Covenant Theology pt 2- Laborers' Podcast

Covenant Theology and the Main Questions

Hello, and welcome to the Truth and Love Network. This is... This looks different. Anyway. So, welcome to the Laborer's Podcast. My name is Tyler. I'm filling in for Rob as the commander of the operation here.

We are revisiting our conversation on covenant theology from the various subgroupings that exist within that. And, we will catch you for continuing that discussion after the wipe.

Welcome to the Truth and Love Podcast. Join Miss Baptist and Presbyterian as they discuss theology and its application to life. Together, let's seek the Son and glorify the Father. Stay tuned as we speak truth and love.

Well, that was not the right video, but we will take it. How are you guys doing today?

Doing well, man.

How are you?

Having a good day. It's been a rough bout. We've had some pretty challenging weather. It's been varying levels of how people have been affected by it. It's been rough. It's been challenging. Like I said, my family, we're okay.

We're just hunkered down. We're just kind of bracing for the continued fallout until things find that rhythm again.

Yeah. I gotcha.

It's been rough. It's been heartbreaking watching all the videos and seeing all the posts coming out of eastern Tennessee and west North Carolina. Everybody's lost homes. People swept away. Having issues getting supplies and relief efforts to the people in need.

It's absolutely heartbreaking. Our prayers go out to these communities. It's truly a terrible thing.

Yeah.

So we are continuing our talk through the idea of covenant theology. We had ten questions to go through last Thursday that we met, and we got through two of them. Because we kind of bit off more than we could chew, I think, in an hour.

So I guess the best way to go about this would be to take a step back and kind of recap a little bit. Because we threw out a lot of terms last time with Presbyterian covenant theology and 1689 Federalism and New Covenant theology.

I'm still not sure what some of the distinctions are myself. This is not necessarily my bag. This is not something I eat, sleep, live, and breathe. This is not a doctrinal realm that I'm particularly gifted in.

But Troy, why don't you, I guess, start from where you're coming from perspectives-wise.

1689 Federalism and the Covenant of Works

So perspective-wise, I would be coming from a 1689 Federalist perspective. So all of this is hinged around the difference between the continuity and discontinuity of the Old Testament and New Testament.

So how like is Israel to the church? And it kind of becomes, we're floating around in that distinctions. So there's a lot of similar language, but you can really step off each other's path real quickly.

So there's just a lot of nuances to it. But I would be coming from a 1689 Federalist perspective.

So just out of curiosity, what is federal about 1689. Federalism? I'm still trying to figure out the naming convention there.

So it would be mostly based on the headship. So you are either in Adam or in Christ. That there is no middle area. There's no you're somewhat in Adam or you're either in Adam or in Christ. And that would be the federalistic part.

Okay. Dan's not here to be the straight and true Westminster gentleman. I personally lean a bit more towards like the Savoy Declaration. Because I'm kind of a non-denom Presbyterian, which is like a unicorn these days I guess.

But Savoy actually I think lines up a bit more with what we were talking about with the 1689 last time. Because Savoy puts the covenant of grace, as I understand, in the New Testament and the covenant of works in the Old Testament.

And that's something I think we got we went back and forth on last time was where is the actual changeover. Because oftentimes with more straight and true Westminster covenant theology from that Presbyterian vein, it's all grace from about Abraham on.

And so you have the covenant of works in the garden and you have the covenant of grace at some point with Abraham. There's a little bit of debate as to when exactly it kicks in. But the Westminster looks at Moses and says that's covenant of grace.

The Old Testament law, covenant of grace. As opposed to the Savoy, which would lean I think towards some of the Baptist veins that the covenant of grace is ratified by Christ.

Yeah, I do think a lot of what you're talking about with the Savoy Declaration, a lot John Owen actually brought that kind of to the forefront of saying the Mosaic law, which we'll talk about here in a little bit, was not that of grace.

And so there was that distinction. I think the London Baptist brothers kind of leaned towards that perspective. Josh, where would you say that you land?

I'm not really sure I should even be here tonight because I don't have a real solid position on this. This is one of my weakest theological positions. Not that I'm like a stud in anything else, but this is the one I'm the least confident in.

I am a Baptist. I go to a Reformed Baptist church. But the bulk of my covenantal understanding, I have gleaned from listening to so many Presbyterian preachers and teachers because they talk about it more.

