Emily Maxson: Welcome to Halting Toward Zion,
the podcast where we limp like Jacob to the
Promised Land and talk about life, the universe,
and everything along the way. I’m Emily
Maxson, here with Greg Uttinger and a few
guests who will introduce themselves shortly.
Last week we finished up our 3-part discussion
on the Trinity. We talked about how God is
in himself interpersonal and sustains relationships
in a structured way with promises – promises
to perform given activities, promises to give
power and rewards for those activities – so
there’s the structure to relationships even
within the Godhead. Today we’re going to
sort of continue and step past that with how
God structures relationship with us, his creatures.
First let’s introduce our friends. Bryan,
you’ve been with us before but remind us
who you are.
Bryan Broome: Hi, my name is Bryan. I’m
long-time friends of pretty much everyone
here, except for the new person who’s joining
us. I’m a California resident and native
– not a fan of avocado toast, though. We’re
not that far gone. That’s me.
Emily: Really, no avocado toast? Do you have
something against avocado in general or just
avocado toast?
Bryan: Yes, actually.
Emily: Hey, same!
Bryan: It’s an unpopular opinion. I’m
glad that you are also of the faith.
Emily: People are always like, “You don’t
like avocados? But you’re from California,”
and I’m like, “No. Avocados are gross.”
Bryan: They are.
Emily: Alice, what is your opinion on avocados
and the toast thereof?
Alice: I’m going to be of the unpopular
opinion here, I think, and say that I definitely
love avocados. As for avocado toast, I’m
not especially partial one way or the other.
It just kind of goes with liking avocados
that I wouldn’t mind it.
Emily: Alright, and where are you from, Alice?
Alice: I’m from South Carolina, but I’m
here in the DC area. For those who don’t
know, I’m friends of the Maxsons, so just
from the area and I’m excited to join the
discussion and learn a little bit tonight.
Emily: We’re excited to have you.
Alice: Thank you.
Emily: So Greg, what is a covenant?
Greg Uttinger: You know, if you asked any
dozen theologians that question, you’re
probably going to get a dozen answers – everything
from an agreement to something far more detailed.
Last time we were talking we asked the question,
“Can we speak of the members of the Trinity
being covenanted together?” and the conclusion
I think we came to was we can, but we have
to realize that when we talk about God as
he is in himself, everything is going to be
a little different.
God does not think or understand or love the
way we do. He’s God, and everything that
we do and live out is analogical. He’s the
archetype, we’re the image. So when we start
talking we don’t have to come up with a
definition that includes him, except in the
most broad sense, and you’ve already sort
of done that.
We’re talking about fellowship. We’re
talking about communion, with goals in mind
– not just friends who hang out and play
Rook or something because they’ve got nothing
better to do, or watch Princess Bride because
there’s not much better to do, but actually
have some kind of purpose.
We’re going to be talking about the name
of this podcast, Halting Toward Zion, and
what in the world that has to do with covenant,
but in the meantime let me read you a few
verses from Psalm 105. The psalmist says this
about covenants. Speaking of the Lord he says
–
He hath remembered his covenant forever, the
word which he commanded to a thousand generations,
which covenant he made with Abraham, and his
oath unto Isaac; and confirmed the same unto
Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting
covenant: Saying, Unto thee will I give the
land of Canaan, the lot of your inheritance.
There’s more, but notice all the synonyms.
We’re talking about the covenant, but it’s
the word that God commanded. He commanded
it to a thousand generations. He also calls
it an oath, he calls it a law, and he comes
back again and says it’s everlasting. He
ties it off by saying its substance is an
inheritance.
People have argued about whether or not you
can nail down exactly how many parts or facets
or dimensions a covenant has, and I think
you can, but that’s not the main point here.
The Bible gives us a number of things right
there we can work with, I’m going to say
five, and there’s a theological flow here.
Once we see that and we begin looking around
the Bible, we start running into a lot of
things that come in 5’s, like the Torah,
for instance.
* We have God, who is sovereign, the God who
issues a law and makes commandments
* We have the idea of him making it with a
person or a representative. We probably should
talk a little bit more about that.
* It’s called a law and it’s called a
promise. God promises that he will do things,
and he requires us to do things.
* The word oath shows up. When people cut
covenants they swear self-maledictory oaths.
“I will do this, and if I fail to do this
may my body be cut open, my entrails poured
out, and my flesh fed to the birds of the
air and the beasts of the earth.”
* Finally, it’s to a thousand generations.
It’s to believers and their seed after them.
The words that we’ve used at our school
have been lordship, representation, stipulations,
oath and blessing or oath and sanction, and
continuity/succession/inheritance. You can
use other words, but these ideas, these theological
realities, these ways that God pulls us into
a relationship with himself and to one another
show up in all the covenants that are labeled
covenants in scripture, so we have some common
material.
We have to be careful of not making them airtight
because the psalmist here sure didn’t. The
ideas flow one into another. You’re making
an oath to call down sanctions about an inheritance,
and you’re doing this as a representative
of the sovereign God who had spoken to you
in his word, and you get the idea.
