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The TWO NEW Covenants
Miles J. Stanford PAULINE DISPENSATIONALISM stands for the following concerning the relationship between the Everlasting Covenant, Israel's New Covenant, and the heavenly Church:
By means of the common, unequivocal, literal hermeneutic, we will share the scriptural facts as to the relationship between the Everlasting Covenant, Israel's New Covenant, and the heavenly Church. I - THE EVERLASTING COVENANT:
The Everlasting Covenant is neither between God and the Church, nor God and Israel, nor God and the Gentiles. Rather, it is between the party of the first part, "the God of peace," and the party of the second part, the "Lord Jesus." The conditions of this covenant were that if the Great Shepherd would lay down His life for the sheep, the Father would raise Him from among the dead. "And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross." "But God raised Him from the dead ...." He was "raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father" (Phil. 2:8; Acts 13:30; Rom. 6:4). The Everlasting Covenant was ratified in eternity past, and fulfilled at the resurrection. It is a new covenant in respect to TIME (Calvary), and it is new in respect to KIND, i.e., between God the Father and God the Son. It is the fulfillment of Galatians 3:20: "Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one." The Mosaic Covenant was between God and Israel, with Moses as mediator. Israel broke that covenant. "My covenant they broke, although I was an husband to them, saith the Lord" (Jer. 31:32). Hence Israel's New Covenant is unconditional--"I will." But the Everlasting Covenant is all of God--God the Father, and God the Son: "God is One." While neither under it, nor a part of it, the Church is the primary beneficiary of the Everlasting Covenant. "I ... make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ." The Church has not come to the Covenant; she is in union of life with the Mediator of all covenants! Israel's New Covenant is based upon the Everlasting Covenant, i.e., the Blood of the Cross. II - ISRAEL'S NEW COVENANTThis New Covenant is (a) exclusively Israel's; (b) it is for the future millennial and the eternal kingdom; (c) it is eternal; (d) it has several features:
Israel's New Covenant will neither be inaugurated nor fulfilled until after the Great Tribulation (Jacob's trouble), nor until the Deliverer returns to earth, nor until Israel's sins are forgiven.
SEPARATE, OR SINK -- Both Classic and Traditional Dispensationalism have always dipped into Israel's comparatively slender New Covenant resources, claiming their "spiritual" blessings for the Church. This unwarranted encroachment has resulted in the downfall of Dispensationalism, and the upsurge of kingdom-oriented Progressive Dispensationalism, and kingdom-centered Covenantism. If you so much as touch Israel at any point--past, present, or future--you have violated the rightly-divided Word of truth and its Pauline Dispensationalism. HEBREWS -- The book of Hebrews was written primarily for the Hebrew converts to Christianity. Its purpose was to center them in the glorified Lord Jesus Christ in the heavenlies, and to protect them from turning back to the Mosaic Covenant and its Law. Hamilton Smith explains the problem:
James L. Harris, another early Plymouth Brethren writer, elaborates:
MOSES OUT! -- The author of Hebrews used Israel's New Covenant to show these converts that the Mosaic Covenant was to be replaced:
Wm. R. Newell gives the proper conclusion concerning these covenants:
The purpose and burden of Hebrews is to draw believers away from anything of earthly Israel, and to establish them in their heavenly position in Christ, and that by the "Blood of the Everlasting Covenant." He would never point them to Israel's earthly New Covenant for anything heavenly!
Try and get that via Israel, past, present, or future! There is no blood of Israel's New Covenant. That covenant, and all other covenants, are based upon the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant! Therefore:
"This cup is the new covenant in My Blood: this do in remembrance of Me" (1 Cor. 11:25). PAULINE -- Paul's ministry was heavenly, to the heavenly Body of Christ. There is no way that he could have resorted to Israel's earthly kingdom New Covenant for ministry to the heavenly Church! His ministry was (is) based upon the "Blood of the Everlasting Covenant." Is there anyone here who has a problem with that? If so, read on. If you think Paul was a minister of Israel's New Covenant, and if you aspire to be the same, you are kingdom bound, along with Progressive Dispensationalism and its counterpart, Covenantism. Flat, horizontal, earthly-wrong!