You know, it's hard to find a lot of people who talk about Reformed Baptist covenant theology. You've got, you know, the Renahan and some other ones who talk about the federalism. But I've not been able to sit down and really get a detailed understanding of the Baptist side of the argument.

And I like a lot of what the Presbyterians have to say about it. I think it makes sense. I think it's consistent. It puts me in a weird spot being a Baptist at a Baptist church. But I'm looking forward to going through that book with Claude for the evening services coming up.

That's going to be very helpful for me.

What book is it?

It is A Kingdom of God by Geoffrey Johnson, an expression of Baptistic covenant theology. Let me see if I can...

I think I've heard of that. Is that the one from Founders?

It is The Kingdom of God, a Baptistic expression of covenant biblical theology. Puritan title there.

Nice and long.

I think it is on Founders. I do. I do think so.

Because I know Founders has a couple things on the covenantal Baptist perspective. Honestly, this is all still relatively new for me because I came up dispensational, as did a lot of us. A little different kind of dispensational than probably you had experience with, Troy, because of differing backgrounds from the IFB to the megachurches.

So when I say dispensationalism, it's a little looser. It's probably a little more just the rapture and then maybe a smidgen of antinomianism sometimes. That's the Old Testament. We don't really have to pay attention to that as much.

We get inspiring stories from the Old Testament, but there's nothing really binding or authoritative necessarily in the Old Testament aside from Genesis. That seems to often be the attitude, intentional and unintentional.

It's not always where we intend to land or what we intend to mean. It just kind of happens, if it will.

Yeah, I think that's what most people are being brought up in, just because that's most of what America is. Dispensational. And a lot of people, if you hit them with, are you a dispensational? I have no idea what I am, but there's a rapture coming and I'm on the ship.

It's assumed more than understood.

Yes.

Yeah, definitely don't have to be the case.

The Law, the Gospel, and the Ten Commandments

So, as the jumping off point there, from those three perspectives that we described and that we come from, one of the big questions often is, what do we do with the law? That's a very long-winded answer sometimes.

That's something that we can write entire books about sometimes. We got a couple of books from, I think it was Reformation Heritage last year to give out at the last laborers' conference on the law and the gospel.

I forget who wrote it. It's somebody I probably can't pronounce. But, how do we deal with the law from our different perspectives? If we have this idea of continuity and discontinuity in this, I guess, well-structured set of lenses that we're looking at, the covenant of works, the covenant of grace, the Old Testament, the New Testament, how do we approach the law?

A Presbyterian would say that the law is within the covenant of grace. Since the covenant of grace was put on after the garden, that they would say that just runs straight through. I would see that differently as a 1689 Federalist.

I would say that the law is part of the covenant of works. Flushing that out just as a simple over-the-head view of it is that all of the law is conditional. It is, do this, I will bless you. Do this, I will curse you.

Even up to scripture texts that we could pull up. Galatians 3, Galatians 4, where it says the law is not that of faith. The people that were under the law is its own covenant. Then you have the covenant of the promise, pictured by Sarah.

I could really get into that, but I do see the covenant of the law as being part of the covenant of works. Given as a tool to safeguard the people of Israel, through whom the Christ would come. What kind of stance would you take on that?

Talking to me?

Anybody.

I'm a little funny. Maybe more in the way I word things than what I actually mean by the words. One thing I think that is important to recognize with the law is that A, it was fulfilled by Christ. That we can't keep the law.

If we can be found righteous, it is because it is granted by Christ. It is imputed to our account. Which means whatever we do with the law, we have to start with that fact. That Christ has done all the obedience that is necessary.

That Christ did all the work. And I think sometimes we get a little muddied in the water sometimes on trying to bring the law back into the conversation. That we've got to do this, we've got to do that, because that's what a good Christian does.

And we forget the presupposition that Christ has already done the spiritual requirements here. That we're not required to offer sacrifices. We're not required to do any of this to be a Christian. But rather that these are things that obedience, there is still obedience, but it flows from a new heart.

I think John Knox put it beautifully when he said that the Holy Spirit is the cause of good works. Which is the distinction that I would make here between the old covenant and the new covenant. Is that A, the full body of the law was fulfilled in Christ.

