Episode 43: Baptist Covenant Theology (Part 2)

The Kingly Rule of Christ and the Necessity of the Local Church

To the Ruled Church podcast.

This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased. He is honored, and I get the glory. And by the way, it's even better, because you see that building in Perryville, Arkansas? You see that one in Pechote, Mexico?

Do you see that one in Tuxla, Guterres, down there in Chiapas? That building has my son's name on it.

The church is not a democracy, it's a monarchy. Christ is king.

You can't be Christian without a local church.

You can't do anything better than to bend your knee and bow your heart, turn from your sin and repentance, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and join up with a good Bible-believing church, and spend your life serving Jesus in a local, visible congregation.

Welcome back to the Ruled Church podcast.

Eddie, I feel like I've seen you the entire time since last episode.

That's right, that's right.

It's one of those episodes where we just stayed on and kept going.

Yeah, that's good.

I like this, I like this. Welcome to the Ruled Church podcast.

This is episode 43. Now we are getting closer to your age, aren't we, Eddie?

We're getting very close.

I'm your co-host, Alan Nelson, pastor of Perryville Second Baptist Church in central Arkansas, and with me, a good friend and brother in Christ, and partner in ministry, pastor of First Baptist Church of Marshall, Arkansas, the one and the only Eddie Ragsdale.

Say hello again.

If you Google Eddie Ragsdale, I think that there are lots of them.

You know, I said, in Perryville, there's Ragsdale Cemetery.

Is there really?

Yeah, it's interesting.

Oh, wow, you'll have to show me that the next time I'm in Perryville. Man, we had a young man in our church, I probably should tell this story, but he just got engaged, so anybody in my church that hears this will know who I'm talking about, but he Googled his own name.

He kind of has a unique name. I won't say his name on here, but he Googled his own name, and he found a girl, and her name is exactly his name, same first name, same last name, and they started talking and stuff, and he just proposed, and she said yes, and so they're gonna, I mean, this had been like a year or two ago when he Googled her name, but they have the same first and last name.

That's wild. Well, brother, we won't rehash, so we're talking about Baptist covenant theology, and if we were gonna rehash everything we talked about last episode, we'd just make this episode extremely long as well, and so really, if you're just tuning in, you just found us or whatever, you're just listening, you really need to go back and listen to episode 42.

That'll catch you up to speed. Then you can listen to this one, because we're talking about Baptist covenant theology, and we got into the covenant of grace. We really, Eddie, did not get into, so far, we really didn't get into what really distinguishes us from Presbyterians, and we need to get into that today, so just to note, you move on from what happens in Genesis 3, and then the next covenant that you run into is the Noahic covenant, and I just read, that's the covenant with Noah, and I'll read, I don't know, I mean, we could spend forever to talk about that, but one thing maybe you remember in today's time, what a sick and twisted thing to use this special sign of this covenant for such wickedness, but listen to what Sam Waldron has to say about this covenant.

He says, the covenant with Noah is given as a framework in which creation will be preserved by common grace until the fulfillment of the promise, that is, the promise of Genesis 3 .15. He goes on to say, the covenant with Abraham formally initiates that community through which the promised redeemer will come.

The Mosaic covenant provides the necessary regulation and legislation for that community at the time when it has ceased to be a family and has become a nation. In the Davidic covenant, God's rule over his people is given concrete manifestation, and so doing the line through which the redeemer would come is specified.

In the new covenant, the redeemer appears and accomplishes redemption, thus bringing to fruition all the types and predictions of the earlier covenants. He inaugurates the final form of the covenant community.

So what you have there is an overview of these subsequent covenants in the Bible from Sam Waldron, really an overview of Baptist covenant theology, and this is the key to reading the 66 individual books of the Bible as one unified story.

That's right.

Comments, questions there?

Well, I think the big thing that we wanna point out, and I just wanna keep trying to relate it to someone who maybe doesn't already hold our view or just thinks that we're complicating things with the language, and I just wanna bring it down to maybe the simplest place that I feel like we can bring it is to say that as we look at all of these covenants across the scripture, essentially the difference between the Presbyterian view and the Baptist view, and Quatro, you feel free to say, hey, that I made it too simple to the point that it's inaccurate if you need to say that, but I'm just gonna say this.

The Presbyterians view all of the covenants beginning with God's promise in Genesis 3 .15, they say that inaugurates, that's the word that you just used in that quote speaking of the new covenant. They would say that inaugurates the new covenant or the covenant of grace in Genesis 3 .15, and then they would say all of these covenants are different ways that God administrated the covenant of grace throughout history leading to Christ, and we as Baptists would say, biblically, that no, those were different administrations of the covenant of works leading up to the promised covenant of grace being inaugurated and put in place by Christ, and I think when you get to places like Galatians 3 and 4 and the book of Hebrews, that it's very clear that that's what we're talking about.

