As the difference just insisted on is of all importance, let us look at Isa. 59:20, 21; 60:1, 2, 320And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith the Lord. 21As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith the Lord; My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, saith the Lord, from henceforth and for ever. (Isaiah 59:20‑21)
1Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. 2For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. 3And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. (Isaiah 60:1‑3). “And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, saith Jehovah. As for me, this is my covenant with them, saith Jehovah: My spirit that is upon thee, and my words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed’s seed, saith Jehovah from henceforth and forever. Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of Jehovah is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the peoples: but Jehovah shall rise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.” Here also it is clear that, in the coming dispensation to which the Holy Spirit in Rom. 11 applies the passage, preeminence over the Gentiles is guaranteed to Israel.
“The wealth of the Gentiles shall come unto thee” (ver. 5). “The Holy One of Israel... hath glorified thee. And the sons of strangers shall build up thy walls, and their kings shall minister unto thee.” “Therefore thy gates shall be opened continually; they shall not be shut day nor night; that men may bring unto thee the forces of the Gentiles, and that their kings may be brought. For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted” (vers. 11, 12). Compare also the rest of this chapter, as well as chapters 61 and 62. One portion of the first is so decisive and striking that it may be well to cite it. “I will make an everlasting covenant with them; and their seed shall be known among the Gentiles” (is this the same common position?) “and their offspring among the peoples: all that see them shall acknowledge them that they are a seed which Jehovah hath blessed.”
Here, plainly and indisputably, we have the literal fulfillment of the promises to Abraham and his seed; but it is evident that the terms of the prophecy, equally with those of the original covenant, are irreconcilable with the notion of identical blessings to Jews and Gentiles, all difference between them being utterly nullified. On the contrary, great as may be the privileges to the nations of the earth, resulting from these promises, decided and blessed superiority will be the indefeasible prerogative of Israel. The Gentiles are to serve them, and the nations that will not shall perish. All this is in perfect accordance with the Abrahamic covenant whose accomplishment in any strict sense is yet future without one feature of resemblance to the church, which is entirely above such distinctions. For the Christian it is grace.
The prophecy of Zecharias (Luke 1:68-7968Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, 69And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; 70As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: 71That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; 72To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; 73The oath which he sware to our father Abraham, 74That he would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve him without fear, 75In holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life. 76And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; 77To give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins, 78Through the tender mercy of our God; whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, 79To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. (Luke 1:68‑79)) is evidently Jewish in its sources, its associations, and its hopes, as indeed had been the previous announcement of Gabriel to him (vers. 13-17). “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets,” &c. (is this the mystery which, from the beginning of the world, hath been hid in God?) “that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us” (is this the character or manner of salvation to the church?); “to perform the mercy promised to our fathers” (are they really our fathers, or fathers of the Jewish people?), “and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, that he would grant unto us,” &c. It is conceded that many of the blessings are common, such as “in holiness and righteousness before him,” faith resting on Messiah and the new birth; for there are, of course, general principles which characterize all the people of God in all ages. But I affirm that, as a whole, this prophecy, as yet unfulfilled, and clearly based upon the oath sworn to Abraham, is not in any way a charter of church privilege. To say that it is, would be, in effect, to efface the peculiar doctrine of such Epistles as to Ephesians and Colossians; or, in other words, to deny unwittingly the being and proper character of the church of God.
