his life becomes our righteousness, his death becomes our death, and thus we're saved by works.

01:02:00

But for us, on our end, we didn't do anything. It's the works of another.

01:02:06

Yeah, other than sin. So we're saved by grace. So the new covenant, that's why the

01:02:13

Mosaic covenant, the law, the law and the covenant of works didn't just get pushed aside.

01:02:21

It stayed enforced until Jesus Christ says, I didn't come to do away with it, I come to fulfill it. And so he comes and satisfies it, and then by that, and only by that way, we're saved.

01:02:33

It's a glorious thing. Well, oh man, well, like you said, there's one way of salvation, and it's found in Jesus Christ, and you actually mentioned a term that I think is really important in your book.

01:02:44

You said, for the members of the new covenant. So I want to read a quote to you, and perhaps this quote has caused a little bit of controversy, but I was hoping you could maybe bring some clarification on this when we start talking about who can be members of the new covenant.

01:03:01

So I have a paragraph here from your book I'd like to just read briefly. You said, Baptist covenant theology, on the other hand, you know, as opposed to Presbyterian thought,

01:03:09

I think, understands that salvation and justification have always belonged to the covenant of grace.

01:03:16

Yet, it also understands that judgment and condemnation have always come as a result of the covenant of works.

01:03:23

The covenant of works did not cease after it was broken by Adam's fall. Rather, it remained in operation and continues to hold fallen man captive until he is spiritually transferred, how?

01:03:36

By faith alone into, now this is the key, into the membership of the covenant of grace.

01:03:42

Then you said, God's law must stand over man until it is satisfied in both its penalties and demands.

01:03:49

So something I want you to speak to just a little bit is, it sounds like you're saying Old Testament saints could actually become members of the covenant of grace, which is members of the new covenant, but how can that be before Jesus Christ comes and cuts the covenant in His blood?

01:04:06

Yeah, yeah. Well, there's no other salvation other than through the covenant of grace. Old Testament saints, like Abraham, was justified by faith alone and grace alone by looking ahead to the promised

01:04:18

Messiah. And they looked and saw that there was a seed who would come that would bring salvation to the nations.

01:04:27

And they believed in that and they were justified. Well, there's no salvation independent of Jesus's actual physical presence on earth.

01:04:36

His life, His suffering, and His death and resurrection. So that is the foundation. No one can deny that the death of Jesus Christ is the foundation of salvation for all people, no matter when they lived,

01:04:48

Old Testament, New Testament. So we're already making concession that salvation is by faith alone throughout all history, by Christ alone through all history.

01:04:59

So Christ is the head of the new covenant. He's the head of the covenant of grace. He's what brings about the covenant of awake.

01:05:05

He's what brings about the covenant of grace through the fulfillment of the covenant of works. And so if we say that, then obviously everyone's saved by the covenant of grace, even in the

01:05:15

Old Testament. So what we're saying is the Old Testament saints were saved by the grace that would come about in the future.

01:05:23

That's retroactively applied to them in the past. So it was pre -applied, if you would, knowing that there was a security.

01:05:30

God gave a promise and God would justify them looking ahead at the work of Christ.

01:05:37

And He was certain, this is why He could promise Abraham that it was certain to happen. Abraham, okay, it's going to happen, but his seed has to obey.

01:05:44

He couldn't have said that about any other person other than his own son. And because he knew it was going to happen, he had surety.

01:05:51

He had confidence that it would take place. And so the new covenant blessings were applied to the

01:06:01

Old Testament saints before it was enacted. Galatians points this out, that the

01:06:12

Old Testament saints, though they were just by faith, they still lived within the order of the old covenant.

01:06:20

And therefore they still had to carry out the sacrifices and not eat pork.

01:06:26

And they did all these things because they were, the way Paul applies it or explains it, it would be like children and slaves.

01:06:35

There's not a lot of difference between them as long as the child, though he may be an heir to the throne or heir to the inheritance, but as long as he's a child, he still has to live like the slaves.

01:06:46

They get told what to do, don't do that. But eventually the child's going to be mature and he's not going to be treated like slaves.

01:06:53

He's going to be ruling over the slaves. And that's what he explained about the Old Testament saints. They were like children, don't do this, don't do this.

01:07:02

But now that we've come to maturity, the people of God have come to maturity. Now we don't have to live under these same conditions.

01:07:14

No, that's so good. And so when we start talking about word concept fallacies and people saying, well, how can an

01:07:23

Old Testament saint be a membership of a covenant that's not even been cut yet? Well, we really just have to ask the question and say, you know, what is a member?

01:07:31

Because if we're defining members of the new covenant as the elect who experience justification by grace through faith, well, then, you know,

01:07:41

Romans 4 makes that case that in Hebrews 11, the hall of faith have said, you know, all those who have their sins forgiven, paid for in full, are those that by faith are trusting in Messiah.

01:07:54

And so that's, to me, it's all how you define a membership, a member of the covenant of grace or the new covenant.

01:08:02

And so it's always been by faith apart from works. And so that's essentially, you know, our doctrine of justification by faith alone.