Emily: So the purpose of all these facets
are united in that there’s a legal and personal
bond that’s being created.
Greg: A legal and personal bond. I think I
wrote that in one of my syllabuses someplace.
Emily: You probably did. I probably stole
it.
Greg: It’s personal in that it is not merely
an external requirement of duties. To make
it simple, marriage is not about keeping a
list of rules. Church membership is not about
a list of rules or checking off boxes. There
is true relationship which involves personality,
love, commitment, but God structures this.
He does not leave it to the impulse of the
moment. He does not leave it to sentiment.
He doesn’t leave it to passion.
“How do I feel right now? Am I still married
today? I don’t know. How do I feel about
this?” He does not do that. “Am I a loyal
citizen of the United States today? How do
I feel about the president? Let me check before
I answer that question.”
Covenant loyalty is something that either
God imposes, depending on the nature of the
covenant, or that we freely pick up, or God
creates the covenant institution and we sometimes
have a choice. You can choose to marry this
person or that person, but you don’t get
to redefine marriage. You can be a citizen
of this nation or that nation, but you don’t
get to define the whole idea of nationhood
and civil government.
And most certainly you don’t get to redefine
the doctrine of the church. You can belong
to this church or that church, but if you
are born again, if you’ve come by faith
to Christ, God puts his people and grafts
them into the church. He adds to the church
those that are to be saved.
So that’s at least a general starting point.
Yes, it’s an agreement. Yes, it’s kind
of like a contract, but the issues are life
and death. It’s being bound up in a bundle
of life with the Lord.
The most important covenants of scripture
we think of in terms of our salvation, being
a little selfish. We want to know, “How
am I related to God?” The evangelical line
is, “Do you have a personal relationship
with Jesus?” Well, you know what? Everyone
has a personal relationship with Jesus. They
either personally love him or personally hate
him, but there’s no neutral ground. That
opens the door to another discussion later
on. We are covenant creatures. We’re either
covenant keepers or covenant breakers.
The other thing I think we have to throw in
here is that covenant is inevitable because
of everything we’ve said up to this point.
We can’t be God because he’s the creator
and we are creatures, because there can be
no crossing of that metaphysical boundary.
The only way God can relate to us personally
is by covenant.
He can run the universe, he can declare our
destinies, but if he’s going to talk to
us or love us it’s going to be covenant,
not by mystical interpenetration. We don’t
get to rise to the level of divinity. We don’t
get to be God, so he condescends to this relationship
that we call covenant.
A couple months ago at school one of the teachers
said, “Hey Greg, I just had an idea! Is
it alright to call a covenant a relationship?”
I hope I wasn’t rude. I think I just kind
of blinked a few times and said, “Yeah,
that’s great. The question is what kind?”
Our generation is great about relationships,
like Facebook. I don’t know if all social
media has it. I imagine it does. “Are you
in a relationship?” What in the world does
that mean? On one level, everything in the
universe is related to everything else. We
have the same God. We exist in terms of matter
in 3-dimensional space and time and so on.
What kind of relationship?
Covenant relationships are very particular.
The nature of the most basic are defined for
us in scripture. I guess that’s what we
want to talk about.
Emily: Yes. You listed the five points that
we wanted to talk about sort of in bullet
succession, so let’s slow down and take
each of them in turn. First of all, lordship
or sovereignty I guess you would say is a
synonym for that.
Greg: Sovereignty, suzerainty, if you want
to use an old Hittite word – it means God’s
in control.
Emily: That’s a Hittite word?
Greg: The whole field of covenant studies
perked up in the early 1900s when archeology
became a thing. It hadn’t been. People began
to, first of all, discover there actually
were Hittites and the Bible was right about
that, surprise surprise. Then Hittite treaties
began to show up and they seemed to be very
well-organized and have a particular format.
Theologians began to say, “Well look, maybe
this is where the Bible got its ideas.”
Because of the suzerainty form, theologians
began asking questions. “Is there a format
for biblical covenants?” People began to
look around and look at the material, particularly
Deuteronomy, which is a covenant renewal document,
and began to see that there are similarities
between what the Bible does and between what
Hittite covenants do.
The thing about Hittite covenants is the king
declares them unilaterally. These are not
covenants of parity between equal individuals
until we talk about a covenant that God makes
or that we make with an appeal to God. God’s
in charge. He’s God. That one’s automatic.
We shouldn’t have to think about it. Unfortunately,
we do need to think about it because we’re
sinners and we don’t like God to tell us
what to do, but that’s the starting point.
God is either the originator – covenant
of works, covenant of grace, marriage, church,
civil government…
Emily: So an example of that would be in the
marriage ceremony. “We are gathered together
in the sight of God.”
Greg: Yes, and usually there’s a reference
to Jesus who adorned marriage by his first
miracle in Cana of Galilee. That’s not just
a passing thing, “Wow, isn’t this a neat
coincidence?” That’s a reminding that
both under the old covenant and the new, God
is the Lord of marriage.
