One Covenant Under God

By R.C. Sproul Jr. 10/1/2006

     We are a litigious people. We not only like to sue one another, we like to avoid being sued, and having to sue. That is, we hire lawyers not only to write up contracts, but to help enforce contracts. Handshakes and verbal agreements have gone the way of the nickel cup of coffee. (And be careful with that coffee now. It just might be hot, and you wouldn’t want anyone to sue.) As a culture we can barely even agree to disagree.

     On the other hand, we are likewise a licentious people. We want our pleasures, and we want them now, and nothing, we seem to believe, ought to stand in our way. We have our rights, and by rights, we will have them. Contracts, the saying goes, are made to be broken.

     It is a strange marriage in a given culture. The great English novelist, Anthony Burgess, in his great work, A Clockwork Orange, speculated that cultures are doomed to alternate between two extremes of the pendulum. Sometimes a culture embraces a Pelagian view of man, what Burgess called the “Pel phase.” Here man is seen as basically good, and all restraints are inherently bad. This romantic notion, however, soon loses its romance, as sinful men without restraint begin to, well, sin. Their sin grows bolder and bolder until the culture reacts, and enters into the “Aug phase,” named for Augustine. Here man is looked at as fundamentally sinful, and restraints are all the rage. The state, in seeking to restrain sin, soon enters into sin, becoming ever more oppressive itself. Soon enough the people tire of a heavy handed state, and the pendulum swings back the other way.

     His analysis, a case could be made, reflects similar thinking on the issue of the Trinity. Some cultures tend more toward the one, and exhibit a uniformitarianism, often manifested as totalitarianism. Other cultures tend toward the three, (or the many) and, as T.S. Elliot put it, the center cannot hold. Culture simply disintegrates in a fog of variety. The solution here is, of course, the Trinity, where the one and the many come together in peace. But what of the shift from a permissive culture to a repressive one and back again? The answer here is covenant.

     Just as the Trinity brings together the one and the many, so covenant binds together (or marries, if you will) the legal and the familial. Covenant does not merely reduce down to contract, for such misses the inherent grace therein. God did not create Adam and Eve as tabula rasa (blank slates), placing them in a neutral realm and then waiting to see which way they would go. Instead, He blessed them with life and a garden. He put them in a paradise they did not earn, and He walked with them in the cool of the evening. This relationship, however, wasn’t some sort of anything-goes, if-it-feels-good-it-must-be-good relationship. Yes, God loved them. Yes, He blessed them. But He established that love and the boundaries by which it might be protected by making covenant. It is in this context, in the context of a loving father in relationship with His children, that God first establishes covenant with man.

     Covenants, rightly understood, then, are not merely contracts, the legal forms of legal relationships. Neither are they formless sentimental feelings that bring people together as long as those feelings last. Instead, they are both. In covenant we have real obligation. Real promises are made, and real sanctions handed down when those promises are broken. But underlying all of that is grace, love, and relationship.

     This is why Paul speaks of our heavenly Father this way, “It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26). God did not wink at our sin because He loved us. Instead, because He loved us, He punished our sin in His Son on the cross. He wanted to justify us because He loves us. He did it justly by punishing His only begotten Son.

     Grasping covenant is not only necessary for understanding the Word of God, but it is our only hope, culturally speaking, to escape the pendulum of which Burgess wrote. It was in fact our understanding of covenant that birthed the freest nation the world has ever known. It is no accident that the British, during the time of the Revolutionary War, referred to it as “the Presbyterian war.” We are a nation founded on the principle of covenant, beginning even before the Revolution with the Mayflower Compact.

     A nation built upon covenant is a nation that recognizes the sinfulness of man, and so wishes not only to restrain the sinful impulses of the individual but also to restrain the sinfulness of men who have power in the state. As Lord Acton observed: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” To restrain the state we need checks and balances. We need covenant keepers in office. And we will have these things only when we in the church learn to keep covenant among ourselves. We will have faithful politicians when we are faithful to our Shepherd. The nation will be free again when God’s people are once again subject to their High King, and when God’s people rejoice in their Great Husband, even Jesus our Lord.

The New Covenant Meal

By Terry Johnson 11/1/2006

     One of the great insights of the Reformation was the recovery of the biblical concept of “covenant.” This recovery was fueled by the “new learning” of the Renaissance humanism, the return ad fontes, “to the sources,” of theology in the original texts of the New and Old Testaments and in the writings of the church fathers. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Muslim Turks brought a flood of Greek and Hebrew scholars with their manuscripts into Western Europe. For the first time in a thousand years in the West the Bible was being studied in the original languages, and in particular, the Old Testament was being given close attention. The expression, “Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched,” is well known and refers to his publication in 1516 of the first critical edition of the Greek New Testament, barely a year before the posting of the 95 Theses. Less well known is the fact that Luther was one of a handful of tri-linguists (Greek, Hebrew, Latin) on the whole continent of Europe. No longer would the church’s theologians be content to study the Bible in the Latin of the Vulgate.

     The biblical covenants were given careful study by Zwingli, Bucer, Calvin, and Bullinger, often in relation to sacramental theology. What they came to understand was that the Lord’s Supper is a supper, that is, a covenantal meal. It should not be understood as a sacrifice offered upon an altar by a priest, but a supper offered upon a table by a pastor. The Lord’s Supper is the Christian Passover in which, as with many covenantal meals before it, the agreement between the two participating parties is ratified or confirmed (Ex. 12:24; see also Gen. 14:17–20; 18:1–13; 27; Prov. 9:1–6). Jesus announced, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11:25; see Matt. 26:28). By participating in the meal, the covenant with Christ is ratified and confirmed, the Reformers argued. God confirms His promise to redeem those who come to Him through the cross of Christ. Communicants in turn promise to be faithful servants of the Christ whom they trust.

