Theme of being in God's place, mistaken for "RoCoW"

[Peairtach]

Isn't the typological and also real theme of God's people, in God's place, doing God's will, what some Covenant Theologians, are mistakenly calling a "Republication of the Covenant of Works" ?

In Eden we have Adam and Eve as God's people in God's place doing God's will. When they lose favour with God because of their braking the Covenant of Works, they are cast out of the Garden and the Earth is cursed.

This is a real judgment on Adam, but it is only typological of the much worse reality that could have befallen him, i.e. of being cast out of God's favour and grace altogether into Hell. Nevertheless it is a pointer to that. Here the loss of divine favour could have been avoided by Adam's perfect obedience. Hence the pre-Fall Covenant, however graciously instituted, is called the Covenant of Works.

The Antedeluvian World could have only been saved by grace through faith, leading to works as evidence of that grace and faith. The cleansing of the World by the Flood pointed to the casting of sinners out of the place of grace into a lost eternity. Only Noah and his family were in the place of safety God had provided for them.

Although there may be quite a strict correspondence between those sinners who drowned and thoise who ended-up in Hell, the type of the Flood as being swept by death out of God's place of favour is typological of the future New Heavens and New Earth being emptied of sinners, who end up in Hell. Besides a few may have believed Noah's message, but too late to get into the Ark (?)

With the people of Israel and the Land of Israel we have another type of the New Covenant and eschataloical reality of God's people, in God's place, doing God's will.

The condition to remaining in the Land is not perfect obedience as it was with Adam, for either individual Israelites or for the Israelites collectively.
Any Israelite who has true faith by grace will be justified before God. This faith will be evidenced by sanctification and good works.

As well as simple and temporary excommunication for certain offences, which involved loss of religious privileges, (partial?) shunning, and exile (?), there were other conditions for both individual Israelites who had true faith, individual Israelites who didn't have true faith, and for those who were strangers in the Land.

If excommunication wasn't carried out by the people, it could be carried out by God Himself imposing a curse. Or in certain circumstances, it seems that simple and temporary excommunication was said to be accompanied by God's curse.

For the most gross, flagrant, and presumptious (wilful) breaches of the 10C, there was no sacrifice available, but hence, the properly convicted individual was to be excommunicated by death without mercy. This would of course apply whether the individual concerned had true faith or not.

In individual cases, none of this meant that individual Israelites were in some kind of Covenant of Works, or in some kind of hybrid Covenant of Grace-Covenant of Works situation, if that were possible.

Nor did it mean that individuals in Israel were personally justified and sanctified by grace through faith, but kept from being cast out of the Land by excommunication in any of the three above levels by works. All it meant was that - just as in the New Covenant- grace and faith are evidenced by behaviour, and church sanctions only kick in when certain conditions have been breached by behaviour that may or may not point to the person's unbelief, so in Israel grace and faith were evidenced by works.

If certain works weren't evidenced church-nation sanctions kicked in at different levels. Some of these sanctions could lead to the restoration of the offender. Others could lead to his/her death. For the believers this excommunication by execution would be an entrance to glory from the typological Promised Land. For the unbelievers it would be an entrance to Hell.

None of this makes the Sinaitic Covenant a hybrid Covenant or Covenant of Works.

Any ability that truly believing Israelites had to keep their Covenantal noses clean was by saving grace. Any ability that "unbelieving" Israelites had to keep their noses clean was by common grace.

The whole Sinaitic system may seem in some ways "less gracious" than the New Covenant system, but it is not a hybrid covenant or CoW, which is impossible. It wasn't really "less gracious" anyway, as it was appropriate to the childhood church.

It was no more less gracious, than a father chastising his younger son with a belt, while his older son doesn't get the belt. Or a father teaching his younger son with picture-books, while his older son is just taught with word-books. It was an appropriate system for that time.

There was no RoCoW there, but the theme of God's people, in God's kingdom, doing God's will, makes further advances at Sinai, and somewhat echoes the Edenic situation, in places.

Sinai was through and through an administration of the Covenant of Grace. The only condition for justification before God was saving faith. There were conditions on what was acceptable behaviour within the Covenant admin, but acceptable behaviour was only ultimately by grace through faith, and the works were evidence of that.

The difference in conditions between the OC and NC can largely be put down to the fact that the NC Church is no longer a child but a rebellious adolescent.

More later..................

 

[TeachingTulip]

I find myself disagreeing with several points made in this post. Am I the only one?

 

[Peairtach]

I find myself disagreeing with several points made in this post. Am I the only one?

You'd have to tell us what they are, Ronda.