I remember a friend of mine who had just recently
come to Christ. This was ages ago. She was
listening apparently to some kind of tape
I had done on the Heidelberg Catechism or
something, and she said, “Yeah, before today
I didn’t understand that marriage was for
the glory of God.”
“Wow, I’m glad you understand that now.”
It just didn’t occur to me that somebody
would name the name of Christ, even as a very
young Christian, and not understand that God
is the Lord of marriage and ordains what marriage
is like, yet today it’s kind of an important
thing. As I said earlier, we don’t get to
reinvent marriage. God defines it. He’s
the Lord of it.
We could take this through church and state.
I assume you want to keep it simple for now.
Emily: And we need to keep moving, but that
is an easy mistake to make, I think, even
if you’ve grown up on the Westminster Catechism
that says, “Before anything else, everything
is for God’s glory. Man’s chief end is
to glorify God.” It’s easy to know the
answer and then think, “Does that mean the
way that I arrange my house is for the glory
of God? Does that mean the way I drive my
car is to the glory of God?” because we
might need to talk about my road rage.
Greg: Of course the biblical answer is yes,
but then the next is what does that mean?
What does that look like? Is there a list
of rules in the Bible? Well, that’s a long
discussion, but before we get to the list
of rules, when God represents himself to us
he historically speaks through a person. He
establishes a chain of command, a system of
revelation.
This is God’s nature. The Father reveals
himself in the Son. The Son is his very image,
the brightness of his glory, the express image
of his person. So when God comes to us he
introduces the concept of a mediator. Ultimately,
the mediator of all covenants is Christ. This
is the ongoing theme of scripture.
Everything is in and for Jesus, but then within
human relationships that doesn’t stop. God
sets up a chain of command. In marriage you
can talk about the relationship of husband
and wife, then parents together, over against
children, over against pets and the house
and the yard and all that. There is a flow
of authority.
This point is going to bring us back to, “So,
I’m a father. I need to know how to raise
my children. How is it that I get this from
God?” This is where we start talking about
the doctrine of scripture. God reveals himself
in Jesus, but Jesus reveals himself in his
written word, which on the one hand we all
have, but then he also gives particular people
within church, within family, even within
state to interpret and apply. The rest of
us are to be in submission, and yet not in
an absolute sense because they’re not God.
There’s a whole lot of discussion that could
go on there, and needs to go on, lest we make
huge mistakes, but we can at least set this
over against the pagan idea that I reach out
and touch the infinite. I become God, and
every decision I make, every thought I feel
in my heart is now divine and beyond question.
That’s not biblical Christianity remotely;
however, it’s very popular today.
Emily: So that’s representation or hierarchy.
The next point is stipulations, or I guess
you’d say rules or duties – what we are
to do and what we are not to do. In the case
of marriage you’d have all of the “to
love and to cherish, in sickness and in health”
and all that.
Greg: Yes. When we say rules, it’s easy
to misunderstand. I’ve opted for promises
and requirements. I also sometimes say rules
and tools, depending on what we’re talking
about. When we’re talking about people I
think we need to talk about promises and obligations;
otherwise, it degenerates really fast into
a list of do’s and don’t’s. Biblical
wisdom and biblical morality is far beyond,
“Have you kept this? Yes or no? Check off
the box.”
Emily: Have I loved my neighbor?
Greg: Yes, and who is my neighbor? It was
those kinds of things that provoked Jesus
to some of his most profound discourses. What
does it mean to have kept the commandments?
“I’ve kept all of these from my youth
up.”
“Really? Mm-hmm. Go sell everything you
have, give to the poor, and come and follow
me.”
“Oh, hmm, not sure about that one.”
Let me also introduce the word tools here.
When a king, through his ambassador or prince
or general, calls someone into his service,
when you’re called into service, especially
if you’re called out of the slave market
or from poverty, you have nothing and you’re
called to serve a king, you kind of need some
stuff.
When I got my first job at Sears, I worked
in the shoe department and they gave me a
name badge. You think, “That’s really
exciting.” Well, what it meant was that
I could walk into the back without being stopped
by security. I could go into the stockroom,
the storerooms, the back offices and such.
It was an entrée into all kinds of things
that other people did not have.
They gave me a number…
Emily: “I am not a number. I’m a free
man!”
Greg: I was waiting for that. They gave me
a number that allowed me to access the brand
new technology called computer cash registers.
They gave me a handbook of all the codes that
would allow me to access that machine. They
gave me this little stupid-looking mustard-colored
vest that again marked me off as their employee,
and all their employees would know that I
was such and would respect that fact. And
I’m sure they gave me one or two other things
which enabled me to do this job, to act on
their behalf.
I could take money. I could take hundreds
or thousands of dollars from complete strangers
because I had these things that marked me
off as their representative. These were tools
I needed to do the job. We also had paper
sacks and plastic sacks. They were still legal
in those days.
Emily: They still are in places other than
California.
Bryan: In the Free Realms.
Emily: In the United States of America.
Greg: We had tape of all kinds, we had stock
and merchandise to sell. They gave me tools
in order so that I could perform the function
they had for me. These were a blessing. These
were a positive thing for me. They gave me
status, but very simply they enabled me to
do a job.
