Episode 44: Baptist Covenant Theology (Part 3)

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Thank you, it's not my birthday, but we're kind of there, aren't we?

The podcast episode number has now finally reached your age.

That's right, it has, 44.

Episode 44. Now we've gone way past our last time.

Yeah.

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We even got some bank for the summer. It's gonna be good. Welcome to the Rural Church Podcast. I'm Allen Nelson, pastor of Perryville Second Baptist Church. With me is Eddie Ragsdale, as we established a couple weeks ago, not the one and only Eddie Ragsdale, but an Eddie Ragsdale.

Say hello, Eddie.

Hello, everybody.

We're gonna pick up today, try to pick up where we left off, although there's been a week in our minds of separation between this podcast episode and the last one, but we've been talking about the important subject of Baptist covenant theology.

I wanna say that this is an area that good brothers can disagree on, and even within the Baptist camp, there are some that disagree, but what we're trying to establish here is there is a way that we are to read the Bible as a whole book, not merely 66 individual books, but also one whole book.

And we do this, in our opinion, the best way to do this is through this lens of what the scriptures reveal, Baptist covenant theology. It's consistent in the history of Baptists in the First London Baptist Confession of Faith and in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.

They are actually in agreement in this area. Some will say they're not, but I would point you to the great resource by James Renahan on Baptist Symbolics, volume one and two. I've been reading volume two recently on this matter, and it's so good and so helpful.

So we really need to jump in today to the new covenant, Eddie. And so why don't you start us off? Would you, could you pull up Jeremiah 31?

I've got it, yeah.

Okay, okay, could you read this for us?

Yeah, how much you want me to read? Um, well, just probably starting there in verse 31.

Yeah, and just, yeah, read through 31 through 33.

Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke.

Though I was their husband, declares Yahweh, for this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares Yahweh. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.

And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, no, Yahweh, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares Yahweh.

For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Thus says Yahweh, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs the sea so that its waves roar, Yahweh of hosts is his name.

If this fixed order departs from before me, declares Yahweh, then shall the offspring of Israel cease from being a nation before me forever. Thus says Yahweh, if the heavens above can be measured and the foundation of the earth below can be explored, then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel for all they have done, declares Yahweh.

Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when the city shall be rebuilt for Yahweh from the tower of Hanel to the corner gate, and the measuring line shall go out further straight to the hill of Gareb and shall turn to Goa and the whole valley of the dead bodies and the ashes and all the fields as far as the Brook Kidron to the corner of the horse gate toward the east shall be sacred to Yahweh.

It shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever.

Amen.

It's indisputable. I don't know that anybody actually would disagree with this. It's indisputable that this refers to the new covenant because this is quoted in Hebrews. I mean, no matter what one, somebody takes on this, whether you're Presbyterian or Baptist or dispensational or whatever you may be, this is the new covenant.

And what we're trying to establish today is that this new covenant is not inaugurated in Abraham, but it's inaugurated in Christ. Nehemiah Cox says, with respect, 17th century Baptist Nehemiah Cox, with respect to them, Abraham is to be considered in a double capacity, both as the father of all true believers and as the father and root of the Israelitish nation.

And for both of these seeds, God did enter into covenant with him, albeit these seeds being formally distinguished the one from the other, their covenant interest must have necessity be diverse and fall under a distinct consideration.

So the idea here is that the physical offspring of Abraham were not in the covenant of grace, only guaranteed.

Right, they could be if they were believers.

But it wasn't by virtue of their birth.

That's right.

It was by virtue of, and this is a whole different subject, maybe their regeneration and their belief in the promised Messiah. And so what's important about Jeremiah 31 is that in this text, we understand what the new covenant is.

I mean, first of all, you see it's distinct from the old covenant, not verse 32, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers. And that is a covenant that was broken. And verse 33 says, this is the covenant that I'll make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord.

Now by the house of Israel, he means not the physical lineage of Abraham, but the true Israel, right? Which is the church. The church does not replace Israel, but is the fulfillment of Israel. And so this is promised, we see in the Old Testament, it's promised, it's foreshadowed, the types, all these things, but it's inaugurated in the work of Christ.

And what's important is that he says, and we'll talk about this here, this is what the covenant looks like. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

So let's talk about that for a second. Eddie, I will put my law within them.