-----Added 11/30/2009 at 10:13:36 EST-----

So in the last post we saw that individuals under the Sinaitic/Mosaic/Old Covenant were justified by grace alone through faith alone just as we are.
Also their sanctification and good works which evidenced their belonging to the "righteous" or "just" was traced to the gracious work of God in their hearts.

What basis is there therefore for saying as the Republicationists seem to be saying or emphasising with their repeated teaching that the CoW was republished at Sinai, that Israel collectively would have remained in the Land by works or a hybrid of works and grace, if they had been allowed to remain in the Land. It is quite a different thing to say as the WCF says, that the moral law was republished at Sinai.

If the RoCoW folks are saying that there was a hypothetical RoCoW at Sinai, this is very different to a RoCoW proper. Sinners, in both the Old and New Covenants need to be reminded that the only means of salvation apart from Christ is by perfect moral obedience from conception to death. But this is very different from saying that Israelites could have bought personal salvation by works, or that Israel - collectively - could have remained in the Land by works rather than grace because if the requisite works had been produced for them to stay in the Land, all the Israelites would have been able to do, or want to do, is ascribe all the glory to God.

If Israel had been permitted to stay in the Land would they not have been obliged to ascribe this all to God's grace in working true faith and the resulting evidence of works in the hearts of the people?

Or would they have been able to say as the RoCoW advocates seem to posit, that their being allowed to remain in the place that symbolised God's favour was down to themselves, or down to a combination of themselves and God's grace?

 

[Irish Presbyterian]

It is to be remembered that there were two covenants made with Abraham. By the one his natural descendants through Isaac, were constituted a commonwealth, an external community; by the other his spiritual descendants were constituted into a church, [invisible of course, since, at that time, the only formal organization was that of the law.] The parties to the former covenant, were God, and the nation; to the other, God, and his true people. The promises of the national covenant, were national blessings; the promises of the spiritual covenant (i.e. the covenant of grace) were spiritual blessings, as reconciliation, holiness, and eternal life. The conditions of the one covenant [the old] were circumcision, and obedience to the law; the conditions of the other were, and ever have been, faith in the Messiah, as the seed of the woman, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world. There cannot be a greater mistake than to confound the national covenant with the covenant of grace, [that is, the old covenant with the new] and the commonwealth founded on the one, with the church founded on the other. When Christ came, the commonwealth was abolished, and there was nothing put in its place. The church [now made visible] remained. There was no external covenant, nor promise of external blessings, on condition of external rites, and subjection. There was a spiritual society, with spiritual promises, on condition of faith in Christ.” “The church is, therefore, in its essential nature, a company of believers, and not an external society, requiring merely external profession as the condition of membership. (Charles Hodge, Princeton Review, October, 1853)

-----Added 11/30/2009 at 06:59:34 EST-----

Many critics of federal theology misunderstand the tradition to be saying that the entire theocratic period as a works arrangement (i.e., that Old Testament believers were justified by their personal obedience). But this fails to recognize the nuances in classic covenant theology at this point; namely, that national Israel, with Moses as its mediator, is not the equivalent to the covenant of grace, with Christ as its mediator in both testaments. The two exist side by side throughout the theocratic era, one operating as a typological earthly kingdom on a works principle; the other operating as a spiritual kingdom on the grace principle. Meredeth Kline is a masterful exegete, but he is hardly the first to articulate these views.

As Paul makes clear in Galatians (especially chapter 3), there was the heavenly Zion and its way of salvation (grace alone through faith alone) and a typological earthly Zion and its way of national preservation (conditioned upon her obedience). The inheritance of the typological land was based on law, while the heavenly rest was based on promise, Paul insists. It is not an either/or here, but two distinct operations: the typological land promises indicating in a shadowy, figurative way what was to come when the true Israel would come and perfectly fulfill God's commands and the spiritual promises in which individual Israelites rested just as we do today (Heb. 4:1-5).

Scripture itself assumes a distinction between the typological land-promises for a transitory administration (national Israel) and the perpetuity of the Abrahamic covenant (of grace) for the salvation of believing Israelites. It is upon this logic that Paul's arguments in Romans 9-11 depend. We do not thereby hold that the Old Testament is equivalent to a "covenant of works," but that during the Mosaic "tutelage," the status of national Israel as the typological-theocratic kingdom of God on earth was transitory and conditional. Belonging to the nation (law) was not equivalent to being a child of Abraham (promise). Charles Hodge expresses it well:

Besides this evangelical character which unquestionably belongs to the Mosaic covenant ["belongs to," not "is equivalent to"], it is presented in two other aspects in the Word of God. First, it was a national covenant with the Hebrew people. In this view the parties were God and the people of Israel; the promise was national security and land prosperity; the condition was the obedience of the people as a nation to the Mosaic law; and the mediator was Moses. In this aspect it was a legal covenant. It said 'Do this and live.' Secondly, it contained, as does also the New Testament, a renewed proclamation of the covenant of works" ("Covenant of Grace," ed. Michael Bremmer, Sola Scriptura web page; cf. C. Hodge, Systematic Theology [Eerdmans, 1946], 117-122).