When God calls us into covenant relation,
whatever that relationship is, he will equip
us by his Word and Spirit and by other externals
with whatever we need to do the job. He provides
the tools, and chief of these is his Word
– well, Word and Spirit. You can’t separate
them and shouldn’t try.
We want to know how to be a good husband or
good wife. We have the Bible to tell us and
we have the Spirit to make it real in us.
We want to know how to be a good church member,
how to be a good pastor or elder. We have
the Bible that tells us.
The Bible is not something we run into at
a second level of representation. God reveals
and represents himself in scripture, but when
we ask, “What is this representation?”
we open the Bible again. It’s not just information
but it is a tool, a guide book for dominion
and service, for love, for relationship.
This is crucial. We need to not bring it down
to the level of mere legality. Most certainly
there’s a legal side. When you defined covenant
you spoke of a legal and personal bond, but
we must not raise the legal dimension to the
point where we lose the personality and the
spiritual dimension.
So that’s the third point.
Emily: Moving on to sanctions or oaths.
Greg: Oaths and sanctions. The great example
here that we’ll get to way down the line,
I imagine, is Abraham. God has made a promise
to Abraham in Chapter 12 of Genesis. Abraham
has acted on that. He’s acted in faith.
We’ve had the doctrine of justification
by faith introduced in Chapter 15.
God formalizes this by a very odd ceremony,
but it wasn’t odd in the ancient world.
God tells Abraham to take a bunch of sacrificial
animals, cut them up in bloody pieces, and
create a path. Abraham no doubt recognized
this. The Hittite covenants are similar.
You create this bloody path, then the one
upon whom the obligations are being placed
walks down that path, saying in fact, “I
promise to fulfill my obligations, and should
I fail, may my body be torn in pieces like
these animals. May my flesh be fed to the
birds of heaven and the beasts of the field.
May I die a horrible death because I have
failed.” It’s a self-maledictory oath.
Maledictory is to speak evil concerning oneself.
What no doubt surprised Abram was that he
was not required to walk the bloody path.
God walked it. That’s something we’ll
talk about as we talk about the covenant of
grace, and later as we talk about Abram. But
we can see that there is an oath here, and
the oath calls down sanctions – blessings
if we’re faithful, curses if we’re not.
As we’re already getting a glimpse from
the thing with Abraham, our odds of being
faithful are zero. We’re not going to be.
We had one shot with that at Adam and we failed.
So from there forward, any kind of oath has
to fall upon God himself, any oath that’s
going to accomplish salvation and secure inheritance.
Only in terms of that are we then in a position
to swear any kind of oath and fealty to God.
Emily: Am I right in thinking that it’s
with these sanctions that the signs and seals
are associated?
Greg: Yes. The oath is often portrayed or
incarnated or embodied in some kind of sign
or seal. In Abraham’s case, after the initial
covenant-cutting ceremony, in Chapter 17 God
imposes the ritual of circumcision. “You’re
going to circumcise the foreskin of your sons
at eight days old. And any convert who enters
the faith, you’re going to mark in their
flesh the very nature of this covenant.”
In the New Testament the signs are baptism
and the Lord’s Supper.
These things ratify and recognize the reality
of the covenant. They’re not magic, but
they are legal covenant realities that call
God to witness and to do what he has said.
When we throw ourselves upon God in repentance
and say, “There’s no hope in my flesh.
I know I must be born again. Jesus, wash me
with your blood. Wash me with the Holy Spirit,”
baptism witnesses to that. We are appealing
to the reality that’s behind baptism, and
God honors that – the thing he has pictured,
the thing that is written in the gospel.
Signs are always interpreted, and that’s
another discussion for another time. But when
we make the signs stand by themselves they
tend to become magic rites. In the Bible they’re
also interpreted by the preached word or the
written word. God always tells us what these
things mean, and then he gives us the signs
and seals to appeal to our other senses, so
that we not only hear the word but we feel
it as water upon our bodies, and we taste
it as bread and wine in our mouths. Yet the
emphasis is most certainly on the word itself.
Emily: Right, and that brings us to the final
point of the covenant, which is continuity
or inheritance, which we’ve kind of alluded
to all along the way, because again everything
is so enfolded on itself in these united promises
of God, the structure, but key to the sustenance
of a covenant is how it’s going to continue.
All the covenants that God makes with us in
Adam and Noah and Abraham are for a long time.
As David says when he walks in before the
Lord, “You’ve spoken to your servant of
a great while to come.” When God said forever,
he meant forever.
Greg: When we look at succession over multiple
generations – and the Bible constantly uses
the word generation, not merely years, although
it does that occasionally – the idea is
that we’re supposed to have children and
they’re supposed to have children and then
they’re supposed to have children.
This relationship that we have with the sovereign
God, the Creator, is to be extended and transmitted
across time, across generations, from one
group of people living at the same time to
another group of people who come later and
live at the same time, and so on.
