Its been almost a month since I’ve posted a blog here since I’ve been really busy. I’m hoping to finish this one and get another one on some other topic up by the end of the week to make up for that.
With that said, I’m going to be taking a break from discussing law (directly) for a post in order to discuss a topic that gets thrown around a lot, the nature of the covenant community in the New Testament.
The Reformed Baptist argument goes something like this.
1. The Old Covenant was a mixture of true believers and unbelievers.
2. Jeremiah 31 teaches that the New Covenant is “not like” the Old because “all shall know me [the Lord]
3. Infants received the sign of the covenant in the Old Covenant because they were born into a mixed covenant.
4. Since the New Covenant is made up of only those who have been born again, nobody is physically born into the new covenant. Thus the church should do everything reasonably possible to only give the sign of the covenant to members of the New Covenant, which means only giving it to those who “know the Lord.”
At first glance this argument seems reasonable, to the point where I’ve been accused of ignoring the clear meaning of Jeremiah 31 when I don’t accept either the argument or its conclusions.
First off I’m going to share some good reasons I see to say the New Covenant is mixed, then I’m going to explain why I don’t agree with Reformed Baptist exegesis on Jeremiah 31.
Hebrews 10:26-31
26 For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, 27 but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. 28 Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know Him who said, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,”[a] says the Lord.[b] And again, “The Lord will judge His people.”[c]31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
In the first place, you have people who were sanctified by the blood of the covenant who fall away and profane the blood. If we agree that you cannot lose your salvation (as the Reformed Baptist does due to believing in Perseverance of the Saints) you have people who werent truly saved yet were part enough of the covenant community to be sanctified by the blood of the covenant.
Some Reformed Baptists would say it was Christ who was sanctified by the blood of the covenant, not the person profaning it. This understanding is possible, but even if that’s true, the passage then says “the Lord will judge his people.” Who is the Lord judging? Surely not the elect, but those who fall away, yet they can be referred to as “the Lord’s people.” This doesn’t make much sense with an ecclesiology that sees only believers as part of the covenant. The baptistic view would say that the people who are being judged are not God’s people. But this is not what the scriptures teach.
Also Romans 11:19-24 says:
19 You will say then, “Branches were broken off that I might be grafted in.” 20 Well said. Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either. 22 Therefore consider the goodness and severity of God: on those who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness,[f] if you continue in His goodness. Otherwise you also will be cut off. 23 And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. 24 For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, who are natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?
“Cut off” is covenant language. It is used to describe those who were not circumcized in Genesis 17, and its also used here. Now certainly this is not to say that some outward sign like circumcision is essential for salvation, but this is exactly the point. We make a distinction between covenant membership (which one can be cut off from) and being among God’s elect, something that according to Romans 8 nothing can change. Though there have been many philosophical arguments raised against the idea that one could be cut off from the New “covenant of grace”, Romans 11 is clear that without faith one will be cut off. Thus if the new covenant is something you can be cut off from, not only true believers are saved.
Now, I am quite willing to grant that what they are being cut off from is, to use more formal theological language, the “administration” of the covenant rather than its “substance.” However I believe this was true in the Old Covenant as well. God never promised to save Esau, yet he received the covenant sign and was a part of the nation of Abraham, which at that time was the covenant people of God on earth.
Similarly, God does not promise to save every single infant that is baptized, Christ does not intercede before the Father for non elect infants, yet because we only see the visible church and do not know who is and is not of him, we regard our infants as being part of God’s people on earth, even knowing they may or may not be of his people for eternity. 1 Corinthians 7, though primarily about marriage, clearly alludes to this truth.
So this gets to the question of how I interpret Jeremiah 31. If you are a Reformed Baptist you might be thinking “your argumentation is all well and good, but Jeremiah 31 says that the New Covenant is different than the Old, so you cant use the mixed covenant of the Old Testament as precedent for how a mixed covenant would work in the New Testament.” This is still a fair objection, but keep in mind that we have already shown that such an understanding is difficult to reconcile with other texts. I will now examine why I don’t think its the best understanding of Jeremiah 31 either.
Jeremiah 31:31-35
31 “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 32 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day thatI took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them,[a] says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
The first problem I have with the literal application of these passages is that it proves too much. This passage speaks of a day where no longer will people be taught to know the Lord, yet the church continues to teach today. And it doesn’t just teach outsiders, it even continues to teach the church as a whole to know the Lord. So in order to make this passage even applicable in this way, Reformed Baptists will say that we teach people in the church but not people in the covenant. In my mind this is special pleading. Externally the ministers teach the external people of God just as they always have, all we’re doing (if the Reformed Baptists are right) are simply declaring that those people aren’t part of the covenant community anymore, yet they’re still being taught all the same.
In addition to not fitting well with other scriptures as described above, I also don’t think this view really captures what’s better about the new covenant. I’d be much more inclined to accept this view if people never walked away from the faith, if all professions of the true gospel were genuine, if we didn’t need apostasy warnings to the church to stand in faith, lest they fall. But yet clearly these things still continue.
But there is a way in which the New Covenant is really better than the Old, in reality and not just abstractly. To explain this I point to where Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31. There’s a lot to quote here, so if you’re not very familiar with the passages in question, I would recommend taking a break from reading this blog to read Hebrews 8-10.
Now, what do we see referenced continually alongside the New Covenant promise? A change in the priesthood. We see that now all believers are priests! In the Old Covenant grace was administered through shadows. We needed priests on earth who mediated temporally as a shadow of Christ the true mediator. We needed sacrifices on earth which acted temporally as a shadow of Christ the true sacrifice. We see the gospel itself taught through various typological shadows. I believe this type of teaching has been done away with, and I believe that’s how Hebrews 8-10 are to be interpreted. No longer will the covenant people need to be taught to know the Lord, not in the sense that there are no longer false converts in their midst, but in the sense that every member of the covenant is able to have a personal relationship with the Lord, rather than having to go through a priest or an animal sacrifice. The type of teaching that features priests as a special class, and the pedagogical ceremonial laws has been done away with. No longer must ANYONE be taught to know the Lord through shadows, but now only the substance is taught.
Not only is this interpretation more consistent with the rest of scripture, its more consistent internally. The Reformed Baptist has to explain why teaching is still occurring in the New Covenant and even to visible church members. I have no need to explain this because the type of teaching I believe Jeremiah 31 is referring to has entirely been done away with and never needs to be used again. No longer can there be a human priesthood, for Christ is the high priest and all of us are priests. Because of Christ all of us can commune with God. But yet there are still false converts within the covenant community, hence the warnings. And we’re still commanded to give the sign of the covenant to our children, because there is a real people of God on earth, because there is no basis to say the new covenant excludes them now, as discussed previously.
reconvenantersassanach 