And what remains to be followed is what's universal. That there are different laws given for different people for different purposes. I .e. the ceremonial laws, the civil laws, it's not all just one big blob that we call the law.

But that there are different facets. Like we have the animal sacrifices, we have the dietary restrictions. But I don't believe that scripture presents these things as being universally binding. All 613 for every person that ever lives.

And I think the Westminster statement on the law is that what remains for the believer is what they call the general equity of the law. That is what is principally applied. Which comes down to, as I've heard most Westminster explanations, it's come down to the Ten Commandments.

It's come down to love God and love neighbor.

Yeah, the understanding that, like the Lord Jesus says, He said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. On these two things hangs all the law and the prophets.

So all of the laws, all the 613 or 12 laws that God gave to the people of Israel in the wilderness. Those are an exposition, right? It is exposition of those two fundamental commandments. You can break them down into 10.

And then on the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, you have a case law system that God gave to Moses fleshing out what the application of that statute would look like. And I personally, I've not tied my understanding of the law to covenant theology per se.

I guess that makes sense if you think about it. But I've always been, well, for the sake of this discussion, I've always been a general equity, lowercase t, theonomist. Meaning like the, and I believe that's what the Westminster in the 1689 present, is an understanding that what God had prescribed to Israel was truly just.

There isn't a standard that's more just than God's law. He could have given them anything. And he gave them a law that is consistent with his nature and his character, which is what justice and righteousness is.

It's being behaving in a way that is consistent with God's nature and God's character. But he gave them the law and we don't apply the law is specifically the moral and the civil laws of the Old Testament.

We apply those one to one. Right. So we don't have to build fences around the roofs of our house, but we need to understand the principle. The point being made by that statute in that time was you need to take measures to protect the lives of the people who are in your home.

We wouldn't have to put a fence on a roof. We would put a fence around a pool or around a second story deck.

Which you do in Florida.

Right. Yeah. And I think it's federal level building codes. You have to have some level of a fence around your pools because we understand life is valuable. Human life is precious in the sight of the Lord.

And you are to act in a way that's going to preserve human life. And when it comes to building something potentially dangerous, you take precautions proactively to keep people from harm. So that's been my understanding of the Old Testament law for a while.

And I hadn't really thought about it in terms of covenant before. So that's an interesting question. I like that you guys brought that up. I'm going to have to dig into that a little bit.

I love that the three of us are non-experts on this.

We're bringing out the B squad for this one.

Forget about the A team. This is the B team.

This is what we got tonight, brothers.

This is what we got tonight. We are not the expendables here. This is the acceptables.

The acceptables.

The acceptables. That's cool. Okay. So the law is a fun one, I think. That brings a lot of thought into it, I think. Not just when we're talking about the law with governments, but even just the way we look at obedience.

What does it mean to obey Christ? Just as an individual Christian, even. When you look at that, when we talk about the distinction between the law and the gospel, that is a very weighty conversation that I dig into from time to time.

Sinclair Ferguson wrote a fantastic book on it a few years back called The Whole Christ. I deal a little bit with this because, like I said, I come from a background where there's a lot of, oftentimes, antinomianism.

Which is to say there's a rejection, oftentimes, of the law in a whole. Oftentimes out of a fear of becoming like the fundies. Because we don't want to be like the IFB over here that the women can't wear pants or they're excommunicated from the church.

And so we swing that pendulum the opposite end and then just nothing matters. I've been in churches where we sang Taylor Swift to God. I've been in the Church of the Movies scenarios. I've been at churches where we did entire serieses based on secular songs by Whitney Houston.

I'm getting a little long-winded here, but the point being that we swung that pendulum the other way to where nothing matters. Because we didn't want to take the extreme stance here, rather than trying to find that middle ground.

What did God actually mean by this? And oftentimes it's an overcorrection of an error. And that's an interesting one to think through, even in the context of covenants. We talk about the covenant of grace, and we call it the covenant of grace.

But it's not a covenant of only grace. There is still, if you love me, keep my commandments. There is still an obligation to obey, but not just to obey with rigidity, but to obey with joy. To delight in the character of Christ.

So much so that we're doing things that cultivate that character within us. I think that's where we get with the law. We look at the civil and the moral and the ceremonial and the general equity and all.