Some things are involved here. First of all,
you’ve got to have kids. If there are no
children this doesn’t work. But also in
the New Testament it becomes clear that there
are ways to have children that do not involve
natural procreation. It’s called evangelism.
You can win other people to faith in Christ
so that they can become sons of God as well,
even though they’re not your family members
and they were strangers to the covenants of
promise until they heard the gospel and believed.
There’s this basic idea of bringing more
and more people into this relationship with
God. As we talk about the nature of Zion,
of the new Jerusalem later on, why that is
I think will become clearer.
Having said that then, rebooting back to the
beginning, “How does this work?” It begins
with a sovereign God who decrees the end from
the beginning. If we were left with this we
would say, “Okay, how are we going to make
this thing work over multiple generations?”
Well, look at the United States Constitution
and see how well that worked. It did pretty
good. It had a good run of 200 years more
or less. There was that Civil War thing.
When we try to invent something and extend
it over generations, we don’t do very well.
It requires the sovereign power and faithfulness
of God, his promise to be a God to believers
and their seed after them, generation after
generation after generation.
How does he do that? He does it by his Word,
in which he reveals himself in his gospel,
which promises that if we believe in the Lord
Jesus we’ll be saved. Then through his Holy
Spirit he works out those blessings in the
hearts of those who hear according to his
purpose, then tasks them with the same job.
Raise your children in the nurture and admonition
of the Lord, and go win other people to Christ.”
And this keeps working until Jesus comes back,
until all of God’s elect are saved and all
those for whom Jesus died have come to faith,
which will be an exceeding great number that
no man can number of every nation, kindred,
people and tongue. That’s the plan. That’s
where the New Jerusalem ends up.
Emily: So that is the structure of a covenant.
This is a good time to pause for questions
and tea.
Bryan: One of the things that definitely tempts
every generation is the very simple problem
of trying to supplement the things that God
has promised he will bless. For the purpose
of covenant he’s promised to bless the work
of evangelism. He promises to give his Spirit
for that. In the act of child-rearing the
same thing applies, even if it’s not your
biological children, in the act of adoption
or in the act of mentorship.
There’s a parallel here to other things
that God has blessed. He’s promised to grow
his kingdom through the dual ministry of the
Word and the sacraments. Without going too
far off-topic, there are a myriad of programs
and new ways of doing things and rapping for
Jesus that is not promised to grow his kingdom.
Emily: That’s kind of like in the Word,
right? It’s a very word-focused medium,
no?
Bryan: Let’s not stretch this too far.
Greg: Well, rapping would be better than puppet
shows for Jesus, at least.
Emily: Or how about flannelgraph? No, sorry.
I don’t want to hate too much on flannelgraphs.
We’ve already offended how many people?
There are other flannelgraph users too.
Greg: Thank you, Bryan. Please jump back in
to continue that thought, but I just wanted
to say that I wanted to go there and I forgot.
I’m so glad you brought that up because
you’re absolutely right. We’re presenting
a biblical vision of continuing the faith
from generation to generation, but as I said
this all begins with a sovereign God. What
happens if you don’t have a sovereign God?
What if your God is kind of weak and puny
or doesn’t want to interfere or doesn’t
want to mess with men’s wills? Then we have
to do it for him. We have to find other ways
to convince people, since God’s not going
to do it. His Word obviously isn’t powerful
enough; in fact, it’s offensive. So what
are the ways that we sell any product and
build a consumer base without being offensive?
The church has tried all of them.
Emily: Charles Finney was the master of it,
right?
Bryan: I was just going to say, we can blame
Charles Finney.
Emily: He wasn’t the originator, but we
can blame a lot on him.
Greg: He most certainly wasn’t, but he’s
a good American example. Finney was the guy
who said, “There is absolutely nothing miraculous
about revival. It is technique. It can be
done scientifically. And if all of the pastors
in the new republic had been using these techniques,
the millennium would have arrived a long time
ago.”
He was just absolutely certain that it’s
all basically, “Convince people to be good
with sufficient persuasion methods,” and
his were not too different from selling vacuum
cleaners. It’s not that hard to get people
to weep. I’ve done it before, teaching.
It’s not that hard to get people to walk
down an aisle or raise their hand. Changing
a heart is something only God can do.
Bryan: And those techniques will not – well,
I should clarify. The Lord may end up using
it, but those techniques will not have the
same return rate that God’s way does, let’s
put it that way.
Greg: If the word of God is in there, God
honors his word in the most strange and limited
of circumstances. He can speak through the
mouth of a donkey, but he hasn’t promised
to do so on any regular basis. So when we
find out that someone came to Christ at a
puppet show for Jesus, we should just give
God the honor. That doesn’t mean we should
go out and invest in a lot of puppets.
Bryan: It also means we should not use the
fact that someone else is doing it wrong to
stand on a platform of pridefulness, because
the fact is that you faithfully expositing
a portion of scripture has no more power in
and of itself than the puppet show.
Emily: Right. Amen to that.
Alice: Before we move on, I do have one point
of interest that I would love to further clarify,
if anybody has any thoughts. That was on the
difference between a legal obligation and
a personal obligation in this context.