01:08:11

And that's why we're Baptist for crying out loud is because upon profession of faith, are you able to receive the administration of the, we'll say, a sign of the new covenant, right?

01:08:22

That's better than the sign of the old. But baptism represents that we have the indwelling Holy Spirit who has regenerated us, brought us to newness of life, and the

01:08:33

Holy Spirit that will not pass away or remove itself from us, but permanently indwells believers.

01:08:38

So would you add anything to that membership? No, that's very good. That's very good. It's like, you know,

01:08:44

I said earlier in the quote that only members of the covenant are those who have faith because this is the key thing about what makes us

01:08:52

Baptist and the Baptist distinctive of covenant theology is the fact that it's by faith that you become heirs to the kingdom of God.

01:09:01

It's by faith that you're justified. And that comes to you, not through natural birth.

01:09:06

Natural birth gets you depravity, not justification. Natural birth gets you, brings you into the kingdom of darkness.

01:09:17

Natural birth brings you into the covenant of works. All who are born of the flesh are slaves, according to Paul.

01:09:24

So natural birth, even natural birth of Christians, just because I'm a Christian and I received it by faith doesn't mean my children who are born by natural birth receive my faith.

01:09:34

They receive my depravity. They get all the negatives of me.

01:09:40

They don't get what God's done in me by the Holy Spirit. And so it makes sense to the

01:09:47

Old Testament because the Old Testament covenants were covenant of works, and all those who are born are born under the law, born under the condemnation of law.

01:09:54

And so that's how the Old Covenants continued from one generation to the next, is through natural generation.

01:10:00

It was a theocracy. That's how theocracies continue, is through childbirth. So obviously it was important to circumcise their children.

01:10:09

It's important that the children to be brought into the covenant community because they were under the law.

01:10:17

But you're brought into grace, not through childbirth. You're brought through grace according to John 3 .3.

01:10:25

You can't see the kingdom of God unless you're born again. The only way to be brought under the headship of Jesus Christ and have all the blessings and joint heirs with Christ is to be born again.

01:10:36

And that's not something you pass on to your natural children. They have to be born again.

01:10:41

The promises are to them, thankfully. Our children have the gospel, but not just to them as many to the nations as for all.

01:10:49

The gospel goes to all of us. That's a blessing. They think that my children have the gospel, and they can join in by faith at any time, through the work of the

01:10:59

Holy Spirit, of course. But that's unique about Baptist covenant theology, and that's what keeps us from being dispensationalists.

01:11:09

Our Presbyterian is because both of those, one is stressing the discontinuity, dispensationalism, one is stressing the continuity, but they all kind of err at the same point.

01:11:20

They're making the kingdom of God propagated through genetics or through natural birth, where we say, no, the kingdom of God is only propagated and continued and spread and built by the being born from above.

01:11:37

Well, thank you so much for that. I have a couple questions as we wind down, and I'd love to tee you up to answer some of these.

01:11:47

I just want to circle back and say, it's incredible to say the kingdom of God, this is a spiritual kingdom.

01:11:54

It is both above, but it is also from within. The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, joy in the

01:12:03

Holy Spirit. It's not a carnal kingdom. When we start talking about dispensational theology and Presbyterian theology, they both have mixed covenants of both regenerate and unregenerate membership, and I think that's what sets us apart as we're saying membership of the spiritual kingdom are only believers.

01:12:26

It's not a mixed covenant. That doesn't mean there aren't wheat amongst the tares within the church, but they duped us by their profession because we can't ultimately see the heart.

01:12:35

Right. That's right. God sees the heart. Think about this. Is Christ a good federal head or poor federal head?

01:12:45

Does he keep those whom he represents? If you're in the covenant of grace, who's your federal head?

01:12:53

Is it Adam or is it Jesus? It can't be both. There's no middle ground.

01:12:58

You're either in works or you're in grace. You're either lost or you're saved. There's not this mixed mixture where you're somehow in works, half foot in works, half foot in grace.

01:13:09

Regeneration is a point of time where you're transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the

01:13:14

God's kingdom of light. It's a changing from one to the other at a moment of time of regeneration, even though from our experience, it could be years and we might not be able to pinpoint when we were regenerated.

01:13:31

You can't be in one and the other at the same time. Well, because you can't have two federal heads, you can't be represented by Adam and represented by Christ.

01:13:42

When you say that there's going to be unbelievers or unregenerate in the kingdom of God or unregenerate in the new covenant, you're saying that Christ, who is the federal head of the new covenant, represents unregenerate people, which means that Christ somehow is a poor representative.

01:14:02

Christ is a poor federal head, that Christ doesn't keep everybody that belongs to him. We're about to say, no,

01:14:07

Christ is going to save everyone whom he represents. All who are in him, he's going to save in the last day.

01:14:16

That's because he's a perfect federal head. All who are in Adam died.

01:14:22

All who are in Christ are made alive, and not any who are in Christ are going to be dead on the final judgment or be lost and thrown to hell in the final judgment.

01:14:34

So it doesn't leave room. The new covenant, Christ being the federal head of the new covenant, leaves zero room for unbelievers, unregenerate, or apostates.