What remains for us to do is the things that cultivate Christlikeness. Without being grievous or burdensome to the people that we subject to it. So when we're preaching from the pulpit that you can't wear pants, because that pertaineth to a man, does that align with cultivating the character of Christ, both in ourselves and in the people we're talking to?

Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think there is a, I don't know, putting a real fine point on you can't wear pants. You can only be as specific as the scriptures are. So we can say without flinching, without equivocation, the sexual immorality, bad.

Don't do that. Stop looking at that. Stop doing all that stuff. We don't have to. We can say that without flinching. However, scripture doesn't say specifically women can't wear pants. It says they cannot wear that which pertaineth to a man.

And I like that, that rendering of that verse. I think that's, I think that's accurate. That's helpful because I think there is a value there that's being laid down. There's a statute, a clear statute.

I don't think that statute necessarily infers you can't wear any cut of clothing that a man at the time that you're alive would also wear. I think it has to do with a distinction between the masculine and the feminine.

I don't want to get off into the weeds, but I think having an understanding, a clear understanding of what the law is getting at can help us in not binding people's consciences on things that scripture doesn't command.

There are three parts to the law. There's the transcendent law that that everyone has. Right. It literally transcends. Right. That's what we would the Ten Commandments written on everyone's heart, which everyone sins against.

And then there is the ceremonial law that was given to the descendants of Abraham. Sacrifice sheep, oxen. Here's your huge list. And then there was the judicial laws, which is kind of what we're talking about right now.

But understanding those those distinct categories and what's what's still around, what's not understanding that the transcendent law essentially boiling down to love God, love neighbor. That is is the law that we are to work out right whenever it's, you know, if you know, I'm not supposed to travel to Jerusalem every year in observance of the Passover feast, you know, those things are types and shadows of Christ.

And so it's really working that out as far as the thing of where do you go with with on this side you have legalism and this side you have antinomianism. It is is going to be found in and then in the New Testament specifically with with what's what's given to the people post Christ resurrection.

Of course, we can look to the Old Testament and go, this is this is God's God's character through 100 percent. I'm not saying unhitch the Old Testament. That is that is not what I'm going at.

I'll put my stone down. I was OK. OK.

I just wanted to completely and 100 percent clarify that. But there is so much in the New Testament about the distinctions between the law and the new covenant found in Christ, whether it be the entire book of Hebrews or the entire book of Galatians or James or or John.

I mean, you could go through. Paul dealt with a lot of Judaizers. He dealt with a lot of people that were trying to to marry new covenant believers with with the law, with circumcision, with feast holidays practices.

And he laid his foot down, put down hardcore and said, no, this is you are you are leaving Christ. You are forsaking the gospel because of this, because our righteousness are even our righteous deeds that we do nowadays are are tainted by our sinful nature.

Our righteousness is in no part based on us. It is solely based on on Christ, on Christ's sacrifice. We have his alien righteousness.

Old Testament Saints, the Church, and the One People of God

So segwaying into the next question, we've kind of we've touched on that a little bit so far with this idea of believers in the Old Testament, believers in the New Testament. So how does how we understand the covenant of grace in each camp, I guess, if you will, how does that differ in applying the Old Testament to the New Testament and vice versa?

Well, I think first and foremost, none of the Old Testament saints, none of the Old Testament church were saved by observing the law. Right. So they were they were saved by fearing God and keeping his commandments in faith that God would send the Messiah.

Right. They were saved by faith, looking forward. We are saved by faith, looking backwards and trusting what Christ has done. They were trusting something they hadn't seen yet, something that was that was hidden.

It was foreshadowed. It was it was failed, but they didn't know what it was going to look like. But they when they obeyed the law to the best of their human ability, none of them kept it perfectly, but they obeyed the law in faith of what of what God had promised, trusting that God would send the Messiah and that that that they would be saved.

And it was it was their faith that saved them. Nobody was saved by keeping the law. And it's different for us because we were not born in Old Covenant ethnic Israel. Right. We've been born now 2000 years roughly after the revealing of the son of God, but the one who was promised in Genesis three and was continually promised with with ever increasing clarity and specificity.