When I was just conceptualizing that and listening
to you talk about it, Greg, I couldn’t help
but think that a lot of that would really
overlap if there is a true good. Really I
think it would go just to the extent of God’s
law, and then the personal obligations would
be separate and not always overlap completely
with that. I’d be interested to hear your
thoughts on the distinction between those
two things.
Greg: If I understand the question and what
you said, I think you understand the answer.
When we say legal and personal, that’s not
to say there is a legal over here and there’s
a personal over there. It’s to say there
are two sides, a head and tails, to this coin.
There are laws that we can write down that
come with God’s authority. They come in
propositions. We can discuss them and we can
more or less measure our external conformity
to them.
Part of what we’re talking about here is
largely the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus looked
and said, “You have heard that it’s been
said….” and he quoted scripture. “The
Bible did indeed say that, but you’re taking
it too shallowly, too narrowly. Let’s understand
the full scope. Let’s understand what it
means.”
It’s not simply to not take a knife and
run your neighbor through with it. Let’s
understand compassion and respect for the
image of God and laying down your life for
your friend and all of the rest. In other
words, yes, it’s all the law of God but
it’s the law of God understood in terms
of love, one person for another.
But if we just start with the personal then
we run the same thing. “As long as I’m
loving somebody and being committed and being
there for them” – but wait, now we need
to say, “What does that look like? What
does that mean? What are the rules?”
So in saying legal and personal – and I
think that’s my formula, and it’s not
inspired but I think it’s true as far as
it goes – what I’m trying to get across
at least is that we certainly look at the
covenant as a legal document, but if we reduce
it to a contract and simply something that
requires a number of outward actions that
can be measured by taking snapshots and running
them in and saying, “Look, he did this,
he did this, he did this, he’s good,”
we don’t understand. Marriage doesn’t
work that way and our relationship to Christ
doesn’t work that way. There is the commitment
of the heart.
Sometimes I’ve said it’s a spiritual bond,
but do I mean the heart or do I mean the Holy
Spirit? Well, yes. The Spirit of God ultimately
is the personal bond between Christ and us,
and us and one another. His Spirit dwells
in us and in him, so that we are bone of his
bone, flesh of his flesh. We are members of
one body together, and it reaches to the heart.
So whichever phrase you want to use. As I
say, these aren’t inspired definitions but
that’s what I’m trying to get at. Does
that help?
Alice: It does, yes. Thank you for that.
Bryan: I’ll add to that as well. One of
the pitfalls that is ever present is the temptation
towards legalism, of course. Describing this
aspect of covenants as being legal and personal,
in addition to defining strictly what you
can do and what you can’t do in so many
words – “Thou shalt not kill” – that
is pretty straightforward.
There’s also the personal element. It’s
talked about more in the epistles, especially
by Paul, that what is not sin to one person
but is sin to another – those can both be
true at the same time because they fall under
the umbrella of Christian liberty. So it’s
not as simple as just saying, “Some people
sin when they do X. Therefore, everyone should
avoid doing X because it is sinful for those
few people.”
The personal element comes in when you say,
“This person should not do this because
it’s a sin for them.” Maybe drinking alcohol
for them leads them invariably to drunkenness
so they should avoid that, or it infringes
upon their conscience. In such a situation,
being with that person, Person B, for whom
drinking is not a sin, should refrain.
I think that there’s a good case to be made
that flaunting your liberty in that case around
such a person could be considered sin, but
the inverse is therefore not true, that for
Person B drinking at all is always a sin now.
Greg: What you’re talking about is wisdom.
That’s absolutely excellent, Bryan. I hadn’t
thought about it in that context, but that’s
what we’re talking about. We’re talking
about what if? What if these conditions enter
in? What happens when two commandments seem
to be at odds with one another? What if my
brother is a sinner and so am I, but we’re
sinners in opposite directions and our sins
are getting in the way of our fellowship?
What then?
There’s a lot of “what if’s” where
we have to work it out in real space and time
with real people, and we can’t just throw
it off on the abstract principles. I think
you’ve given a good Pauline example of one
thing that can mean. I think that’s excellent.
Alice: That definitely helps as a visual aid
to put that in context.
Bryan: I’m glad it wasn’t just incoherent
rambling.
Alice: No, thank you.
Emily: I was thinking about this in the context
of marriage. David and I have a legal relationship,
but it would be so silly to call it only that.
We have personal bonds as well. I think we
all know marriage doesn’t really work if
you have only personal bonds and no legal
relationship, or the other way around.
Greg: Back in the 60’s that was the plea
against marriage. “I don’t need a piece
of paper to show that I love you.” No, you
don’t, but you need the piece of paper to
show that you’re married, because loving
someone and being married to them are not
the same thing. We need to have serious conversation
about “What do you mean by love, anyway?”
Often it meant, “I feel really good about
you until somebody better comes along.”
In those cases we have the legal bond that
says, “How you feel right now doesn’t
matter,” but in the long range over marriage
it actually does. The Bible is full of commandments
about loving one another and being ravished
with each other’s love and enjoying each
other’s beauty and bodies and all of that,
and yet it doesn’t get too specific or too
graphic.