I think when he speaks of putting the law within us, one of the things the Lord is doing is he's giving us an explanation of how that this covenant is not like the one before. You know, going back up to verse 32, it's not like the covenant that I made with them.

That external covenant, that old covenant, that old law was an external covenant, an external law. This is an internal law, an internal covenant. And the difference is in that one was external in the conditions that it made.

This one is transformative, internal in, and it's unconditional in the sense that the believers are now in it. They have that law residing within them. So I think he's really referring to the idea of how it's showing the distinction between how the new covenant is not like the old covenant because it's mediated to us in a different way.

Instead of externally, it's mediated to us internally by the work of the Spirit.

Yeah, let me see what you think about this. But in a way, you know, the Presbyterians talk about one overarching covenant, the covenant of grace. But in a way, I'd push back on that and say the one overarching covenant that hangs over both the Old and New Testament is the covenant of works.

And here's my position there. In the Old Testament, it's the covenant of works unfulfilled. And in the New Testament, it's the covenant of works fulfilled.

Right.

And so this is very important. Let's get to this point. Then I want to talk about the law on the cross. It was very important to establish the federal headship of Adam is parallel with the federal headship of Christ.

So in Adam, all die. In Adam, we get credited with the brokenness of the covenant, failing the covenant of works. But in Christ, Christ has completed the covenant of works on behalf of his people. And so he is fulfilled.

Remember, he stands before John and John's like, John the Baptist, you should be baptizing me. But Jesus says, I need to do this.

Why?

In order to fulfill all righteousness and to identify with his people. He is our federal head. And so he is actively and passively obedient, active and passive obedient of Christ on behalf of the biblical term is his elect.

We are legally united to him, as it were, in the sense that he is our legal representative. And he has fulfilled, essentially what did he fulfill for us? The covenant of works. And now by virtue of grace through faith, we are credit and this is the covenant of grace.

We are credited. We are accepted before God. Christ has fulfilled all covenant obligations on our behalf. That makes sense to kind of sputter through that.

No, no, I think it's really helpful. I was having a conversation with the brother this morning and we were discussing this very thing. And I told him, I said, I think a lot of our problem with understanding this, maybe it's our modern culture, but we just don't think about covenants the right way.

We think about covenants as if they're broken, then you're out of the covenant. But that's not the case with the covenant of works. I think oftentimes sincere believers read the Bible and they read Genesis one and two.

And then when they get to Genesis three, Adam and Eve break the covenant. And in their mind, when Adam and Eve sin, well, then that was all gone. Then what was required was gone because they broke it.

So it's not there anymore. And we think that way in our modern society, sometimes about marriage, right? Someone breaks the covenant. So we act like the promises were never made if one side breaks the covenant promises.

And we shouldn't think that way. And so I would say, we think that because Adam and Eve sinned then that all went away. Well, it didn't. The covenant requirements remained there even after Adam and Eve sinned, even after we sin, the covenant requirements remain the same till someone fulfills it, not by being broken, but till it's fulfilled.

Even here in this passage, we see that one of the things that the Lord is saying, he says there in verse 32, my covenant that they broke. So they broke the covenant, but that didn't make it not still a abiding covenant.

On them, just because they broke it. You're not out of the covenant requirements because it's broken. Well, and then what we needed was for someone to fulfill the covenant and that's what Christ did for us.

And marriage is a great example because we have this idea of, the covenant's broken. So we'll just get divorced and it's over or whatever, but you're actually still in covenant, right?

That's right.

But that'd be a different episode, but very good points there. And so what we're trying to say is this covenant of grace that's promised here and foreshadowed, Dr. Renahan talks about, I'll just read it real quick.

Jesus Christ is the theme of scripture. Each word from God provided increasing light for his people. And so as you turn through the Old Testament, you're seeing more and more and more, okay, Christ and Christ and Christ and Christ.

And all of this is pointing forward to Christ. And so we're not able to stand before God by virtue of our own merits, though we try. Covenant of works is kind of the default position of everybody. We wanna work our way back to God, but we can't.

And that is the covenant of grace. Jesus has worked on our behalf. And now the application of this is through the spirit of God, applies this to God's people in time. And we could get a whole another episode maybe on the Ordo Salutis or whatever.

We did one not long ago on regeneration. But when a sinner comes to Christ, when the Holy Spirit has drawn a sinner to Christ, he comes to Christ and puts his faith in Christ by grace and because of the regenerating power that has produced these things.