     The practical implications of a covenantal understanding of the Eucharist were soon obvious: the communion service was to look like a meal. The language of sacrifice, as well as gestures and furnishings that implied sacrifice, were removed from the service: “Let us, therefore, repudiate everything that smacks of sacrifice,” Luther wrote in 1523 in his Formula Missae.

     The pastoral implications were enormous as well. The communion table became the point at which commitment to Christ was either refused or ratified, and the people came to understand that if they were to do business with God it would be at the table. If you were a non-believer, Christ was beckoning you to His table. The Supper was a poignant reminder that one was outside of God’s covenant family and thus not a recipient of His saving provisions. If you were a baptized but non-communing child of the church, confirmation would take place at the table. The table for you was a reminder that though a covenant child, you had unfinished business with God. If you were a back-sliding Christian, rededication would take place at the table. The fenced table, excluding the unrepentant, was like a divine cannon-shot over the bow, warning you to get right with God. If you were a faithful believer, reaffirmation of the covenant with Christ would take place at the table. The table for you was a blessed spiritual meal, a reminder of the gifts of grace, and communion with the risen Christ Himself. The table was the Reformed altar-call. At the table, one was to deal with Christ, for there He was present, there He was most clearly seen, and there He issued His invitation to “take, eat,” “take, drink,” and enjoy His benefits.

     The implications for koinonia soon became clear as well. By baptism one was initiated into the covenant. By participation in the Lord’s Supper one identified oneself as a member of the covenant community, in fellowship with Christ, and in fellowship with those in fellowship with Christ. Thus the apostle Paul writes: “Is not the cup of blessing which we bless a sharing in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread which we break a sharing in the body of Christ? Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16–17 NASB). The unity of the church, mutual accountability, the mutual responsibility, the mutual caring and “sharing” (koinonia) are all implications of participation in one bread, one cup, and one table of the covenantal meal.

     We have perhaps made too little of the practical importance of the table. Perhaps this is especially true of first communion. I wonder if more ought to be made of this crucial step in a young person’s life of ratifying the covenant with Christ. I am not sure of what shape making more of first communion would take. But I do think we need to think and pray about what that might mean. Regularly observed, properly understood, and covenantally interpreted, the Lord’s Supper becomes the focal point of both one’s relationship with Christ, and one’s relationship with fellow believers.

• 1     Reformed Worship
• 2     The Family Worship Book: A Resource Book for Family Devotions
• 3     Leading In Worship
• 4     When Grace Comes Home: How the 'doctrines of grace' change your life
• 5     Reformed Worship: Worship that is According to Scripture (new 2010 reprint)
• 6     When Grace Comes Alive: Living Through the Lord's Prayer
• 7     The Parables of Jesus: Entering, Growing, Living and Finishing in God's Kingdom
• 8     Worshipping with Calvin
• 9     Contemporary Worship
• 10     When Grace Transforms: The character of Christ's Disciples put forward in the Beattitudes (Radical Life Change Offered by Jesus' Beatitudes)
• 11     Case for Traditional Protestantism: The Solas of the Reformation
• 12     Catechizing Our Children: The Whys and Hows of Teaching the Shorter Catechism Today
• 13     Galatians: A Mentor Expository Commentary

The Covenant of Works

By R.C. Sproul 10/1/2006

     Covenant theology is important for many reasons. Though covenant theology has been around for millennia, it finds its more refined and systematic formulation in the Protestant Reformation. Its importance, however, has been heightened in our day because of its relationship to a theology that is relatively new. In the late nineteenth century, the theology called “dispensationalism” emerged as a new approach to understanding the Bible. The old Scofield Reference Bible defined dispensationalism in terms of seven distinct dispensations or time periods within sacred Scripture. Each dispensation was defined as “a period of time during which man is tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God” (p. 5, Scofield Reference Bible). Scofield distinguished seven dispensations including that of innocence, conscience, civil government, promise, law, grace, and the kingdom period. Over against this diversified view of redemptive history, covenant theology seeks to present a clear picture of the unity of redemption, which unity is seen in the continuity of the covenants that God has given throughout history and how they are fulfilled in the person and work of Christ.

     Beyond the ongoing discussion between traditional dispensationalists and Reformed theology with respect to the basic structure of biblical revelation, there has arisen in our day an even greater crisis with respect to our understanding of redemption. This crisis focuses on the place of imputation in our understanding of the doctrine of justification. Just as the doctrine of imputation was the pivotal issue in the sixteenth-century debate between the Reformers and the Roman Catholic understanding of justification, so now the issue of imputation has risen its head again even among professing evangelicals who repudiate the Reformation understanding of imputation. At the heart of this question of justification and imputation is the rejection of what is called the covenant of works. Historic covenantal theology makes an important distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. The covenant of works refers to the covenant that God made with Adam and Eve in their pristine purity before the fall, in which God promised them blessedness contingent upon their obedience to His command. After the fall, the fact that God continued to promise redemption to creatures who had violated the covenant of works, that ongoing promise of redemption is defined as the covenant of grace.

     Technically, from one perspective, all covenants that God makes with creatures are gracious in the sense that He is not obligated to make any promises to His creatures. But the distinction between the covenant of works and grace is getting at something that is of vital importance, as it has to do with the Gospel. The covenant of grace indicates God’s promise to save us even when we fail to keep the obligations imposed in creation. This is seen most importantly in the work of Jesus as the new Adam. Again and again the New Testament makes the distinction and contrast between the failure and calamities wrought upon humanity through the disobedience of the original Adam and the benefits that flow through the work of the obedience of Jesus, who is the new Adam. Though there is a clear distinction between the new Adam and the old Adam, the point of continuity between them is that both were called to submit to perfect obedience to God.

