This is the last post of my mini-series on the UNITY of the Old and New Testaments.
Directly below, are the titles of the preceding 9 parts which can all be found in the CATEGORY, Covenant Theology:
Part 1: What is Biblical Typology [One must have some understanding of typology to see how the testaments are unified]
Part 2: Unity of Old and New Testaments [too much material from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion was used to convey this point. I think it bored or overwhelmed readers]
Part 3: Passover: a type of the New Covenant in Christ’s blood – R C Sproul [The covenants of the Testaments are viewed as central to the structure of the testaments by those who hold to Covenant Theology – these are how God unfolded His plan of redemption. I hoped to convey that to readers via Sproul’s message]
Part 4: The Covenant by R C Sproul
Part 5: What is Dispensationalism? [This post was aimed at showing that Dispensationalism sees that there are two people of God, not one as the Bible puts forward: read Ephesians 1, about God electing a people before He formed the world.]
Part 6: What is typology [A review of this material via a different source because it is essential to grasping the unity of the Testaments. For example, Christ is pictured throughout the Old Testament in many events: in the Ark; in the Passover; in the Levitical sacrificial system; in the Tabernacle…. These systems, events…, POINTED to the coming Messiah. A study of Galatians and Hebrews will bring much clarity on such things.]
Part 7: The Body in Christ – Pastor James Boice [Dr. Boice explained how that the church was in existence before Pentecost; he stated that a better name than church is “BODY OF CHRIST.” The information he presented builds on what had been posted in parts 1-6]
Part 8: There are Not Two People of God, used an 8-minute sermon excerpt from a sermon preached by the late Rev. Eric Alexander from Ephesians: Pastor Alexander defined the ‘mystery’ that Paul discussed in Ephesians 3: the mystery is that God incorporated the Gentiles into ‘His people’ by uniting them to His Son. This post uses scripture to disprove the claims of Dispensationalism that there are two peoples of God, Israel and the church. [It was as if, God expanded His plan of redemption from the nation Israel to the world, via Christ.]
Part 9: An excerpt from the teaching of the late, Dr. John Gerstner, on the Westminster Confession of Faith. Therein, Gerstner stated that the WCF opposed such theories as Dispensationalism. [The WCF is a thoroughly biblical document; the Westminster divines took great pains to clarify the doctrines of the Bible.]
Today, part 10, will use as little as possible from chapter 11 of Book 2 of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion to support the idea of UNITY in the two Testaments.
CHAPTER 11
The Difference Between the Two Testament
All excerpts come from the following source:
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion (p. 130). Hendrickson Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Excerpts from chapter 11: SIGNIFICANT PORTIONS THAT ARE RELEVANT TO MY TOPIC WILL BE UNDERSCORED
[All bracketed statements, underscoring and emboldening are mine.]
Section 1 [Chapter 11 has 14 sections. I will not excerpt from each of those, but will indicate the section from which each excerpt came.]
[Regarding the four differences between the Old and New Testaments]
Calvin’s words:
…I hold, and think I will be able to show, that they all belong to the mode of administration rather than to the substance. In this way, there is nothing in them to prevent the promises of the Old and New Testament from remaining the same, Christ being the foundation of both.
…The first difference then is, that though, in old time, the Lord was pleased to direct the thoughts of his people, and raise their minds to the heavenly inheritance, yet, that their hope of it might be the better maintained, he held it forth, and, in a manner, gave a foretaste of it under earthly blessings, whereas the gift of future life, now more clearly and lucidly revealed by the gospel, leads our minds directly to meditate upon it, the inferior mode of exercise formerly employed in regard to the Jews being now laid aside. Those who attend not to the divine purpose in this respect, suppose that God’s ancient people ascended no higher than the blessings which were promised to the body. They hear the land of Canaan so often named as the special, and as it were the only, reward of the divine Law to its worshipers….
…The ground of controversy is this: our opponents hold that the land of Canaan was considered by the Israelites as supreme and final happiness, and now, since Christ was manifested, typifies to us the heavenly inheritance; whereas we maintain that, in the earthly possession which the Israelites enjoyed, they beheld, as in a mirror, the future inheritance which they believed to be reserved for them in heaven.
Section 2
This will better appear from the similitude which Paul uses in Galatians (Gal 4:1). He compares the Jewish nation to an heir in pupillarity [as pupils under a school master], who, as yet unfit to govern himself, follows the direction of a tutor or guide to whose charge he has been committed. Though this simile refers especially to ceremonies, there is nothing to prevent us from applying it most appropriately here also. The same inheritance was destined to them as to us, but from nonage [immaturity] they were incapable of entering to it, and managing it. They had the same church, though it was still in puerility.
The Lord, therefore, kept them under this tutelage, giving them spiritual promises, not clear and simple, but typified by earthly objects [earthly objects were a ‘type,’ as in typology].
Hence, when he chose Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their posterity, to the hope of immortality, he promised them the land of Canaan for an inheritance, not that it might be the limit of their hopes, but that the view of it might train and confirm them in the hope of that true inheritance, which, as yet, appeared not.