The text says back in Jeremiah 31, that God will put his law within them and he will write it on their hearts. Now, specifically, Eddie, what law is that? The ceremonial law or what are we talking about here?

Yeah, this would be, it gets the moniker of God's moral law. I would say this is the law that reveals God's righteousness. It's the law that reveals God's righteous character, right? And maybe that's a good way to think about God's moral law, which is then when we go to the New Testament, we see that's exactly what Paul is arguing in Romans 3 that Jesus comes to do, is reveal God's righteousness.

God's righteousness had been manifested in law and now it's manifested in Christ. And that is the law that's written on our heart. It's that law of righteousness, that law of God's righteous character.

So the Ten Commandments, for an example, are a reflection of that.

Right.

So people, well, that was just given to Israel. Some people would say that, well, sure, it was given in the Mosaic Covenant, but it's a revelation of God's righteous character.

Right, all the way back to the beginning.

Yeah, we talked, Adam, the moral law, essentially the stipulation for Adam was love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's what Jesus says is the summation of the law.

Love God with everything. Love your neighbor as yourself. That is, that stands for all time. And it's expressed through the Ten Commandments. And this is written on the believer's heart. So in other words, when we come to Christ, God writes this law on our heart.

So we don't do away with the Ten Commandments. What we understand about the Ten Commandments, though, is that we don't keep them in order to find favor with God. Rather, because we found favor with God in Christ, and because we've been born again, God has now written this law within, and is now our desire to follow the Lord, and to please Him, and to understand what He wants in our life.

Does that make sense?

Yes, yes, yeah.

And so, and I have to make an important point in just a minute, but let's keep going on. So he says, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares Yahweh.

So in other words, we can do away with pastors, right? Well, that's not what he's saying. What's he saying there? He's saying that we will actually, and I know we don't kinda like this terminology sometimes, but we really are in a personal relationship with the Lord in the sense that we know the Lord personally.

I don't know the Lord by virtue of my pastor, by virtue of my parents, by virtue of anyone else. I know the Lord through Christ, personally and really. Everyone within the new covenant knows Yahweh. And then there's this point.

I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. What's that saying, Eddie?

Yeah, you know, once again, it's God relaying who he is covenantally with his people. Go back to Exodus 34, verses six and seven. And who does God say that he is? He says he is gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.

And so here we see God showing the very person that he is in his relationship with the people who are in this covenant with him. He's gonna forgive their perversity, their iniquity, their sin, and he's gonna put it away from him and remember it no more.

That's making us think of Psalm 103 and just the way that God casts our sins as far as the East is from the West. We see this relationship of God to his covenant people where he's bringing them into perfection, into righteousness.

Okay, so let's just be clear. Those in the covenant of grace have, I'm just gonna read from the text, the law of God written on their hearts. They know the Lord personally. They have their sins forgiven.

And just to be clear, I'm so grateful the text reads the way it does. It doesn't just say I will forgive their iniquity because then you might be like, well, maybe, yeah, he'll forgive our iniquity, but what if we fall out of this?

No, no, no, I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. So this is true of every, you probably know the point I'm fixing to make here, but this is true of everyone in the covenant of grace.

If you are in the new covenant, if you are in the covenant of grace, you have the law of God written on your heart, you know God personally, you desire to follow the Lord, your sins are forgiven and God will remember your sins no more.

So who is in the new covenant? Well, it has always and only been believers. Believers in the Old Testament, those who by grace look to Christ by faith and it was counted to them as righteousness and then believers in the New Testament where the covenant was inaugurated in the blood of Christ and they look to Christ and they are saved by grace through faith.

So who does that leave outside the covenant?

But Quatro, what about believers and their children?

Yeah, guess what? Believers and their children will be saved assuming their children believe.

That's right.

Right?

So unbelieving children, unbelieving infants, unbelieving spouses, unbelieving households or whatever, these are not and never have been. So that's the argument from our Presbyterians. They were in the covenant in the Old Testament so they should be in the covenant in the New Testament.

And our argument is, no, they weren't. They were never in the covenant in the Old Testament because Abraham is the father of two seeds, his physical seed and his spiritual, the seed of promise. Infants have never been within the covenant.