He was revealed. And now now we have the whole picture. The puzzle is complete. Right. And we can look and see the whole thing. We have to trust that Christ was who he says he was. And that he did pay for our sins on the cross and we put our hope in his perfect righteousness, whereas they were trusting in something that they didn't actually know exactly what it was going to look at look like.

But the both Old Covenant church and New Testament church were saved by Christ and by faith in the promises of God.

Yeah, same answer. That was that on all of our Old Covenant, Old Testament brothers and sisters, you know, Abraham, David, they were looking forward to the promised seed. Adam, Eve, you know, to the promise of the seed that would come.

It was the promise of that seed that would take away our sins. And through it, it kept being unveiled more and more and more. The picture of him gets clearer through all these types and shadows that we have the beauty and the hindsight to be able to read back through our Old Testament and go, there's Christ, there's Christ, there's Christ, there's Christ.

But yeah, they were saved looking forward, we're saved looking back.

Yeah, we're all on the same page there.

Yeah, regardless of whether you're Presbyterian, Dispensational, Reformed Baptist, doesn't matter. That's the biblical view.

Should be. It is the biblical view. It should be your view. I've talked to people who genuinely believed that the Old Testament Israel was saved by keeping the law. Which I guess I could understand why somebody would come to that conclusion.

It's not a very informed conclusion. There's some key passages that they have not read, if that's what they take away from the Scriptures. But all of the conditions that were given in the Old Testament, those conditions in and of themselves don't save you.

It's the keeping of the law in faith. It's still the faith that does the saving, even in the Old Testament.

And if righteousness came from the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

That's right.

Galatians 2 .21. So there's an interesting subject that Calvin talks about when he's working through the book of Job. Have you guys read about what he said on double righteousness? No. This was a new one on me as I've been working through Job on Bread of the Word for a year and a half.

But he talks about a view of God's righteousness that is, he said double, in the idea that what we see in the law is an expression of God's righteousness, I guess, in terms we can understand. It's almost like God's righteousness is in shorthand.

But if you could peel back the law and see the fullness of God's righteousness, it is far greater, far grander, far fuller than even the law can capture. So much so, the thing with Eliphaz is that even the heavens are unclean in his sight.

And so this is how he works through the idea that God was just in his dealing with Job. Because it doesn't seem very fair or just from our perspective, but it's still just from God's perspective. And I bring that up because regardless of how good we are with the law and dealing with the law, and we may come close to all 613.

But we're not going to get that back half. We're not going to get the fullness of that righteousness that exists in God, even if we kept all this. Because there is more to God than thou shalt not murder.

This is a, I guess, a sliver of his character that shows us a bit of what God is like in a way we can understand it. We can recognize that God is good, that God values life, we can see these things. But if the fullness of God can fit in this 8-pound brain, there's a problem.

That's right.

Yeah, amen.

I think that's one of the many stumbling blocks to thinking we can keep the law and we can be perfect, is the fact that God's not just a law. But back to the podcast guide here. Again, we touched on this.

We keep getting a couple questions ahead. But Josh, you said a really interesting talk about the Old Testament church. What is that?

So that is the saints of the Old Testament, right? If we've established that everybody in the Old Testament who was saved was saved by faith in Christ, even if they didn't know what that would look like or didn't understand what had been foreshadowed, but they were obeying God in faith and they were saved by that faith in Christ, then that makes them a member of the church, right?

If the Gentiles were grafted in to that covenantal olive tree and the ethnic Israel who didn't believe were broken off of that unbelief, right? So the only people on that olive tree were people who believed, and Gentiles were grafted in through faith.

That olive tree included Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, David, Rahab. All of the Old Testament saints were members of that olive tree. There's one covenant people of God. God doesn't have two covenant peoples.

There's one covenant people. I do believe that there is a full continuity of covenant between Old Testament and New Testament. There's a change in covenant. The terms are changed, but there is only one covenant people of God.

God doesn't have two covenant peoples. So if the church is now God's covenant people, and we've been grafted in to the covenant people, but it's not our thing, we're grafted in to what has already been existing.

So I refer to the saints of the Old Testament as the Old Testament church.

That tends to be a bit of a point of contention on social media, doesn't it?

It does. Yes, it does.

I've seen that get called replacement theology, and I think there's some other funny terms for it out there. But it's almost controversial sometimes to say that the church and Israel are one and the same, in some sense.

