Abrahamic Covenant

[JML]

What is the Reformed Baptist view of the Abrahamic covenant? Is it completely fulfilled in Christ or still ongoing but modified (such as circumcision being done away)? If modified, what has changed? My questions are not limited to Baptists. Anyone can answer.

 

[JML]

Bump

 

[KMK]

What is the Reformed Baptist view of the Abrahamic covenant?

LBC Chapter 7:

Paragraph 2. Moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace,2 wherein He freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him, that they may be saved;3 and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life, His Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe.

Paragraph 3. This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman,5 and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament;6 and it is founded in that eternal covenant transaction that was between the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect;7 and it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen Adam that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality, man being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms on which Adam stood in his state of innocency.8

Reformed Baptists believe the Abrahamic Covenant (at least in its spiritual sense) was the Covenant of Grace being 'revealed by further steps'. The Abrahamic Covenant is now 'fully discovered' in the New Testament.

 

[JML]

The Abrahamic Covenant is now 'fully discovered' in the New Testament.

So by "fully discovered" would that mean fulfilled and no longer in effect? Therefore the New Covenant is the only active covenant which is the representation of the covenant of Grace.

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

John, here are two threads that go into this topic; first the Reformed Baptist view, by Dr. Bob Gonzales; and second my own, from the paedobaptist view. (The initial thread had gotten so long and meandering [4 pages @ 60 posts per page], that I just started a new thread in response).


A Credobaptist Exposition and Application of John 1:12-13

http://www.puritanboard.com/f57/john-1-12-13-baptism-revisited-38633/

 

[JML]

Thank you Steve. Those should keep me busy for a while.

 

[JML]

Follow up question. If all of the "historical" covenants as Dr. Gonzales calls them are fulfilled in Christ and only the New Covenant remains, is God no longer bound by His oath to never again flood the entire earth?

 

[Peairtach]

 

[Jerusalem Blade]

John, I can't speak for Dr. Bob, though I do not think the particular covenant the LORD made with Noah and all living creatures on earth in Genesis 9:8-17 fits into those covenants fulfilled in Christ, as this was only a covenant whereby God promised not to ever destroy the earth and all flesh again by water. He reiterated it in Isaiah 54:9: "For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth..."

Yet not by water but by fire judgment will strike the whole earth again: "Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men" (2 Peter 3:6-7). And the promise regarding this pre-dates even the promise to Noah, when in the garden the LORD said to the serpent in the hearing of Adam and Eve, "And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15), for all the seed of the wicked one will partake of their father the devil's destruction in the fire of God's wrath which shall burn as an oven (Malachi 4:1), and continue in the lake of fire.

But the covenant with Noah stands, in that there shall be no universal flood of water again.

 

[MW]

There are two points from the 1677/89 Confession which indicate areas of continuity. Elect infants are saved by Christ and God promises His Holy Spirit to all the elect to make them willing and able to believe. The area left unspecified is how this promise comes to be administered to infants under the new covenant. Some discontinuity seems necessary from the antipaedobaptist perspective.

 

[Peairtach]

Follow up question. If all of the "historical" covenants as Dr. Gonzales calls them are fulfilled in Christ and only the New Covenant remains, is God no longer bound by His oath to never again flood the entire earth?

Christ didn't fulfil these historical covenants in "one way" so as to make them all , or all aspects of them obsolete. We learn that, e.g., from His fulfilment of the Mosaic law, in which the ceremonial law is fulfilled in one way, the civil law in another, and the moral law in another.

The New Testament is a second major administration of the Abrahamic Covenant after the Old Testament mediated by Moses. In Abraham's seed - Christ- all the families of the earth are blessed, the commonwealth of Israel includes Jews and Gentiles I'm spiritual equality within the Church, unlike under the Old Testament where Gentiles had to become Jews for full spiritual equality. The promise of land to the people of God has expanded to include the whole earth including Israel-Palestine. As part of God's covenant with Abraham, in this NT era, God has not permitted the Jewish people to demise, nor permitted there to be no remnant of true children of Abraham among them. There is also the promise of their national conversion. The New Testament being an expansionary administration of the Abrahamic Covenant, both adult professors of Christian faith and their children are included in its administration, and the covenant sign is suitable for females.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire using Tapatalk 2

 

[KMK]

Follow up question. If all of the "historical" covenants as Dr. Gonzales calls them are fulfilled in Christ and only the New Covenant remains, is God no longer bound by His oath to never again flood the entire earth?

I am not sure how Dr. Gonzales would respond. (He doesn't post on PB much anymore.) Some RBs (of the Nehemiah Coxe variety) believe that there is both an earthly and an heavenly aspect to the Noahic Covenant. The heavenly is fulfilled in Christ. As for the earthly, it is fulfilled by God each day that He does not flood the earth and will be finally fulfilled in the inauguration of the new heaven and new earth.

 

[JM]

Start here: 1689 Federalism | The distinctive biblical theology of confessional particular baptists

 

[Peairtach]

The Covenants are not all fulfilled in Christ, if by fulfilled in Christ we mean that in the sense that He completes their historical purpose in Himself, rather than picking up the supreme administration of them as the Theanthropos and Mediator.

This can certainly be said of e.g. the Noahic Covenant and the Abrahamic Covenant.

This is just my penny's worth and initial thoughts as I've never considered how Christ fulfills all of the historical covenants before. Thanks for the interesting line of thought.