III. THE HEAVENLY CHURCHImagine anything of the following being based upon, or drawn from, Israel's New Covenant! Creation was first in point of time, but the Bridal Church was first in the counsel of God. In eternity past the Father conceived the Church, the Body, the Bride for His Beloved Son, and He kept her a secret and a mystery to man in His heart, until Paul.
Hamilton Smith wrote of the Church:
EACH CHOSEN -- "According as He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world" (Eph. 1:4). EACH CALLED -- "Who hath saved us, and 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 before the world began" (2 Tim. 1:9). " ... called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son" (Rom. 8:29,30). HEART SECRET -- From eternity past, through the ages and generations of time, the Father kept the Bride secretly hidden in His heart of love. Like a mighty jet stream, high above recorded history and Scripture, all unknown to man, the Father finally brought her in a secret descent to the Cross. Not only the descent, but the Cross itself was secret:
SINS FORGIVEN -- There, on the Cross, all of the sins that would ever be committed by a member of the Body, were forgiven. "In whom we have redemption through His Blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace" (Eph. 1:7). SIN CONDEMNED -- Adamic sin was not forgiven. Rather, on the Cross it was judged, condemned, and crucified. "God, sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." "Knowing this, that out old [Adamic] man was crucified with Him" (Rom. 8:3; 6:6). IDENTIFICATION -- Every member of the Bride-to-be, in Adam, was judicially identified with Christ on the Cross. There He was made to be sin--our sin; hence we were identified with Him in His death to sin. "For He hath made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us." "I have been crucified with Christ" (2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 2:20). BURIED WITH HIM -- In our identification with Him in His death to sin, we were buried with Him. "Therefore, we were buried with Him" (Rom. 6:4). DEATH-SEPARATION -- In order to be raised from the dead, resurrected, as a new creation in the Last Adam, it was necessary for us to be separated from the first Adam by death. "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation; old [first Adam] things are [positionally] passed away; behold, all things are become [positionally] new." "Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to have died indeed unto sin, but to be alive unto God in Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 5:17; Rom. 6:11). ASCENDED BRIDE -- Having separated the Bride from Adam and recreated her in Christ, the Father raised her to the heavenlies--each member of the Body of Christ. "Even when we were dead in sins [God] hath made us alive [recreated] together with Christ ... and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:5,6). THE BLOOD -- The Bride was redeemed by "the precious Blood of Christ" (1 Pet. 1: 19). The Bride was "made nigh by the Blood of Christ" (Eph. 2:13). The Bride was positioned in Christ--"hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). The Bride has "boldness to enter into the Holiest by the Blood of Jesus" (Heb. 10:19). PENTECOST -- Soon the Spirit of God brought her to earth again, like a rushing mighty wind, to begin her experiential history--the Bride growing up incognito, in the world, but not of it. "And when the day of Pentecost was fully come ... suddenly there came a sound from heaven like a rushing mighty wind. ..and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:1,2,4). THE HOLY SPIRIT -- From that time forth the Spirit of Christ indwells all who believe--all of the chosen, elect, called members of the Body of Christ. Each believer is baptized by the Spirit into the Body of Christ--in union with Christ. "For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one Body" (1 Cor. 12:13). IN CHRIST -- "So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another." "For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (1 Cor. 12:27; Gal. 3:27). CHRIST IN YOU -- Our union with Christ is reciprocal--we are in Him, and He is in us. "Christ in you, the hope of glory." "At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you" (Col. 1:27; John 14:20). JOINT-HEIRS -- Each member of the Body of Christ is an heir with Christ. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." "The Spirit beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God." "And if children, then heirs--heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:14,16,17). TOTAL ONENESS -- Our life in Christ is complete--total oneness with Him. "For he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit." "And ye are complete in Him." "Accepted in the Beloved." "For we are members of His Body, of His flesh, and of His bones" (1 Cor. 6:17; Col. 2:10; Eph. 1:6; 5:30). RAPTURE -- In the Father's appointed time, when He has completed the Body of Christ, He will again take her aloft--this time for the Bride to meet her Bridegroom in the air. It is then that her eternal position will become experiential condition. "When He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is." "For our citizenship is in heaven, from where also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our lowly body, that it may be fashioned like His glorious body" (1 John 3:2; Phil. 3:20,21). SECOND ADVENT -- Ere long the Bridegroom-King will bring His all-glorious Bride down from heaven to reign forever with Him over the earth. "When Christ, who is our Life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory." "They shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years." "And they shall reign for ever and ever" (Col. 3:4; Rev. 20:6; 22:5). LEWIS SPERRY CHAFER wrote:
HAMILTON SMITH wrote:
QUESTION -- Israel's New Covenant, anyone?! As recipient of "all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ" .... "according as His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness" (Eph. 1:3; 2 Pet. 1:3), would you hanker for anything from Israel's New Covenant? I trust not.