Yeah, it's very controversial. And like Troy pointed out earlier, it's because the dispensationalism is kind of baked into the default understanding of Americans in general. You can talk to somebody who's never been to church in their life, and they still have some level of understanding of the rapture.

Yeah, it's on the sentence.

Right, yeah. Everybody has an understanding of that. And what goes along with that is this understanding that God is doing his thing with Israel over here. And I don't have a lot of experience with dispensationalism personally or independent fundamental Baptist.

So Troy, if I misspeak, feel free to clarify. I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush. But there's an understanding that God's doing his thing with Israel over here. Israel rejected him. He's like, well, I'm already here.

We'll save some Gentiles. And then we'll finish doing... Hey, buddy, I'm doing a podcast. Can you go out there? Yeah, I need you to go out there. Can you go out there for a little bit? Okay, he's just going to watch.

Sorry, I'm going to save some Gentiles while I'm here. But then I'm going to do what I really came to do, which was save just the physical offspring of Abraham. And that's not what the scripture teaches, right?

It's clear that God made a covenant with Abraham that would bless and affect all the families and all the nations of the earth. It's through the promised heir. So global salvation, not universal salvation, but global salvation and global impact and global dominion of the Christ was in view from the beginning.

So it's not two covenants. It's not two peoples. It's one covenant. Well, one covenant people. There are two covenants, but it's one covenant people.

So to get at what the question is asking here, how do Presbyterian covenant theology, Reformed Baptist covenant theology and New Covenant theology each view the role of the church in relation to Israel and the Old Testament covenants?

And so really the whenever you have whenever Israel is brought up, it's important to realize that we can really start start jumping over over each other because even Paul says Romans nine, not all of Israel are of Israel.

And then again, in Romans 11, Israel has been hardened until the fullness of the Gentiles come in. Then it's deliver will come out of Zion and the saying will be said, all of Israel will be saved. So I believe that's two spots in which that Paul uses the word Israel in the same sentence, but meaning two different things.

So you can say Israel is that the church is true Israel. Right. I like using the word true, true Israel. Right. So the true Israel are people that have faith in Christ, whether that be Abraham or or us three that are sitting here talking.

Right. And you can go down the list, everyone that's in the church. But then you have this geopolitical nation out in the Middle East that is called Israel. And so the question is, what what is the distinction between the people called Israel and the people also called Israel, a .k .a. the church?

And so it really comes down to whenever you're. Presbyterian or coming at this from a Presbyterian covenantal theology framework, you're going to say, well, the people of Israel were actually inside the covenant, whether or not they were of true Israel, they were in the covenant people of Israel.

And then you would have dispensationalists on the furthest side from that, that is saying, no, that was God's chosen people, Israel, the nation. But now he is dealing with a parenthetical, his chosen people, the church.

And one day he will go back to dealing with his chosen people, Israel, the nation. And so where I would be in my reformed Baptist theology, covenant theology would go that there is one people of God, the true Israel, the church, and a lot of them were inside the nation of the people Israel.

But the nation of the people Israel did not guarantee that you were within the covenant of grace.

Talking about a spiritual Israel.

Exactly, a spiritual Israel.

I think it's in Romans 2 where it says that a Jew is one inwardly.

Yes, I am a Jew. Romans, what is that, 229?

I think it is.

Right at the end of, I think it's like the last verse in chapter 2.

I've got a comment here that I think ties into this quite nicely. No doubt the saints of the Old Testament had faith in Christ, but it's interesting that the Lord didn't mention the church until upon this rock I will build my church, unless I'm pulling that out of context.

And personally, I think that the word church, or ecclesia, alludes to the Old Testament in a really backwards way. Because the word ecclesia is where we get the word ecclesiastes. That in the Greek copies of the Old Testament, there was a precedence of using this word ecclesia, referring to gathering the people, whether that was in the temple, whether that was for certain processions.

So we don't call it the book of Koheleth, we call it the book of ecclesiastes. And I think there was a precedence of understanding this idea of a spiritual assembly as an ecclesia during that period where the Jews started learning Greek and started copying things down in Greek.

And so when you get to Christ at that point when he says, on this rock I will build my ecclesia, I think in some sense he's hearkening back to Solomon. He's hearkening back to that Old Testament practice of the people gathering.