     When we understand Christ’s work of redemption in the New Testament, we focus our attention largely on two aspects of it. On the one hand, we look at the atonement. It’s clear from the New Testament teachings that in the atonement Jesus bears the sins of His people and is punished for them in our place. That is, the atonement is vicarious and substitutionary. In this sense, on the cross, Christ took upon Himself the negative sanctions of the old covenant. That is, He bore in His body the punishment due to those who violated not only the law of Moses, but also the law that was imposed in paradise. He took upon Himself the curse that is deserved by all who disobey the law of God. This, Reformed theology describes in terms of “the passive obedience of Jesus.” It points to His willingness to submit to His reception of the curse of God in our stead.

     Beyond the negative fulfillment of the covenant of works, in taking the punishment due those who disobey it, Jesus offers the positive dimension that is vital to our redemption. He wins the blessing of the covenant of works on all of the progeny of Adam who put their trust in Jesus. Where Adam was the covenant breaker, Jesus is the covenant keeper. Where Adam failed to gain the blessedness of the tree of life, Christ wins that blessedness by His obedience, which blessedness He provides for those who put their trust in Him. In this work of fulfilling the covenant for us in our stead, theology speaks of the “active obedience” of Christ. That is, Christ’s redeeming work includes not only His death, but His life. His life of perfect obedience becomes the sole ground of our justification. It is His perfect righteousness, gained via His perfect obedience, that is imputed to all who put their trust in Him. Therefore, Christ’s work of active obedience is absolutely essential to the justification of anyone. Without Christ’s active obedience to the covenant of works, there is no reason for imputation, there is no ground for justification. If we take away the covenant of works, we take away the active obedience of Jesus. If we take away the active obedience of Jesus, we take away the imputation of His righteousness to us. If we take away the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us, we take away justification by faith alone. If we take away justification by faith alone, we take away the Gospel, and we are left in our sins. We are left as the miserable sons of Adam, who can only look forward to feeling the full measure of God’s curse upon us for our own disobedience. It is the obedience of Christ that is the ground of our salvation, both in His passive obedience on the cross and His active obedience in His life. All of this is inseparably related to the biblical understanding of Jesus as the new Adam (Rom. 5:12–20), who succeeded where the original Adam failed, who prevailed where the original Adam lost. There is nothing less than our salvation at stake in this issue.

Robert Charles Sproul, 2/13/1939 – 12/14/2017 was an American theologian, author, and ordained pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America. Dr. R.C. Sproul was founder and chairman of Ligonier Ministries, an international Christian education and discipleship organization located near Orlando, Fla. He was also copastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., chancellor of Reformation Bible College, and executive editor of Tabletalk magazine. Dr. Sproul has contributed dozens of articles to national evangelical publications, has spoken at conferences, churches, and schools around the world, and has written more than one hundred books. He also served as general editor of the Reformation Study Bible.

Covenant and Culture

By Gene Edward Veith 10/1/2006

     The word covenant is a theological term. But it is also a cultural term. It has to do with God’s primal design for how human beings, fallen though we be, can live together and form a society. Social philosophers and political theorists talk about the “social compact” or the “social contract.” The concept in its different nuances was developed by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, though it goes back to the ancient Greeks. It states that governments and, indeed, cultures entail a tacit but binding agreement between parties: I will obey your laws if you protect my rights. I will surrender some of my freedom for the good of the group, if the group will take care of my needs that I cannot provide by myself.

     Now the social contract theory ignores the sense in which authority — including the foundation of human institutions such as the family and the state — derives not from arbitrary human trade-offs but from God (Rom. 13). People do not usually sign a contract when they join a family, a tribe, or a nation. Rather, except in the case of adoption or legal immigration, they are born into that institution. They are under its laws and customs whether or not they consent to them.

     Societies are “given,” not drawn up like a rental agreement. But they do — by God’s design and His created order — entail mutual commitments, agreements, and promises. That is, they involve covenants.

     The family, anthropologists agree, is the foundation of every culture. And family, as invented by God, has to do with covenants.

     Marriage is a covenant, in which a man and a woman promise to live together in faithfulness. Sexual relations are authorized within and by authority of the marriage covenant and nowhere else. (People who have sex with someone they are not married to have no authority to do so. They are presuming to act without a covenant.)

     Sexual relations are designed to engender new life. Parenthood is also entering into a covenant. Parents have the responsibility to care for their children and to form them into responsible adults. This is true of both married and unmarried parents, Christians and non-Christians, though Christian parents have the additional covenantal obligation to their children to “bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4).

     And children have the covenantal responsibility to honor and obey their parents and to care for them when the time comes (Eph. 6:1–3; 1 Tim. 5:8).

     The every-day workings of the economy — working, buying, selling — entail covenants. You agree to go to work, whereupon your boss agrees to pay you. In return for your labor, you receive a piece of paper with writing on it: your paycheck, which you can cash at the bank for more pieces of paper. That paper has no intrinsic value in itself, but it can be exchanged for tangible goods and services because of a covenant.

     Adam Smith, the great theoretician of capitalism, wrote much about “the invisible hand” of market forces in a free economy. But all of that unregulated economic activity, he said, depends on a moral foundation. He might have said a covenantal foundation.

