When Wright is Wrong - Phillip D. R. Griffiths

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target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_567649ad-3571-5d0b-a491-e0d424b2d853">113. Wilhemlus a Brakel, Our Reasonable Service, 1:355.

      The Application of Salvation

      Before Abraham

      The first glimmer of light occurred shortly after the first Man’s sin. At the critical moment, when Adam expected to hear only the sentence of death, the Lord pronounced the fact that he was going to interpose on man’s behalf through one who would be born of woman (Gen 3:15). This first promise “implied that God, instead of appearing against them as their enemy, was to interpose for them as their friend; that He had formed a purpose of grace and mercy towards them.”122 One may well find Adam among the congregation of the saved, providing he embraced the promise in faith. While prior to his fall Adam was a federal head of all his offspring, the promise was to be embraced on an individual basis. As Coxe puts it:

      It must be noted that although the covenant of grace was revealed this far to Adam, yet we see in all this there was no formal and express covenant transaction with him. Even less was the covenant of grace established with him as a public person or representative of any kind. But he obtained interest for himself alone by his own faith in the grace of God revealed in this way, so must those of his posterity be saved.123

      Throughout the Old Testament period, this promise would become progressively more explicit; culminating in the appearance of the one promised with the formal legal establishment of the new covenant. Although the first promise was somewhat obscure, “it contained enough to lay a solid foundation for faith and hope towards God, and it was the first beam of Gospel light on our fallen world.”124 Salvation was only available by believing this promise, and, as Denault reminds us, “As a result all those who were saved since the creation of the world were saved by virtue of the New Covenant which was in effect as a promise.”125

      There was a considerable time span from the fall of Adam to the arrival of Abraham. In this time, both before and after the flood, God’s offer of salvation was present and people were being saved. In those relatively dark days, the promise was universal in that it was not chiefly revealed to a particular nation; there was no distinction between Jew and Gentile. Although the new covenant only existed in the form of a promise, in the words of Owen, “It wanted its solemn confirmation and establishment by the blood of the only sacrifice which belonged to it . . . Before this was done in the death of Christ, it had not the formal nature of a covenant or a testament.”126 The way of salvation, however, was the same as it is today. Those who believed became recipients of new covenant blessings because of its retrospective efficacy. All those who believed were effectually called, regenerated by the Spirit, justified by faith and adopted into the family of God. The only badge of membership, if one can call it that, was faith. Those so-called “boundary markers” as the NPP refers to them, did not apply then, and when they later did so they only related to the conditional covenant made with Israel, with its temporal blessings that were dependent upon the people’s obedience to the law.

      Consider the case of Abel. How was he saved? Was the way of salvation different then from what it is today? Was it different from what it was under the old covenant? I emphasize this because it is crucial to the case against Wright and the way he views Israel. Abel knew right from wrong because he had knowledge of the law’s requirements upon his heart. He was by nature a child of wrath, separated from God because of both his own and Adam’s sin. In Hebrews we are told that “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks” (Heb 11:4). No doubt his sacrifice was acceptable to God because it was of a bloody nature, suggesting that he, by a revelation of the Spirit of Christ, saw from afar the blood of Christ. In faith, he would have been united to Christ and made a partaker of the blessings Christ achieved in his redemptive work. And, one must remember that this was before the existence of the nation.

      Old Testament saints obviously did not possess the knowledge about Christ’s work that we have today; they were very much looking through a glass darkly. These saints believed the promise that God would at some future time rescue fallen man. In the age preceding the new covenant’s consummation in Christ’s completed work, the Holy Spirit, whom Peter calls “the Spirit of Christ” (1 Pet 1:11), was at work in regenerating his people, generating faith and uniting believers to Christ. We see the gospel going forth prior to the flood in the case of Noah. Peter tells us that it was the same Spirit of Christ who later raised Christ from the dead, who through Noah “preached to the spirits in prison” (1 Pet 3:19). Through this prophet’s word God “condemned the world”, yet those who believed “became heir of the righteousness which is by faith” (Heb 11:7).

      The Reformed Baptist covenantal paradigm displays unity in its simplicity. There is no covenant duality within the new covenant. Salvation has always been the same, namely by exercising faith in Christ, the mediator of the new covenant. It is usual for many, if not most, Reformed theologians, when examining the way covenantal blessings in the Old Testament, refer to the “covenant of grace.” In this work, I have, on the whole, done the same. It is, however, something I have not been completely comfortable with. This is because the term is not employed in the Scriptures, and also because no one has ever been saved but by the new covenant. It seems, therefore, more reasonable to say that all believers were members of the new covenant.

      With God there is no favoritism, one child is not favored over another on the basis of what its parents may believe, except, of course, of finding itself in a privileged position in regard to the hearing of the gospel. Unlike Israel where all were members of the old covenant, children of believers do not become members of the new covenant simply in virtue of being born into a certain family. God is Spirit and those who worship him do so in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). The only way into Christ is by the new birth, by becoming a new creation; having a new heart of flesh. The church of God is, and always has been, the body of Christ, and Christ as the head of his church is transforming it into the image of his glorified humanity. About all the saints of God John Calvin surprisingly states:

      The children of the promise [Rom. 9:8], reborn of God, who have obeyed the commands of faith, working through love [Gal. 5:6], have belonged to the New Covenant since the world began. This they did, not in hope of carnal, earthly, and temporal things, but in hope of spiritual, heavenly, and eternal benefits.127

      I say surprisingly because Calvin was a paedobaptist, and the majority of Reformed paedobaptists maintain that the new covenant did not become operative until consummated by Christ.

      God’s Covenant with Abraham

      According to paedobaptists, the old and new covenants are not radically different from each other. The new covenant is deemed to be of the same substance as the old covenant, although a fuller and more extended version; with salvation being available under the old covenant as it would later

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