We're talking about the covenant of grace being inaugurated when Christ puts it into effect, not when it was promised to each one of the others. In the Old Testament covenants, what we see is the covenant of works being reiterated and the covenant of grace being promised in each one of those.

Let me just read from the Westminster Confession of Faith, which is the Presbyterian view. It says the covenant of grace, this is chapter seven, paragraph five, this covenant, referring to the covenant of grace, was differently administered in the time of the law and in the time of the gospel.

Under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecy, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all for signifying Christ to come, which were for that time sufficient and efficacious through the operation of the Spirit to instruct and build up the elect in faith and the promised Messiah by whom they had full remission of sins and eternal salvation and is called the Old Testament.

So the idea, the difference, and this language is important, and in fact, we need to get to Genesis 12, but the idea here is that the difference is the covenant being inaugurated and administered versus the covenant being promised.

That's the difference that we're talking about. We're saying the Reformed Baptists, the particular Baptists, the Baptist covenant theology says that these covenants were not administrations of the covenant of grace.

The covenant of grace was not inaugurated until Christ.

That's right.

Those who are saved are saved by virtue of the covenant of grace, but only because it was completed and fulfilled in Christ, and this is actually the distinction between Baptists and Presbyterians when it comes to the administration of baptism, okay?

So for example, Genesis 12, you have verse one. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So the idea here is that the Baptist argument is that this is a promise of the Messiah, his offspring is Christ, and that there's going to be fulfillment here of the promises for the covenant of grace, whereas the Presbyterian would say that this is just an unconditional inauguration, as it were, of the covenant of grace, and I'm not sure if they would say inaugurated with Adam or with Abraham.

I'd have to think through that more, but I know that the idea here is that this is for you, Abraham, or Abram at that point, but this is for you and your offspring, right? That's the argument of the Presbyterian.

So this is a different administration of the covenant of grace, and the covenant of grace was for Adam and his offspring, and so therefore in the new covenant, the covenant of grace is also for the believer and his offspring.

So you circumcise the infant child, and therefore you baptize the infant child. That's the argument, and that's the continuity. Thoughts or anything you want to say there?

Right, and like you said in our conversation on the last podcast last week, we want to remember that baptism isn't the only difference, and I think a lot of times we think in terms of the most visible differences between Baptists and Presbyterians, such as our church polity or baptism, but I would actually say those visible differences in what we do now, they are rooted in these theological differences in how we read the Bible, and so it's really important that we see that it's not just, well, don't they know that baptizo means immerse?

Well, no, it's deeper than that, because getting down to what do we believe about the way that God is dealing with people throughout the course of the history of redemption? How is it that God is dealing with people?

Yeah, a Baptist understanding of baptism really should start in the Old Testament.

That's right.

Okay, so in Genesis 17, 14, it says, any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. Now, what does that sound like to you?

Does that sound like a covenant of works or a covenant of grace? Does that sound like an unconditional covenant, or does it sound like conditional?

Yeah, it's clearly conditional because you can't break an unconditional covenant.

It's obviously conditional, right? If the covenant is not kept, it is, the person, the child is cut off. He's broken. You can't break an unconditional covenant. So the point here is that the promise to Abraham, the covenant with Abraham, as it were, is dichotomous in nature, in the sense that there's a promise of going forward to the Messiah.

But there's also, there's this condition that must be kept. Therefore, it is a covenant of works. If this condition is not kept, then it is a, then the covenant is broken. And so really then, what you have to understand, and I think the dispensationalists and the Presbyterians get this wrong, which we love them, listen to last episode, we're grateful for them.

But Abraham is promised how many people? How many peoples should I say? How many peoples is Abraham promised? Eddie, I'm putting you on the spot.

Well, yeah, because you mentioned the dichotomous nature. And I would say Abraham is promised a physical people. And they are under the conditions of the covenant. That's the conditional side of the covenant.

But the other side of that dichotomous nature is that Abraham is promised a spiritual offspring, spiritual children, and that people is under the unconditional side of the covenant because they are part of the promise.

So we need to understand the conditional side is the covenant that is inaugurated with Abraham. That's the covenant Abraham is under and that his children, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob's sons, they are under that covenant.

They must meet the stipulations.