     A free economy cannot work unless all parties honor their contracts. That is, unless they keep their covenants. Companies have to trust that customers will pay them for their goods, and those customers have to trust that the company will deliver the product and that it is what it was claimed to be. Both parties have to trust their bankers.

     I once had a conversation with a citizen of the former Soviet Union who decried the difficulty of establishing a functioning free economy after the fall of communism. He said that the communists had wrecked the society’s moral infrastructure. As a result, ex-Soviets often lacked respect for private property and the promise-keeping habit entailed in honoring contracts. And without them, he said, economic growth is impossible.

     Government and law, policies and customs, contracts and hand-shake deals — they all have to do with covenants. Every time you sign your name to a document — a check, a mortgage agreement, a video rental slip — you are making a covenant. When you make a promise, give your word, or say that you will do something and follow through, you are making a covenant.

     We also break our covenants. Husbands and wives neglect each other, break their wedding vows, and sometimes just get divorced. Parents fail to spend enough time with their children, letting them grow up un-nurtured and ignored. Children rebel against their parents. Employers misuse their workers, and workers cheat their employers of an honest day’s work. They both sometimes manipulate and cheat their customers. Stealing, lying, and other ways of hurting our neighbors instead of loving them as ourselves are violations of the social covenant that we have with them. Covenant-breaking, whether against God or against our neighbor, is sin.

     Good thing that God does not break His covenant. He not only keeps His part of the bargain, in Christ He keeps our part of the bargain too. He is the restorer of broken covenants.

This Is My Body

By Gene Edward Veith 11/1/2006

     As far as I know, I am the only Lutheran who writes regularly for Tabletalk, so please bear with me. Inviting a Lutheran to write about the Lord’s Supper is like asking a grandmother if she has any pictures of the new baby. So much affection for the subject matter can easily outpace other people’s interest. However, the Lord’s Supper is at the heart of a Lutheran’s piety. Calvinists too, as well as other Protestants, are rediscovering their own sacramental heritage, which has become somewhat forgotten. We Lutherans have never lost the Reformation’s emphasis on the sacrament, so perhaps this description of what it is like might prove helpful.

     I do not intend here so much to argue for the Lutheran theological position on the sacrament, but rather to describe — in a way that I hope is helpful for non-Lutherans who are also trying to regain an evangelical sense of the sacrament — what it is like to believe in it. I will then make some cultural connections, showing why the Reformation emphasis on the sacrament is a bracing tonic against today’s highly-internalized pop-Christianity.

     At the Marburg Colloquy in 1529, that great debate over the Lord’s Supper between Luther and Zwingli, Dr. Martin took a piece of chalk and wrote on a table: “This is my body.” In answer to Zwingli’s long philosophical discourse, Luther whipped off the tablecloth and pointed to those words. For Luther, the conviction that the bread and wine of Holy Communion are the body and blood of Christ was a matter of trusting God’s Word. Since the Bible says, “This is my body,” he would not countenance any arguments designed to prove “this is not my body.” As at Augsburg, so at Marburg, Luther was saying, “Here I stand” on the Word of God.

     Lutherans are puzzled at the resistance from so many other Christians at their conviction that the Lord’s Supper involves “the real presence of Christ.” Calvin had no problem affirming Christ’s true presence in the Lord’s Supper, but he did not understand this in terms of corporeal presence. Luther, who always encouraged Christians to look outside of themselves rather than within themselves to know God, believed in Christ’s objective presence through the objective Word of God that consecrates the elements. Another sticking point was whether an unbeliever receives the corporeal body of Christ. Calvin would say no. Luther, citing 1 Corinthians 11:27–30, would say yes.

     By the way, in this ecumenical forum, let it be known that Lutherans, according to their official statements of faith, reject “consubstantiation.” We do not believe that the body and the bread, the blood and the wine, constitute a new and unique substance. We reject all such philosophical attempts to parse this miracle, insisting that we must simply accept the biblical language without interpretation, that the bread and wine are still bread and wine and also the body and blood of Jesus.

     But, for Luther, the Lord’s Supper is not just about the real presence of Christ. “The main thing in the Sacrament,” Luther teaches in The Small Catechism, are the words “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” Specifically, the words “for you.”

     Whereas Rome taught that the rite of Holy Communion was a good work, man’s offering of Christ up to God, the Reformation reversed that. The Lord’s Supper is about Christ offering Himself — His body broken on the cross and the blood that He shed for the forgiveness of sins — to us. That is, the Lord’s Supper embodies the Gospel.

     Many Christians look for signs and miracles. But there is no more miraculous sign than what happens during Holy Communion. Many Christians look for a religious experience, but there is no experience as vivid as tasting. Evangelicals talk about receiving Christ, something that happened way back at their conversion. But in the Lord’s Supper, as we are brought back to the Gospel again and again, we can continue to receive Christ.

     Contemporary Christianity tends to be all internalized — a matter of my feelings, my inner life, and my personal opinions. People look inward for their salvation, with some health-and-wealth preachers urging the members of their congregation to “have faith in yourself.” But the Reformers — Calvin as well as Luther — stressed how salvation is extra nos, outside ourselves, accomplished in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

     Contemporary Christians tend to be all spiritual. They often scorn the physical realm, even as they indulge their sinful flesh, reasoning like Gnostics that what they do with their bodies does not affect their spirits. They often construe God as a being primarily inside their heads, and they treat Jesus like some imaginary friend. The Reformers rejected such Gnosticism.

     Recovering the Lord’s Supper can remind all Christians that their faith is grounded in objectivity, in a God who created matter and became incarnate in history, in a Christ who redeemed us by giving His body — not just His “spirit” — in a bloody sacrifice.