No Jewish person found justification in obedience under the Mosaic economy, but the servant-nation-like Adam, typological of Christ, could only be justified on those terms, as the exile and, finally, Jesus' "woes" (including the cursing of the fig tree) demonstrate. The nation is not justified and is not a type of the kingdom of God today, but Jewish people are still coming to saving faith just as their father Abraham.
(Michael Horton, What's really at stake?)

 

[Peairtach]

Very interesting, Irish Presbyterian.

I would say that by the fact that the Jews were already fallen creatures, and that the Jewish nation collectively consisted of already fallen creatures, any collective attainment to certain moral conditions that permitted God to let the Jews remain in the Land, would have to be by grace rather than works.

For every year - according to the Sinai grace-works scenario - that the Northern Kingdom of Israel was permitted to stay in the Land, and for every year that the Southern Kingdom of Judah was permitted to stay in the Land, they would have had somewhat in which to boast of their works rather than to boast in their God.

I don't know how the Covenant Theologians of your persuasion deal with this.

Re the Old Covenant state/kingdom of Israel, surely God had replaced this with Christ's mediatorial and everlasting Kingdom, which is seen in the visible Church. It's members constitute a Church-Nation or Kingdom of Priests. Obviously not all are the real deal, which is why we have the distinction between Church Visible and Invisible.

In His mediatorial rule over His Church and the World by Christ, all things, including earthly governments, are ordered "unto" or "for the sake of" His Kingdom of Priests.

There are conditions for remaining a member of the Kingdom of Priests. E.g. If I as a communicant member in the Free Church of Scotland, started going on shoplifting sprees, I would be excommunicated for a time, at least until I showed signs of repentance. But we don't posit that in New Covenant and Church that there is a works principle going on do we?

 

[Peairtach]

When we come to the New Covenant we also find that it has conditions, but that of course doesn't mean that it is a hybrid covenant of grace and works, or that when we attain to these conditions that we can boast that we attained to them by grace plus works, or by works alone.

Conditions of the New Covenant

(a)For personal salvation, including justification, adoption and sanctification, faith traced to the irristible saving grace of God. Someone who is only outwardly in the New Covenant and is yet an unbeliever can/will even end up in Hell if they don't have saving faith.

(b) For avoiding certain types of chastisement, sometimes even unto physical death, avoid sin and grow in sanctification as much as possible. See e.g. I Corinthians 11:17-34; Hebrews 12:3-29.

(c) For avoiding church discipline/sanctions certain conditions must be met in the New Covenant See e.g. Matthew 18; I Corinthians 5; II Corinthians 2:1-11. Those who experience church discipline are (hopefully temporarily) put out of Christ's realm into Satan's.

(d) For avoiding Christ taking the lampstand out of our midst, i.e. remove the blessing of the Spirit of Christ, as a local congregation or denomination, certain conditions must be met. E.g. Revelation 2-3.

It hardly goes without saying that the achieving of such conditions in the New Covenant or Old Covenant by sinful people must be done by grace.

When such conditions are achieved, are we to trace their achievement to our own innate powers?

The Eternal Realm

This is the final state in which all God's true people will be in God's place (New Heavens and New Earth) doing God's will. All others will be put outside into Hell.

This is the antitype, to which all the types of Eden and the Land of Israel pointed in different ways.

The Sinai Covenant has conditions like any Covenant including the New Covenant. It is not necessary or even possible to view it or any part of it as a RoCoW. If the Israelites had been able to stay in Israel by works or by grace plus works, it would have taught them that ultimate salvation was by works or grace plus works.

Instead, the works - if they had been forthcoming - would have evidenced grace working through faith in the people of Israel. That was and is an important lesson.

One of the typolological teaching aspects of the Sinai Covenant is that those outwardly in covenant with God that do not have justification by faith which is evidenced by works will be cast out of God's place of favour (ultimately this Earth in its transformed state) into Hell.

God's favour or lack of favour is firmly associated with location in various typological manifestations of the ultimate realities of the New Heavens and New Earth and Hell throughout the Scriptures.

The theme of God's people in God's place (Kingdom) doing God's will is a theme throughout the Bible.