Jeremiah 31 makes it plain that these in the covenant have their sins forgiven. And so there is no, so it's a very complicated theology with the Presbyterian system where you have the covenants or, you know, you have, you kind of end up having kind of like two new covenants in the sense that you have this outward realm where they're in the covenant, not really in the covenant, but, you know, their sins aren't forgiven.

They may fall out of the covenant.

No, no, no.

You can't fall out of the new covenant. It's been fulfilled in Christ and it is applied to us by grace through faith. Anything you would say to all that?

Yeah, I think we may need to do, we keep speaking of things we need to do other episodes on. We probably need to do an episode on dealing with the passages, the apostasy passages, because I have been hearing lately more Presbyterians claiming that Baptist covenant theology can't rightly account for those passages.

And of course I think that it can. But, you know, as we look at this text and then we continue to think about how the new covenant is revealed in the Old Testament, I think I just might go ahead and move us along to the next passage we need to look at in Ezekiel 36.

So in Ezekiel 36, we see this same view of the new covenant being revealed to God's people. I'll just pick it up in, it's maybe a little early, but I'll just go and pick up in verse 22 and read down through.

Therefore say to the house of Israel, thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.

And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations and which you have profaned among them. The nations will know that I am Yahweh, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.

I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. And I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols.

And I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

And you shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your God and I will deliver you from all your uncleanness. And I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you.

I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field abundant and you will never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the nations. Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations.

It is not for your sake that I act, declares the Lord God. Let that be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel. And you know, we see there, especially going back up to verse 26, and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit and I will put within you.

He says, I will put within you and I will remove your heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

Amen.

That is what happens to those who are in the new covenant, the covenant of grace. We don't see the law written on stone, but written on our hearts and our hearts are removed. Our heart of stone and rebellion are removed and replaced with a heart of flesh that loves Christ.

So that's, it wants to follow God. Let me just be clear. So from the New Testament, just to establish, just like in Galatians 3, 29, Paul says, if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring. Let me read that again, just so you can hear that and our listeners can feel that for a second.

If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. In other words, what people need to understand is you read this and you say, well, all this covenantal language that seems to include Israel, who it's talking about are those of the promise, right?

That's why the language of Jeremiah 31 and the language of Ezekiel 36, all these things mention Israel, but the idea here is that Israel, that the church, the church is the fulfillment of Israel and that these promises are for the new covenant, right?

They're for those who will be within the new covenant. In Galatians 6, for example, Paul says, verse 16, and as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. That is the church is the Israel of God.

And so all these fulfillment, that's why sometimes when you read some of the old writers, they'll talk about the church and the Old Testament. And I know some people will be like, wait, what is that? But what they're talking, they're just talking about believers, right?

Because believers are the church. That's why in the Baptist system, we are the most consistent with that. We still believe, only believers are the church. That's why we believe in regenerate church membership.

That is only those who are in the new covenant are to be members of the church. So we actually agree, so let's make it plain. We both, Presbyterians and Baptists agree, those in the new covenant should receive the sign of the covenant.

Right. We agree on that.

Yes.

The issue is we say, yeah, who's included. Baptists say who's included is, and who has only and always been included is believers. Whereas the Presbyterians say, no, no, it's believers and their children, which is even inconsistent because you could do grandchildren, all that.

But the point is we've tried to establish that the covenant, the new covenant is for, and always has been those whose sins are forgiven, who have the law of God written on their heart, who are born again.

And the covenant of grace is the covenant of works, as it were, fulfilled in Christ. That is that by virtue of Christ's work, we receive all these covenant blessings. Think about that for just a moment, just pause.

Weighty theology, weighty doctrine we've talked about, but don't let the reality of this grace pass you by. What an amazing thing this is. What Adam could not do, what Israel could not do, what even all of Abraham's physical offspring could not do, what David ultimately could not do, or Moses or whoever you want to add, what they could not do, and what you and I could not do, never would do, did not want to do, Christ has done on our behalf.

And all those who believe on him, now, we believe in what's called a well-meant offer of the gospel. That is, we declare this covenant of grace to the nations. And we say, look what Christ has done. By virtue of his blood, you can be forgiven.

By virtue of his work, and by grace through faith, you can be declared righteous. You can be justified if you'll come to Christ. But we know ultimately, sinners rather starve, I think is Isaac Watts' song, rather starve than come.