     What we do in our bodies and in our physical, mundane lives does matter, both for sin and for grace. When we eat the bread of the Lord’s Supper, Christ nourishes us both spiritually and physically, uniting us with His body on the cross and the body that is His church. When we drink the wine, Christ’s cleansing blood courses through our veins, such is the thoroughness and the intimacy of our salvation.

Numbers 8

By Don Carson 5/1/2018

     Before they began their duties for the first time, the Levites were set apart by a ritual God himself established to “make them ceremonially clean” (Num. 8:5-14). The details need not concern us here. What we shall reflect on is the theological reasoning God gives for ordering things this way.

     Part of it we have heard before: this is by way of review. God himself has “taken them as my own” (8:16), i.e., he has selected the Levites “from among the other Israelites” (8:6) to be peculiarly his, “in place of the firstborn, the first male offspring from every Israelite woman” (8:16). The rationale is reviewed: this stems from the Exodus, from the first Passover, when the firstborn of the Egyptians were struck down but not the firstborn sons of Israel (8:17-18).

     But now a new element is introduced. God has “taken” the Levites to be peculiarly his, and, having “taken” them, he has also “given” them as “gifts” to Aaron and his sons, the chief priests, “to do the work at the Tent of Meeting on behalf of the Israelites and to make atonement for them so that no plague will strike the Israelites when they go near the sanctuary” (8:19). So God has “taken” them and then “given” them to his people.

     Formally, of course, God has “given” them to Aaron and his sons, but since the work the Levites do is for the benefit of all Israel, there is a sense in which God has given the Levites to the entire nation. The pattern is spelled out again ten chapters later (Num. 18:5-7). God says to Aaron, “I myself have selected your fellow Levites from among the Israelites as a gift to you” (18:6).

     The closest New Testament parallel is found in Ephesians 4. By his death and resurrection, Christ Jesus “led captives in his train and gave gifts to men” (Eph. 4:8). The words are ostensibly quoted from Psalm 68:18, where the Hebrew text says that God received gifts from men. But it has been argued, rightly, that Psalm 68 assumes such themes as those in Numbers 8 and 18, and that in any case Paul is melding together both Numbers and Psalm 68 to make a point. Under the new covenant, Christ Jesus by his triumph has captured us, and to each one of us (Eph. 4:7) he has apportioned grace and then poured us back on the church as his “gifts to men.”

     That is how we are to think of ourselves. We are Christ’s captives, captured from the race of rebellious image-bearers and now poured out as God’s “gifts to men.” That invests all our service with unimaginable dignity.

Don Carson is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, and co-founder (with Tim Keller) of The Gospel Coalition. He has authored numerous books, and recently edited The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2016).

Read The Psalms In "1" Year

Psalm 44

17 All this has come upon us,
though we have not forgotten you,
and we have not been false to your covenant.
18 Our heart has not turned back,
nor have our steps departed from your way;
19 yet you have broken us in the place of jackals
and covered us with the shadow of death.
20 If we had forgotten the name of our God
or spread out our hands to a foreign god,
21 would not God discover this?
For he knows the secrets of the heart.
22 Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.

By Gleason Archer Jr.

24 |  Isaiah (continued) |  Isaiah: Alleged Differences in Language and Style

     PROPONENTS OF THE  ISAIAH II THEORY affirm that there are very definite and marked contrasts in style between  Isaiah I and  Isaiah II, and that these can be accounted for only by a difference in authorship. The purpose of the ensuing discussion will be to show that the stylistic similarities between the two parts are even more significant than the alleged differences, and that such differences as there are may easily be accounted for by the change in situation which confronted  Isaiah in his later years, and also by the maturing of his literary genius. Numerous parallels to this may be pointed out in the history of world literature. Thus in the case of John Milton, we find far more striking dissimilarities between Paradise Lost, which he composed in later years, and the style of L’Allegro or Il Penseroso, which appeared in his earlier period. A similar contrast is observable between his prose works such as Christian Doctrine and Areopagitica. Or, to take an example from German literature, Goethe’s Faust Part II presents striking contrasts in concept, style, and approach as over against Faust Part I. These contrasts are far more obvious than those between  Isaiah I and  Isaiah II. In his Dictionary of the Bible (p. 339a), Davis points out that in the twenty-five years of Shakespeare’s activity, four distinct periods can be distinguished in his dramatic productions, each period being marked by clear differences in style.

     As in the case of Pentateuchal criticism, dissectionists of  Isaiah have resorted to lists of rare or unique words or phrases in order to confirm a diversity of authorship. But this type of evidence has to be handled with the greatest care in order to come out to valid results. Mere word lists may prove little or nothing. In the case of the Latin poet Horace, some of the best-known phrases from his Ars Poetica, such as callida junctura, in medias res, and ad unguem, occur nowhere else in the writings of this poet. Yet far from being considered spurious because unique, they are very frequently quoted as examples of Horace’s literary skill. So far as  Isaiah is concerned, Nagelsbach points out: “For among the chapters of  Isaiah that are acknowledged genuine, there is not a single one which does not contain thoughts and words that are new and peculiar to it alone.”