01:14:46

That's right. Yeah, so briefly here, I figured

01:14:51

I had some questions from some very worked -up Presbyterians, but I'm going to steal you again, and we're going to go through,

01:14:58

I'd love to interview you on your book, The Fatal Flaw. So we'll save our Presby questions for that interview, but I would like for you to touch on, the book of Hebrews does talk about covenant breakers, and so from a

01:15:12

Reformed Baptist perspective, how do we understand apostates within the new covenant? Yeah, those are very good questions, and I obviously believe in apostates in the sense that I believe that, from our perspective, even though I believe that I'm a

01:15:28

Christian, I've walked with the Lord for some years, and I believe I have assurance, but my assurance is in part built on present faith, not past faith.

01:15:41

And so we must continue to believe, not just have a temporary faith, or faith that is just creedal like the demons have.

01:15:51

You have to have present living faith. The just shall live, that is, they live by the ongoing act of faith, and those who

01:15:58

God represents, or Christ represents, He gives the gift of faith, and that faith is enduring and lasting.

01:16:04

So my assurance in part there's many things that brings assurance, the testimony of the

01:16:10

Holy Spirit, a life that is in conformity to God's law according to John, the

01:16:16

Spirit in us that cries out, Abba, Father, but faith itself is one of the chief sources of assurance, and so whenever we lack faith, or especially if we lose faith or don't have faith, then we should no longer have assurance, and so there's a real warning to us, because I haven't peered into the book of life, and I haven't actually seen my name written on there.

01:16:43

I believe it's in there because of present faith, and knowing that there are many people, and I had a good friend that apostatized, rejected

01:16:51

Christianity, turned back, said, I know I'm going to hell, but I don't care, I'm going to live my life the way I want to live it. We did church discipline on him, and it was tragic and awful, but the author of Hebrews says there is no more sacrifice.

01:17:06

There's no more salvation. I mean, there's no more city of refuge to run to.

01:17:12

This is premeditated manslaughter, and that's a scary thing, and people, professing believers, do commit this, and because it happens to some, it's a warning for all of us, and God uses that warning as one of the means of preserving

01:17:30

His true people, so I need those warnings as a true Christian. I need those warnings to continue to believe, and by these warnings,

01:17:37

God's going to keep me, but those who don't believe are eventually apostatized, which proves, as John tells us, they never were.

01:17:46

They departed from us. They really technically were never a part of us. They weren't really regenerated.

01:17:51

They weren't really represented by Christ, but they had some outward showings of that.

01:17:57

They thought they were. The Christian community thought they were, because we're dealing with the subjective realm while God is dealing with the objective realm, and because we can't see in people's hearts, we have to evaluate through their present testimony and their present lifestyle, but true

01:18:21

Christians have an ongoing nature where they live out the Christian life indefinitely, and that we persevere to the end, and we will persevere because of the preservation of God's saving grace, but we must persevere, and so I still believe in the warnings, and I still believe in apostasy, but it doesn't mean

01:18:40

I have to somehow say that we lost your salvation, or we lost membership in the covenant of grace, or there were true covenant breakers in the new covenant, because the new covenant can't be broken, it simply can't.

01:18:53

It's not covenantal nomism where you get in by grace, stay in by works. No, you're in by grace.

01:19:01

Sorry when my camera shakes, it's because I'm pounding the pulpit here. You're getting a little preachy over there,

01:19:06

I see. That's okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you so much for that. I was going to pull passage, but just if I say, you know,

01:19:13

Philippians 2 does tell us we work out our salvation in fear and trembling. Oh, but it's

01:19:18

God who first worked in you according to His good pleasure, so there's a realm that we experience that in real time, and I think we look at the warnings, and it resonates with the elect of saying, yes,

01:19:32

I want to. I want to glorify God with my whole life, and so I just want to encourage people, go check out

01:19:38

The Kingdom of God and how it relates to covenant theology, and you wrote a separate book, and some books, it's part two, but how it relates to biblical theology, and Dr.

01:19:49

Johnson, I just want to thank you so much for spending the time doing this. It's really helped me. It's really helped me understand the continuity, discontinuity between old and new covenant.

01:19:59

Truly remarkable, and I just want to give you a chance to give everyone any parting words, if you have any.

01:20:07

All right, man, I appreciate being on the show, and I'm thankful for the interview, and yeah, you can get the book, selfish plug here, but you can get it at fruitgracepress .com.

01:20:20

It's actually, the original edition I did was all in one book, which is the cover that you have, but I've done an updated edition and broke it down into two volumes because part two is the story redemption, and I got a lot of feedback that a lot of parents would like to read that to their children in family worship, so I wanted to separate it because it could be designed to kind of give a holistic view of God's story from Genesis to Revelation, where the first part, which is what we talked about today, the kingdom of God, is mainly dealing with the relationship between the

01:20:57

Old and New Testament and how the covenants work together to build out that one storyline of Scripture.

01:21:04

Well, thank you so much. Until next time, because there's got to be a next time. You keep writing books, so we're just going to keep cranking out the interviews, but thank you so much for your time.