In my family, we love eating each other’s
food. That’s a thing. I’m sure there are
marriages where that’s not a thing, and
people go out for dinner almost every night,
but that’s part of our personal bond because
I recognized in my wife something – and
I’m picking one obvious thing I can talk
about in public. That’s one obvious thing
where we can delight in each other and share
and grow together, and it pulls us closer
together and it’s pulled our kids in after
us, because we all like to cook.
People ask us, “What do you mean the dinner
takes two hours?” Well, first you have to
get the food and you have to make the food
and you have to kibitz over the food, then
you have to eat the food, then all these conversations
have sidetracked us into all kinds of things,
then there’s family devotions in there toward
the end, and prayer. Then there’s cleaning
up, because generally everybody does the dishes
except me, because they won’t let me. My
girls are sure they know the only right way
to do dishes, and they may be right.
That whole thing is part of the personal side
of commitment and sharing a life together,
and that can’t be reduced to a mere law
code. I’ve said we do this. Not everybody
does this. For some people it’s art or books
or water skiing or spelunking or whatever,
but there’s more of that personal interchange
and growth together. It’s very important
to covenant life.
Every family is different and every church
is different. Every nation is different. Lewis
has some things to say about this in That
Hideous Strength.
Emily: And I wish we had time to get into
them. Let’s wrap up with a quick rundown
of the two biggest covenants that we deal
with as humans – the covenant of works and
the covenant of grace. Maybe we can point
out the five points in each of these.
Greg: We come to the Adamic covenant. It’s
been given lots of names – the covenant
of creation, the covenant of works, the covenant
of life. The Bible does not exactly give it
a name, to the point that some people have
said, “That’s not even a covenant because
the Bible doesn’t call it one. Oh yeah,
there’s that passage in Hosea that says
‘They like Adam have broken the covenant,’
but that means something else.”
No, that’s almost certainly what it does
mean, that it is a covenant. But we’re back
to, “If it walks like a duck and talks like
a duck and wears a sailor hat and has a big
D on it, it probably is a duck.”
We look at what God did with Adam in the garden.
He presents himself as God. Adam is his image.
He grants dominion and stewardship to Adam
and his wife and to humanity in general. He
gives them stuff to work with – the whole
world, as well as their bodies and their minds
and imaginations and hearts. He lays before
them a task, “Fill the world, subdue it,
glorify it.”
Emily: And keep the garden.
Greg: He starts with keeping the garden as
an apprenticeship. The twin sacraments are
seals/oaths on this covenant. There are two
trees. One, “Eat of this. It’s the Tree
of Life. You will continue in life as long
as you eat of it.” It’s the communion
meal with God. The other, “Don’t eat of
this one yet. It’s the Tree of the Knowledge
of Good and Evil.”
We’ll be talking about this, but just in
passing now, it is the Tree of Knowledge of
Good and Evil. It is necessarily the Tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. There are
two ways you can learn good and evil – but
not eating and by eating. Either way is going
to teach you good and evil, but in very different
ways. We’ll talk more about that at another
time.
If you continue in this grace that you’ve
received – and it is gracious, it is merciful.
God is not obligated to do any of this, but
he does and he makes a promise and commits
himself. And having committed himself, if
Adam is faithful, if he plays by the rules
God has set before him, the life that he’s
received he will continue in until the task
is done – however many generations, however
many centuries or millennia it takes. He will
live in life and finish the task, and then
the next level takes place. On the other hand,
if he eats of the forbidden tree then he will
bring damnation and destruction upon himself
and all of his natural posterity.
At that point there didn’t seem like there
would be any, because God said, “In the
day you eat thereof you shall surely die.”
But if somehow he were to have any children,
they would bear the same curse because Adam
is this covenant representative.
Because it involves particular actions he’s
required to do and not do, it’s often called
the covenant of works. I tend to name the
covenants after whomever they’re made with,
but as long as we’re clear with our terms,
covenants of works is fine. So there’s that.
Well, we know what happened. We’ve read
Genesis. Adam sinned. The instigation of the
devil by willful disobedience Adam took away
all of that, all the divine gifts for himself
and posterity, and at that point the story
could have ended, and that’s what everyone
was expecting. God had this great plan, it
didn’t work, oh well, dump the universe
into hell and come up with a better game to
play. But then God introduced a different
idea, a different principle. It’s grace
also, but now grace in the face of sin.
Before, God was being gracious in the generic
sense of giving Adam stuff that, as a creature,
he had no claim on. Now he’s got an anti-claim.
He deserves death and hell, and yet God is
going to find a way. God knows a way, he just
hasn’t told us yet, that Adam can escape
that judgment and again be received into life
and to fellowship and to blessing.
Now God announces it. The garden came with
a promise, something about, “I will put
enmity between thee and the woman,” Genesis
3:15-16, “and between thy seed and her seed.
It shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise
his heel.”
God accompanies with that a sacramental sign.