     1. The stylistic resemblances between  Isaiah I and  Isaiah II are numerous and striking. Most distinctive of all is the characteristic title of God which occurs frequently throughout  Isaiah and only five times elsewhere in the Old Testament. This title is “the Holy One of Israel” (qeḏôš Yiśrā˓ēʾl), which expresses a central theological emphasis that dominates all the prophecies contained in this book. A statistical count shows that it occurs twelve times in chapters  1–39 and fourteen times in chapters  40–66. Elsewhere in the Old Testament it only occurs in  Pss. 71:22; 89:18 and  Jer. 50:29; 51:5: Whether or not  Isaiah actually invented this title, it became a sort of authoritative seal for all of his writing. Thus it furnishes very strong evidence of the unity of the entire production. The only alternative possible to advocates of the Deutero -  Isaiah theory is to assert that the unknown prophet or prophets who contributed to chapters  40 – 66 were so dominated by the influence and message of the eighth-century  Isaiah that they felt constrained to employ his favorite title of God with even greater frequency than he did himself. But such an explanation does not account for the almost complete absence of this title in the writings of other post-exilic authors who certainly could not have been ignorant of the eighth-century  Isaiah. Furthermore, this type of evasion appears to savor of circular reasoning:  Isaiah II must have been written by a different author from  Isaiah I because of the stylistic differences; but where the most striking stylistic similarities are pointed out, these indicate only that the later author was a pupil or imitator of the original author. Thus the facts are made to conform to the theory, rather than deriving the theory from the facts (i.e., from the textual data).

     Conservative scholars have pointed out at least forty or fifty sentences or phrases which appear in both parts of  Isaiah, and indicate its common authorship. Of these the following are typical:

     “For the mouth of Yahweh hath spoken it” (ASV) occurs in  1:20; 40:5; 58:14.

     “I act, and who can reverse it?” ( 43:13, NASB) is very close to “His hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?” ( 14:27 ).

     “And the ransomed of Yahweh shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads” (ASV) occurs in both  35:10 and  51:11.

     “Will assemble the outcasts of Israel” ( 11:12 ) is very close to “gathereth the outcasts of Israel” in  56:8.

     “For Yahweh hath a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion” ( 34:8, ASV) greatly resembles  61:2, “to proclaim the year of Yahweh’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God” (ASV).

     “The lion shall eat straw like the ox.… They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain” appears both in  11:6–9 and  65:25.

     “For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert” ( 35:6 ) is very close to “I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water” ( 41:18 ).

     “And the Spirit of Yahweh shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding” ( 11:2, ASV) is quite similar to, “The Spirit of the Lord Yahweh is upon me, because Yahweh has anointed me” ( 61:1, ASV).

     In  35:8 we meet with the figure of the highway of Yahweh which runs through the wilderness or desert; the same thought occurs in  40:3.

     “I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts.… Your new moons and appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them” ( 1:11, 14 ) is very similar to “Thou hast filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast burdened me with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities” ( 43:24, ASV).

     “In that day will Yahweh of hosts become a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, unto the residue of his people” ( 28:5, ASV) greatly resembles, “Thou shalt also be a crown of beauty in the land of Yahweh, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God” ( 63:3, ASV).

     Even the use of the imperfect tense of ʾāmar “to say” with Yahweh as subject (rather than the usual perfect tense ʾāmar), namely yōʾmar YHWH (“Yahweh is saying”) is a peculiarity of  Isaiah, and occurs both in I and II (cf. E. J. Young, Who Wrote  Isaiah? chap.  8).

     In view of these and many other parallels which can be cited, it is difficult to see how an unprejudiced observer could fail to be impressed by such numerous instances of resemblance. These distinctive turns of expression which so obviously bear the stamp of originality and yet which occur in both portions of the book indicate that the same author must have composed the entire production.

     2. It should be pointed out that the literary resemblances of  Isaiah II to the eighth-century prophet  Micah are numerous and striking. This would hardly be expected of a writer who composed in the sixth or fifth century B.C. Here are some examples:

     “For ye shall not go out in haste … for Yahweh will go before you” ( Isa. 52:12, ASV); “And their king is passed on before them, and Yahweh at the head of them” ( Mic. 2:13, ASV).

     “Declare unto my people their transgression, and to the house of Jacob their sins” ( Isa. 58:1 ); “I am full of power … to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel his sin” ( Mic. 3:8 ).

     “They shall bow down to thee with their face toward the earth, and lick up the dust of thy feet; and thou shalt know that I am the Lord” ( Isa. 49:23 ); “They shall lick the dust like a serpent, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the earth: they shall be afraid of the Lord our God” ( Mic. 7:17 ).

     “Behold, I have made thee to be a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth; thou shalt thresh the mountains … and shalt make the hills as chaff” ( Isa. 41:15–16, ASV); “Arise and thresh, O daughter of Zion; for I will make thy horn iron … and thou shalt beat in pieces many peoples” ( Mic. 4:13, ASV).

     Whether  Isaiah was influenced by  Micah or  Micah by  Isaiah is hard to say; quite possibly they were familiar with each other’s preaching. It may also have been that the Holy Spirit moved them both to express God’s message to the same generation in similar terms. At any rate, they express the same general mood and viewpoint, and deal very largely with the same issues. In this connection we might mention  Hosea 13:4: “Thou shalt know no god but me, and besides me there is no saviour” (ASV). This sentence appears twice in  Isaiah II, in  43:11 and  45:21, thus indicating a close relationship. (Since  Hosea was slightly earlier than  Isaiah, it is quite possible that the younger prophet deliberately borrowed from the older.)

A Survey of Old Testament Introduction

The Continual Burnt Offering

By H.A. Ironside - 1941

May 1

Be not men’s servant: think what costly price
Was paid that thou mayest His own bondsman be,
Whose service perfect freedom is. Let this
Hold fast thy heart. His claim is great to thee:
None should thy soul enthrall, to whom ‘tis given
To serve on earth, with liberty of heaven.