It's essentially

But the spiritual seed, the spiritual seed is promised. They're not under the same thing that those are under because of that dichotomous. And by dichotomous, we just mean two.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's essentially it is, you may not like the term republished, but essentially it's either needs to be understood as a republished covenant of works or a distinct covenant of works, but it is a covenant of works.

His offspring was obligated to uphold God's law. So what you have then in Abraham, the Messiah is gonna come from this line, right, of Abraham. But they have to keep this up. If they keep it up, there's life.

If they don't, they're cut off. And so his offspring is obligated to uphold God's law, which is represented in circumcision. If his seed upholds the law, there's great blessing. If they don't, they're cut off.

So would his physical offspring keep this covenant? Well, if by physical offspring, you mean Israel, the national, physical Israel, no. But if by physical offspring, you mean true Israel, which is Christ, the true offspring, the answer is yes.

Paul says in Galatians 3, he doesn't say offsprings, but offspring referring to Christ. So that's kind of a quick overview, I know, of the Abrahamic covenant, but this is what separates us from the Presbyterian.

The Presbyterian says, okay, the argument is, what we're saying is by virtue of physical birth, no person has ever entered into the covenant of grace. The only way that you enter into the covenant of grace, so tell me, Eddie, if I'm being plain here, the only way you enter into the covenant of grace is if one of those circumcised children, when they got old enough, or the ladies, the men or the women or whoever, when they got old enough, put their faith in the promised Messiah.

They were not in the covenant of grace by virtue of their birth into Abraham's family.

That's right, that's right. And I think the point we wanna really drive home here is because of the Presbyterian's view, well, as a matter of fact, we would even agree, this is where we would agree with the Presbyterians in the sense that in the old covenant, under the both Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, you had a mixed nature in those covenants.

Now, where we would disagree is they would say that they were part of the covenant of grace, we would say they're part of the covenant of works, but we would both agree that in Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants, you had a mixed nature.

You had unbelieving people who were a part of Abraham's physical descendants, right? They were Abraham's physical descendants, so they were a part of the visible people, but they did not believe in the promise.

You had people in the Mosaic covenant, as a matter of fact, almost all of them, because that's why they had to die in the wilderness, they didn't believe, right? They were circumcised, they seen God's power displayed, but they didn't trust God's promises.

If they had, they would have entered the promised land, but they didn't because they didn't trust God's promises. So they were visibly in the covenant, the old covenant, but they weren't believers. And this is the distinction we wanna make.

When we get to the new covenant, the new covenant doesn't operate that way. It doesn't have a mixed nature. Everyone in the new covenant is a believer. You're not in the new covenant if you're not a believer.

And our Presbyterian brothers would say, well, no, the new covenant is also a mixed covenant where you have unbelievers who they would include in the new covenant. That's why they baptize their children.

Yeah.

But we would say, no, you don't include unbelievers in the new covenant people.

Well, just to say it again though, from Genesis forward, no unbeliever has ever been a part of the new covenant.

That's right.

It's always only been those of faith. Okay, and so Abraham has promised two peoples, a physical people, and then children of the promise. The physical people received the physical sign of circumcision under that covenant of works, as it were.

But in the New Testament, which we'll get to this, but in the New Testament, we don't give the sign, we give the sign of the covenant of grace. The circumcision was not a sign of the covenant of grace.

It was a sign that this covenant has to continue to be kept or you will be cut off like Genesis 17, 14 says. So let me skip over the Mosaic covenant just for a moment and let me mention the Davidic covenant and then we'll come back.

But in Psalm 132, 11 and 12, it says, the Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back. One of the sons of your body, I will sit on your throne. If your sons keep my covenant and my testimonies that I shall teach them, their sons also forever shall sit on your throne.

So again, is this conditional or unconditional? Well, it's unconditional in the sense that this is God's ironclad, irrevocable promise. But it is conditional in the sense that one of David's sons must keep God's covenant.

So what I'm trying to argue here is that these covenants, if you just read the Bible, these are not different administrations of this one covenant of grace. It's obvious in these covenants that someone has to keep this up.

That's right.

We know it's pointing to Christ. Now in between the Abrahamic and Davidic covenant, you have the Mosaic covenant and this covenant is usually what is meant when people say the old covenant. Talking about Moses.

Again, and it's not my desire to argue about this, but I actually think this is just another republication, another manifestation of the covenant of works. But some people would say that it's not the covenant of works.

It's just a covenant of works. And the argument is because it doesn't promise actual life. And I would argue that there is a promise of life if you do this, but it's just hypothetical. Like you can't actually do this because you're already condemned, you're already broken the covenant.

So Benjamin Keech puts it this way, in the second edition of the said covenant, the covenant of works, to the whole house of Israel, God promised them that upon their keeping this covenant of perfect obedience, he would be their God and they should be his people.