The God of Peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the Sheep, through the Blood of the Everlasting Covenant Hebrews 13:20 BODY BEAUTIFULPaul wrote that "it pleased the Father to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:16). This is the ground of the Church's special dignity, and the Gospel which Paul represented and preached. It was not the Gospel of Messiah, the Hope of Israel, nor the Gospel of the once crucified One, now exalted "to be a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sin"; but it was the Gospel of the Son of God revealed in him. The Son had been revealed to the disciples by the Father before (Matt. 16:17); but now He is revealed in Paul. The Holy Spirit in him was the Spirit of the Son. And anointed with the oil of gladness, he had to go forth and spread the savour of it everywhere. And upon the Son thus revealed within, hangs everything that is peculiar to the calling of the Christian and therefore the Church. Thus we read, "The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God ... and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together" (Rom. 8:16,17). And again, we read, "that we are predestinated to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ," that is, as Paul here speaks of himself, to have the Son revealed in us. And this being the predestinated condition of the Church, there comes forth, as in the train of this, all the believer's holy prerogatives--acceptance in the Beloved, with the forgiveness of sins through His Blood--entrance into the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, so as to have made known to us the mystery of the will of the Father--future inheritance in and with Him, in Whom all things in heaven and earth are to be gathered--and the present seal and earnest of this inheritance in the Holy Spirit. This bright roll of privileges is inscribed by the Apostle thus--"spiritual blessings in the heavenlies"; and so are linking us with Him Who is the Lord in the heavens (Eph.1:4-12). All this follows upon the Son being revealed in us, by which the believer puts on Christ, so as to be one with Him in every stage of His wondrous way: dead, quickened, raised, and seated in heaven in Him (Eph. 2:6). A mediator such as Moses, whose best service was to keep Jehovah and the people apart (see Deut. 5:5), could never answer the purpose of this marvelous love of our Father. But in the Son we are accepted; we have everything by our oneness with the Mediator Himself (John 17:26). Nothing less than this could fulfill the desire of our heavenly Father's heart towards us. The wall of partition, whether between God and sinners, or between Jew and Gentile, is broken down; and we stand together on its ruins, triumphing over them in Christ, our heavenly Father rejoicing over them also. This is the marvelous workmanship of the love of God, and the forming and completing of this union of Christ and the Christian, is the husbandry which the Father is now tending. He is not, as once He was, caring for a land of wheat, and oil, and pomegranates, that His people might eat without scarceness of the increase of the field (Deut. 11:12); but He is the Husbandman of the Vine and the branches. He is training the Body in union with the Son of His love until all of the members come into the knowledge of Him to a perfect man. It is this union which makes us of the same family with the Lord Jesus, and entitles us to hear of Him as "the First-born" (Rom. 8:29). It is this union of life which gives us the same glory with the Lord Jesus, and entitles us to look after Him as "the Forerunner" (Heb. 6:20). It is this which gives character to that life which we now have, and to that glory in which we shall be manifested, when He Who is our Life shall appear. --J.G. Bellett |
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MJStanford
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