…“Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward” (Gen 15:1). Here we see that the Lord is the final reward promised to Abraham [not Canaan], that he might not seek a fleeting and evanescent reward in the elements of this world, but look to one which was incorruptible….
Thus David rises from temporal blessings to the last and highest of all, “My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.” “My heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God” (Pss 73:26; 84:2). Again, “The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot” (Ps 16:5). Again, “I cried unto thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living” (Ps 142:5).
Those who can venture to speak thus, assuredly declare that their hope rises beyond the world and worldly blessings. This future blessedness, however, the prophets often describe under a type which the Lord had taught them. In this way are to be understood the many passages in Job (Job 18:17) and Isaiah, to the effect, That the righteous shall inherit the earth, that the wicked shall be driven out of it, that Jerusalem will abound in all kinds of riches, and Zion overflow with every species at abundance. In strict propriety, all these things obviously apply not to the land of our pilgrimage, nor to the earthly Jerusalem, but to the true country, the heavenly city of believers, in which the Lord has commanded blessing and life for evermore (Ps 133:3).
[Hebrews 11 also frames the blessedness of Abraham and other Old Testament saints in that way.]
Section 3
…But we shall easily disencumber ourselves of such doubts if we attend to that mode of divine administration to which I have adverted—that God was pleased to indicate and typify both the gift of future and eternal felicity by terrestrial blessings, as well as the dreadful nature of spiritual death by bodily punishments, at that time when he delivered his covenant to the Israelites as under a kind of veil.
Section 4
Another distinction between the Old and the New Testaments is in the types, the former exhibiting only the image of truth, while the reality was absent, the shadow instead of the substance, the latter exhibiting both the full truth and the entire body. Mention is usually made of this, whenever the New Testament is contrasted with the Old, but it is nowhere so fully treated as in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Heb 7–10). The apostle is there arguing against those who thought that the observances of the Mosaic Law could not be abolished without producing the total ruin of religion….
[They were obviously mistaken because the Old Testament only contained a shadow of the true religion, not its substance.]
…Here we may see in what respect the legal is compared with the evangelical covenant, the ministry of Christ with that of Moses. If the comparison referred to the substance of the promises, there would be a great repugnance between the two covenants; but since the nature of the case leads to a different view, we must follow it in order to discover the truth.
Let us, therefore, bring forward the covenant which God once ratified as eternal and unending. Its completion, whereby it is fixed and ratified, is Christ. Till such completion takes place, the Lord, by Moses, prescribes ceremonies which are, as it were, formal symbols of confirmation.
…Hence, in general, the Old Testament is the name given to the solemn method of confirming the covenant comprehended under ceremonies and sacrifices. Since there is nothing substantial in it, until we look beyond it, the apostle contends that it behooved to be annulled and become antiquated (Heb 7:22), to make room for Christ, the surety and mediator of a better covenant, by whom the eternal sanctification of the elect was once purchased, and the transgressions which remained under the Law wiped away.
…Then only did it [the Abrahamic covenant] become new and eternal when it was consecrated and established in the blood of Christ. Hence the Savior, in giving the cup to his disciples in the Last Supper, calls it the cup of the New Testament in his blood; intimating, that the covenant of God was truly realized, made new, and eternal, when it was sealed with his blood.
Section 10:
…Augustine, with great shrewdness, remarks, that from the beginning of the world the sons of promise, the divinely regenerated, who, through faith working by love, obeyed the commandments, belonged to the New Testament; entertaining the hope not of carnal, earthly, temporal, but spiritual, heavenly, and eternal blessings, believing especially in a Mediator, by whom they doubted not both that the Spirit was administered to them, enabling them to do good, and pardon imparted as often as they sinned. The thing which he thus intended to assert was, that all the saints mentioned in Scripture, from the beginning of the world, as having been specially selected by God, were equally with us partakers of the blessing of eternal salvation….
Section 11:
The fifth distinction which we have to add consists in this, that until the advent of Christ, the Lord set apart one nation, to which he confined the covenant of his grace.
Moses says, “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance” (Deut 32:8, 9).
In another passage he thus addresses the people: “Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord’s thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed, after them, even you, above all people, as it is this day” (Deut 10:14, 15).
That people, therefore, as if they had been the only part of mankind belonging to him, he favored exclusively with the knowledge of his name, depositing his covenant, as it were, in their bosom, manifesting to them the presence of his divinity, and honoring them with all privileges.
…Meanwhile, other nations, as if they had had no kind of intercourse with him, he allowed to wander in vanity….
…But on the fullness of the time destined to renew all things, when the Mediator between God and man was manifested, the middle wall of partition, which had long kept the divine mercy within the confines of Israel, was broken down, peace was preached to them who were afar off, as well as to those who were nigh, that being together reconciled to God, they might unite as one people. Wherefore, there is now no respect of Jew or Greek, of circumcision or uncircumcision, but Christ is all and in all.
To him the heathen have been given for his inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession (Ps 2:8), that he may rule without distinction “from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth” (Ps 72:8).
END
I’m stopping here, as it seems that sufficient information has been presented to confirm that there has always been one people of God and that God’s plan of redemption, which He began with a Covenant with Abraham, was fulfilled in the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, and at that time was held out to the whole world.
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