So this is a promise of God. It's a genuine promise. It's a real promise, but it's actually not a promise that actually can be met by the people of Israel, right? Yeah, that's right. So then two main purposes in this Mosaic covenant.

One, it was not an end in and of itself, but it's a means to an end, namely to show Israel that she has no righteousness in and of herself. She must look to the Messiah. She must look to the promise of another.

So the idea here is, look at all this stuff, 613 laws in the Mosaic covenant, like that should have made them understand their need for grace and their need for Messiah. Instead, it does the opposite for most of them, as you already said, it hardens them.

They actually think, oh yeah, we're good. They actually think they're keeping this. But the feast and the ceremonies and the blood sacrifices, they're pointing forward to the Messiah. They're pointing forward to Christ.

Now, some of the physical offspring, they do embrace the future promises of God. But as you say, most reject them and thought they could keep the law themselves. But this is what happens in Romans nine.

This is why Paul says in Romans nine, what? Not all Israel is Israel. Okay, so who is true Israel? Who are the true sons and daughters of Abraham? It has always and only been those who look to the promises of God in faith.

They're saved by grace alone through faith alone. And all the promises of God find their yes in Christ. It's why the church is called the Israel of God. She doesn't, in Galatians six, she doesn't replace Israel.

She is the fulfillment of it. She's the true Israel, as it were. Christ is true Israel and all those in him are the true Israel. Okay, so but I said, that's the first. It's not, so what's the Mosaic Covenant purpose?

It's not an end in and of itself, but to show Israel their lack of righteousness. But secondly, and I got this from Dr. Jeffrey Johnson. It's very helpful, I think. The Mosaic Covenant is like a fence that is put around Israel to preserve the line of the coming Christ.

Does that make sense?

Yes.

The Mosaic Covenant served the purpose to keep the line of Abraham going until Jesus arrived. So the purification laws, the laws about intermarrying, these laws, they're all designed to keep Israel going from generation to generation until the time of the Messiah.

So, yeah, one interesting thing there to point out, I was just teaching yesterday on the doctrine of Scripture, right, the doctrine of the Bible, and the trust that we ought to have in the Scripture and all of those things.

And I was telling the class that I was teaching, you know, all the Scriptures God breathed, that's what it says in 2 Timothy chapter three, right? All Scripture is inspired, breathed out by God. And that means every single part, including those chapters of name that we can't pronounce begets name that we can't pronounce, right?

And so often people say, well, I can just skip over that. Well, no, you should read it because it's in the Bible and God put it in there. And one of the reasons that those chapters are in your Bible is because it's preserving the lineage of God's physical people up to Christ.

It's interesting that no Jewish person can establish that line now. They can't do that because those records are gone. They're gone after the inauguration of the new covenant. I didn't have to preserve them anymore.

They were only preserved to get us to Christ.

Yeah, God is done covenantally with the nation of Israel other than if you just wanna say broken covenant works, in the sense that now we could have different in time thoughts about how many of Israel is gonna be physical Israel.

I'm talking about Jews, how many will come to Christ, all those things. But in terms of covenantally operating under the Mosaic covenant with Israel, that's done. That's over. We'll talk about that more, but it's like when you mail something really precious, you wrap it carefully, you box it up carefully, you pay a little more for shipping.

All that external stuff though is not the point, right?

Right.

It's there to do what? To protect the cargo. Okay, so the Mosaic covenant protects the cargo and that is Christ. Okay, so lots of stuff left unsaid that we need to have honestly one more episode, but that's gonna be it for today.

So up in these last two episodes, and we've really tried to cover the covenant of works, what happened in the garden, and then what happened with Abraham and Moses, and what we'll do in the next episode.

And we'll try to,.

Because we don't wanna do this 100 episodes, but we'll try to tie it all together in the last episode where we'll talk about the new covenant as inaugurated in Christ. Again, how that affects our understanding of baptism and what it actually looks like to be in the new covenant and these promises from Jeremiah 33 and Ezekiel and all these things.

People who know the Lord and their sins are forgiven, right?

That's right.

Anyway, all those things we'll talk about next time. So hopefully you're enjoying this, you're tracking with us, and this is a good start to your summer jumping into a little bit of Baptist covenant theology.

But we're gonna sign off there and so pick up next week. So Eddie, sign us off, brother.

We'll see you guys next week.

If you really believe the church is the building, the church is the house, the church is what God's doing, this is his work. If we really believe what Ephesians says, we are the hoemas, the masterpiece of God.

How are you gonna respond?