Be wise, be watchful. Wily men surround
Thy path. Be careful, for they seek with care
To trip thee up. See that no plea is found
In thee thy Master to reproach. The snare
They set for thee will then themselves inclose,
And God His righteous judgment thus disclose.
--- J. J. P.

The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Translated by Henry Beveridge

     CHAPTER 22.

THIS DOCTRINE CONFIRMED BY PROOFS FROM SCRIPTURE.

The divisions of this chapter are,--I. A confirmation of the orthodox doctrine in opposition to two classes of individuals. This confirmation founded on a careful exposition of our Savior's words, and passages in the writings of Paul, sec. 1-7. II. A refutation of some objections taken from ancient writers, Thomas Aquinas, and more modern writers, sec. 8-10. III. Of reprobation, which is founded entirely on the righteous will of God, sec. 11.

Sections.

1. Some imagine that God elects or reprobates according to a foreknowledge of merit. Others make it a charge against God that he elects some and passes by others. Both refuted, 1. By invincible arguments; 2. By the testimony of Augustine.

2. Who are elected, when, in whom, to what, for what reason.

3. The reason is the good pleasure of God, which so reigns in election that no works, either past or future, are taken into consideration. This proved by notable declarations of one Savior and passages of Paul.

4. Proved by a striking discussion in the Epistle to the Romans. Its scope and method explained. The advocates of foreknowledge refuted by the Apostle, when he maintains that election is special and wholly of grace.

5. Evasion refuted. A summary and analysis of the Apostle's discussion.

6. An exception, with three answers to it. The efficacy of gratuitous election extends only to believers, who are said to be elected according to foreknowledge. This foreknowledge or prescience is not speculative but active.

7. This proved from the words of Christ. Conclusion of the answer, and solution of the objection with regard to Judas.

8. An objection taken from the ancient fathers. Answer from Augustine, from Ambrose, as quoted by Augustine, and an invincible argument by an Apostle. Summary of this argument.

9. Objection from Thomas Aquinas. Answer.

10. Objection of more modern writers. Answers. Passages in which there is a semblance of contradiction reconciled. Why many called and few chosen. An objection founded on mutual consent between the word and faith. Solution confirmed by the words of Paul, Augustine, and Bernard. A clear declaration by our Savior.

11. The view to be taken of reprobation. It is founded on the righteous will of God.

1. Many controvert all the positions which we have laid down, especially the gratuitous election of believers, which, however, cannot be overthrown. For they commonly imagine that God distinguishes between men according to the merits which he foresees that each individual is to have, giving the adoption of sons to those whom he foreknows will not be unworthy of his grace, and dooming those to destruction whose dispositions he perceives will be prone to mischief and wickedness. Thus by interposing foreknowledge as a veil, they not only obscure election, but pretend to give it a different origin. Nor is this the commonly received opinion of the vulgar merely, for it has in all ages had great supporters (see sec. 8). This I candidly confess, lest any one should expect greatly to prejudice our cause by opposing it with their names. The truth of God is here too certain to be shaken, too clear to be overborne by human authority. Others who are neither versed in Scripture, nor entitled to any weight, assail sound doctrine with a petulance and improbity which it is impossible to tolerate. [496] Because God of his mere good pleasure electing some passes by others, they raise a plea against him. But if the fact is certain, what can they gain by quarreling with God? We teach nothing but what experience proves to be true--viz. that God has always been at liberty to bestow his grace on whom he would. Not to ask in what respect the posterity of Abraham excelled others if it be not in a worth, the cause of which has no existence out of God, let them tell why men are better than oxen or asses. God might have made them dogs when he formed them in his own image. Will they allow the lower animals to expostulate with God, as if the inferiority of their condition were unjust? It is certainly not more equitable that men should enjoy the privilege which they have not acquired by any merit, than that he should variously distribute favors as seems to him meet. If they pass to the case of individuals where inequality is more offensive to them, they ought at least, in regard to the example of our Savior, to be restrained by feelings of awe from talking so confidently of this sublime mystery. He is conceived a mortal man of the seed of David; what, I would ask them, are the virtues by which he deserved to become in the very womb, the head of angels the only begotten Son of God, the image and glory of the Father, the light, righteousness, and salvation of the world? It is wisely observed by Augustine, [497] that in the very head of the Church we have a bright mirror of free election, lest it should give any trouble to us the members--viz. that he did not become the Son of God by living righteously, but was freely presented with this great honor, that he might afterwards make others partakers of his gifts. Should any one here ask, why others are not what he was, or why we are all at so great a distance from him, why we are all corrupt while he is purity, he would not only betray his madness, but his effrontery also. But if they are bent on depriving God of the free right of electing and reprobating, let them at the same time take away what has been given to Christ. It will now be proper to attend to what Scripture declares concerning each. When Paul declares that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4), he certainly shows that no regard is had to our own worth; for it is just as if he had said, Since in the whole seed of Adam our heavenly Father found nothing worthy of his election, he turned his eye upon his own Anointed, that he might select as members of his body those whom he was to assume into the fellowship of life. Let believers, then, give full effect to this reason--viz. that we were in Christ adopted unto the heavenly inheritance, because in ourselves we were incapable of such excellence. This he elsewhere observes in another passage, in which he exhorts the Colossians to give thanks that they had been made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints (Col. 1:12). If election precedes that divine grace by which we are made fit to obtain immortal life, what can God find in us to induce him to elect us? What I mean is still more clearly explained in another passage: God, says he, "has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we might be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will," (Eph. 1:4, 5). Here he opposes the good pleasure of God to our merits of every description.