And so by application of the work of Christ through the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, the elect ultimately will come only because of God's gracious purposes. And so the covenant of grace is offered to the world, but its intention, and made specifically in application, is for who God chose before the foundation of the world.

Does it make sense?

Yeah, it does. That's really good.

You know, something else that I might want to add here, I think it's our desire to kind of close up this discussion of Baptist covenant theology with this episode. And so one thing I would like to also point out, because I don't want us to sound like we're just, you know, bashing on our Presbyterian brothers.

Right.

Or dispensational.

Right.

I think there are a lot of Baptists, especially maybe nowadays, and this is a whole nother subject as well when you get into theonomy and all of those kinds of things. But I think there are a lot of Baptists who essentially hold to a Presbyterian view, but they just are convinced that you're supposed to baptize believers.

But essentially they're holding to the same kind of continuity between the old and the new covenant that our Presbyterian brothers would hold to. And that causes them to have views of these other issues, whether it's a millennial view or eschatology or the way that God's law should encounter our current culture.

All of those things are reflections of your understanding of, like you said at the beginning of the episode, how do we read the whole Bible? And so I think that there are a lot of Baptists that are inconsistent because they essentially say, well, in the New Testament's pretty clear that they were baptizing believers, so we want to do that.

But essentially their undergirding theology is the same as the Presbyterian's.

Yeah, and that's why a lot of times you might have a Baptist that will go into, will ultimately become a Presbyterian. They haven't thought through this well. They have not thought through it well in the sense, like our Baptist forefathers.

Again, I would encourage you to read men like Nehemiah Cox, especially, and what's that book, A Discourse of the Covenants thing? It's Cox and John Owen, read that. And then there is, I think we already mentioned the Pascal Denal book, Benjamin Keech.

Benjamin Keech has some great writings. But the point is, if you don't get established in this, and a lot of people, so Baptists will come to the doctrines of grace and they'll be looking at these things and then they'll be like, oh, and then they make the leap to Presbyterianism because they don't understand our history and the great theological framework and the great theological heritage that has been passed down to us that is tied to the scriptures, it flows out of the scriptures.

And so, again, I do wanna make clear too, I'm not disparaging, one of the greatest theologians personally in my life has been R .C. Sproul and John MacArthur, and both of these brothers, we would disagree with what we've presented in these three episodes.

So I love these brothers, and I'm grateful, and we must partner together. They're not gonna ask us when they throw us in the jail cell, they're not gonna ask us our covenantal position, but I do believe this is extremely important.

It makes the whole Bible just sing, in my opinion.

That's right.

Because you just, you see it all go, and the grace of God washes over us all the more, and we're so grateful, and it flows right into all these other things about how we understand the church and all these things.

So, boy, that was a whirlwind three episodes. I'm sure a lot to digest there. Anything else that we should add? And by the way, if you got questions or thoughts, or even if you wanna push back, you can reach out to us.

One of the, you can reach out to us on PerryvilleSBC .org. You can look us up on Twitter, at Eddie Ragsdale, or at Quatro Nelson, that's C-U-A-T-R-O-N-E-L-S-O-N. We're happy to dialogue more about this, but Eddie, is there just any other things that we've missed that need to be included here?

Well, yeah, there's about a thousand. Right, right. That could still be said, and so we won't get into any of those now, but I would wanna stress to any of my brothers out there that haven't thought through these things, this is worthy of the investment of time to think through it.

And it's one of those kinds of things that it's worth you going ahead and investing the time to do the reading, to do the study, because it is so foundational to the other theological issues that we need to be studying.

I know for myself, as a pastor, it can seem like, you know, I've just got stacks of books on several different subjects, and it's like, when am I gonna dive in and conquer this one? And sometimes it's like, well, which one's really important right now?

You know, is there a hot debate going on in eschatology? Well, maybe I feel like I need to read on that or whatever. But I would say, if you've not got this, your understanding of covenant theology down, you need to study that to get a foundation for studying these other areas of biblical truth.

Yeah, and I would say this, be a better Bible reader, read through the Bible more. And I understand, you know, there are times that you just wanna, you're spending months on one book or a few books, I get that, and I'm down with that.

However, I challenge you, read through the whole Bible and read through the whole Bible more. And these things will pop out all the more. I do wanna make it clear, in case I didn't, and just in my mind, as I recap all the things we said, you know, when God says, I'll remember their iniquity no more, that's because Christ has paid for that iniquity.