“You see this animal? Watch it die. Here
are some clothes from the animal’s skins.
Wear them.”
Now put that all together. You’ve got 4,000
years. They didn’t know, but as it turns
out mankind had 4,000 years to figure out
what in the world that all meant and how it
explained how a good, holy, and just God could
love and receive sinners back to himself without
denying his justice and holiness. That makes
the Bible the greatest mystery story ever
written.
God goes on for 4,000 years through all the
Old Testament dropping hints as to what that
means and where this is going, but by and
large, until Jesus came, nobody really understood.
This we call the covenant of grace. God structured
it under the old covenant in the discrete
covenants of promise. I say discrete. They’re
recognizably packaged, but they kind of bleed
each into the next.
Emily: There’s a continuity to them, for
sure.
Greg: There’s a continuity even within them,
but the New Testament does speak of the covenants
(plural) of promise. We can think of the promises
the covenant made with Adam and his wife at
the garden gate, later on Noah, then Abram
becomes Abraham. We can think of the covenant
with Israel through Moses at Mount Sinai,
the covenant with David, then finally the
restoration covenant, one that’s often ignored
but it was the covenant administration that
was up and running when Jesus came. Those
are all promises, and the promises get clearer.
We get more information, more details as to
how God is going to do this and who’s the
person that’s going to make this work? God’s
our Savior, right? So who’s this Messiah?
He’s a great hero. Is he a prophet? No,
he’s a king. Wait, is he a priest? What?
What’s he going to do? He’s going to reign,
yeah. Suffer? What? No!
The fathers under the older dispensation struggled
trying to figure it out. The angels themselves
tried to look into this and tried to figure
out, “What’s God up to? What’s this
all about?”
As each covenant unfolded, people living at
that time had to live in terms of it, but
every one of them focused on this promise.
God’s got a plan. He’s got a Savior. He’s
the Savior. Huh? What? Trust God. Believe
God. Believe the promise. He will save. He
will do what Adam couldn’t do.
As everyone keeps asking, “How? When? Where?”
God keeps dropping more and more hints until
the day that Jesus comes and gives his life
a ransom for sinners. He rises from the dead,
ascends to heaven, and pours out his Spirit.
Then, “Oh, that Savior! That king. That
prophet. That priest. That salvation. Oh!
Let’s go tell everybody!”
This is the covenant of grace, much simpler
than the older covenants – fewer rites,
fewer ceremonies – because now we’re out
of the shadows. Everything’s open and clear.
God is not hinting and peeping anymore. He’s
telling us very plainly.
In light of the New Testament revelation we
can look back at the old and say, “Oh!”
If you read any Agatha Christie mystery you
get to the solution and you look back and
suddenly it’s, “Oh, it’s so obvious!
How did I miss that?” but along the way
it wasn’t that obvious. God hid the mystery
of Christ for 4,000 years, but looking back
we see it so clearly. That’s a taste of
covenant theology.
Emily: Have you seen the movie The Prestige?
Greg: That’s the one I’ve missed.
Alice: I have not seen it.
Emily: Bryan, you’ve seen it, right?
Bryan: I have seen it I don’t even know
how many times now – less than 10.
Greg: I hear you saying we should see it.
Emily: Not necessarily. David says yes. I
don’t love it, but it’s an exceedingly
well-made movie. But what makes me think of
it in this context is that the movie is about
magic tricks, and the movie is also one big
magic trick. So as you re-watch it you see,
“Of course! How did I not understand this
from the very beginning?” and yet you keep
coming back to it, and every time you watch
it you see more.
Reading the Bible is like that, seeing these
covenants. “Oh yeah, they’re all the same
covenant! It’s just one big covenant! Oh
wait, no, but there are 7. But they’re all
one. But…” It’s a marvelous experience.
Bryan: Definitely.
Emily: I think that’s all the time we have
for today. We’ve short-changed the covenant
of grace, but hopefully we’ll be talking
about that a lot in episodes to come.
Greg: Alice, thank you for joining us. It’s
a pleasure to meet you.
Alice: Thank you so much. Thank you for having
me on. I really appreciate it. It’s been
lovely listening to you all.
Emily: It’s been great.
Greg: We hope to hear more from you in the
future.
Alice: Thank you.
Emily: Thanks, Bryan, also for being here.
Thank you, Greg. Thanks to David, our producer
and my lawfully-wedded husband. Thanks to
all you all who are listening. You can send
us an email if you have questions or insults
or thoughts or comments. If you think we’re
totally off-base, send us an email. If you
think you really like the show, also send
us an email because we love to hear that.
It’s really encouraging. Who else do I have
to thank? I feel like I’m missing someone.
Bryan: The Lord.
Emily: Well, we thanked him at the beginning.
Bryan: Does that mean you can’t thank him
a second time? How stingy are you with your
thankfulness?
Emily: I don’t remember how I close the
episodes, guys. What do I say?
Greg: I don’t remember what you say, so
just make up something.
Emily: Oh goodness, this is dreadful. Thank
you all for listening. Hope to see you next
time.