Holiness of life springs from election, and is the object of it2. That the proof may be more complete, it is of importance to attend to the separate clauses of that passage. When they are connected together they leave no doubt. From giving them the name of elect, it is clear that he is addressing believers, as indeed he shortly after declares. It is, therefore, a complete perversion of the name to confine it to the age in which the gospel was published. By saying they were elected before the foundation of the world, he takes away all reference to worth. For what ground of distinction was there between persons who as yet existed not, and persons who were afterwards like them to exist in Adam? But if they were elected in Christ, it follows not only that each was elected on some extrinsic ground, but that some were placed on a different footing from others, since we see that all are not members of Christ. In the additional statement that they were elected that they might be holy, the apostle openly refutes the error of those who deduce election from prescience, since he declares that whatever virtue appears in men is the result of election. Then, if a higher cause is asked, Paul answers that God so predestined, and predestined according to the good pleasure of his will. By these words, he overturns all the grounds of election which men imagine to exist in themselves. For he shows that whatever favors God bestows in reference to the spiritual life flow from this one fountain, because God chose whom he would, and before they were born had the grace which he designed to bestow upon them set apart for their use.

3. Wherever this good pleasure of God reigns, no good works are taken into account. The Apostle, indeed, does not follow out the antithesis, but it is to be understood, as he himself explains it in another passage, "Who has called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began," (2 Tim. 1:9). We have already shown that the additional words, "that we might be holy," remove every doubt. If you say that he foresaw they would be holy, and therefore elected them, you invert the order of Paul. You may, therefore, safely infer, If he elected us that we might be holy, he did not elect us because he foresaw that we would be holy. The two things are evidently inconsistent--viz. that the pious owe it to election that they are holy, and yet attain to election by means of works. There is no force in the cavil to which they are ever recurring, that the Lord does not bestow election in recompense of preceding, but bestows it in consideration of future merits. For when it is said that believers were elected that they might be holy, it is at the same time intimated that the holiness which was to be in them has its origin in election. And how can it be consistently said, that things derived from election are the cause of election? The very thing which the Apostle had said, he seems afterwards to confirm by adding, "According to his good pleasure which he has purposed in himself," (Eph. 1:9); for the expression that God "purposed in himself," is the same as if it had been said, that in forming his decree he considered nothing external to himself; and, accordingly, it is immediately subjoined, that the whole object contemplated in our election is, that "we should be to the praise of his glory." Assuredly divine grace would not deserve all the praise of election, were not election gratuitous; and it would not be gratuitous did God in electing any individual pay regard to his future works. Hence, what Christ said to his disciples is found to be universally applicable to all believers, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," (John 15:16). Here he not only excludes past merits, but declares that they had nothing in themselves for which they could be chosen except in so far as his mercy anticipated. And how are we to understand the words of Paul, "Who has first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again?" (Rom. 11:35). His meaning obviously is, that men are altogether indebted to the preventing goodness of God, there being nothing in them, either past or future, to conciliate his favor.

4. In the Epistle to the Romans (Rom. 9:6), in which he again treats this subject more reconditely and at greater length, he declares that "they are not all Israel which are of Israel;" for though all were blessed in respect of hereditary rights yet all did not equally obtain the succession. The whole discussion was occasioned by the pride and vain-glorying of the Jews, who, by claiming the name of the Church for themselves, would have made the faith of the Gospel dependent on their pleasure; just as in the present day the Papists would fain under this pretext substitute themselves in place of God. Paul, while he concedes that in respect of the covenant they were the holy offspring of Abraham, yet contends that the greater part of them were strangers to it, and that not only because they were degenerate, and so had become bastards instead of sons, but because the principal point to be considered was the special election of God, by which alone his adoption was ratified. If the piety of some established them in the hope of salvation, and the revolt of others was the sole cause of their being rejected, it would have been foolish and absurd in Paul to carry his readers back to a secret election. But if the will of God (no cause of which external to him either appears or is to be looked for) distinguishes some from others, so that all the sons of Israel are not true Israelites, it is vain for any one to seek the origin of his condition in himself. He afterwards prosecutes the subject at greater length, by contrasting the cases of Jacob and Esau. Both being sons of Abraham, both having been at the same time in the womb of their mother, there was something very strange in the change by which the honor of the birthright was transferred to Jacob, and yet Paul declares that the change was an attestation to the election of the one and the reprobation of the other.

The question considered is the origin and cause of election. The advocates of foreknowledge insist that it is to be found in the virtues and vices of men. For they take the short and easy method of asserting, that God showed in the person of Jacob, that he elects those who are worthy of his grace; and in the person of Esau, that he rejects those whom he foresees to be unworthy. Such is their confident assertion; but what does Paul say? "For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth; it was said unto her, [Rebecca,] The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated," (Rom. 9:11-13). If foreknowledge had anything to do with this distinction of the brothers, the mention of time would have been out of place. Granting that Jacob was elected for a worth to be obtained by future virtues, to what end did Paul say that he was not yet born? Nor would there have been any occasion for adding, that as yet he had done no good, because the answer was always ready, that nothing is hid from God, and that therefore the piety of Jacob was present before him. If works procure favor, a value ought to have been put upon them before Jacob was born, just as if he had been of full age. But in explaining the difficulty, the Apostle goes on to show, that the adoption of Jacob proceeded not on works but on the calling of God. In works he makes no mention of past or future, but distinctly opposes them to the calling of God, intimating, that when place is given to the one the other is overthrown; as if he had said, The only thing to be considered is what pleased God, not what men furnished of themselves. Lastly, it is certain that all the causes which men are wont to devise as external to the secret counsel of God, are excluded by the use of the terms purpose and election.

     Christian Classics Ethereal Library / Public Domain

     Institutes of the Christian Religion