Moreover, it was no secret that the nations were to be blessed. It was as ancient a promise, we have seen, as that which secured the peculiar seat of honor to Abraham’s seed. It was repeated to Isaac (Gen. 26:44And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; (Genesis 26:4)) and reiterated to Jacob (28:14). A Jew ought not to have thought of Jehovah’s pledge of blessing to his race without remembering that he himself was to be the channel of blessing to the nations. Will it be affirmed that this most familiar assurance of blessing to the Gentiles in the promised seed, published frequently and undisguisedly (as the apostle Paul showed) in Moses, and the Psalms, and the prophets, is the same thing as “the mystery” which has been “hid from ages and from generations, but is now made manifest to the saints” (Col. 1:2626Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: (Colossians 1:26))? Is that secret and silent which was published from age to age and rehearsed from generation to generation? Can a simple and familiar covenant, revealed so often by Jehovah, and so often appealed to by His people, from the book of Genesis till the last prophet wound up the Old Testament canon (Mal. 1:1111For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 1:11))-can this be deemed a “mystery,” altogether concealed from the sons of men? Surely not. Gentile blessing therefore, as involved in the Abrahamic covenant, which was the constant expectation of Israel, wholly differs from “the mystery of Christ;” which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. This mystery was not revealed before. It is now disclosed. From the beginning of the world it was (not known to God’s people, but) hid in God (Eph. 3:99And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: (Ephesians 3:9)).
Indeed, we have only to read Matt. 16:1818And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18) in order to see that, even in the Lord’s life-time here below, the church did not exist save in the purpose of God. It was His eternal purpose in Christ Jesus, but actually existed only after His death and resurrection. During His ministry He was not even beginning to build it: “Upon this rock I will build my church.” Hence it is said in Col. 1:1818And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. (Colossians 1:18): “He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead.” Christ Himself, in resurrection, was the beginning. Souls had been born again; sinners had been brought by the faith of the Savior. But the church was a new body formed by the Holy Ghost, after its risen Head took His seat in heaven. Hence Heb. 12:2323To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, (Hebrews 12:23) distinguishes the church from the “spirits of just men made perfect” (i.e. the Old Testament saints), as plainly as from myriads of angels, a general assembly. Scripture applies the term “Church of God” only to the saints of the present period. The congregation of Jehovah, Israel, was wholly different.
Is it maintained then that election, redemption, faith, life, saintship, are peculiar to the church? By no means. The church of God shares these and other blessings with all the faithful of all times. But this does not make all the faithful to be the church; nor can it annul the peculiar standing which is traced as the church’s portion, in Ephes. ii. iii. iv. It is admitted fully that to us, members of Christ’s body, it can be said, “All are yours.” Of the new covenant, though, strictly speaking, made with the house of Israel, we yet enjoy the blessing; and if we are Christ’s, then are we Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. But it by no means follows that millennial Israel, for instance, though enjoying the new covenant and the Abrahamic promise still more literally than ourselves, will have any portion in that mystery, or secret of God, which is distinct from either.
Scripture speaks of the faith of Abel, of Enoch, of Noah; but that the Abrahamic covenant was in operation as to them is assumption and false. Faith ever rests upon the word, i.e. the revelation of God; and the Abrahamic covenant was not disclosed until the time of Abraham, though the Savior had been pointed to from the first (Gen. 3:1515And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15)). Saints previously rested on a revealed Redeemer, not on an unrevealed covenant.
The real stumbling-block, as appears in scripture, has ever been, not so much the Jewish channel of outward testimony traced in Rom. 11 as the temporary leveling of Jewish prerogative, and the grace which gathers out of Jews and Gentiles, alike children of wrath as traced in Eph. 2. The ordinary notion, which prevails to the present, is a specious form of the same self-conceit which vexed the church from its early days.
The “new covenant” and “new testament” are merely various versions of the same Greek phrase, καινὴ διαθήκη, of which the former is always, I believe, the right rendering, as regards the use of the full phrase in scripture. If so, the reasoning about the testator has no place save in the parenthesis of Heb. 9:16, 1716For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. 17For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth. (Hebrews 9:16‑17) which seems owing to “inheritance” immediately preceding, besides being an admirable turn given to that other and familiar sense of the word διαθήκη singly. I do not believe the new covenant to be identical with the Abrahamic covenants, which are more extended in their scope, though, so far as Israel is concerned, they may coincide; but it is needless to discuss the point at this time.
Nor is there such an idea in the Bible as the grace-giving testament. The grace of God brings salvation, even to such as were strangers from the covenants of promise. There is no doubt that the shedding of blood is essential to the remission of sins, and that the new covenant is much more too. Eph. 2, as we have seen, introduces other truth. Nor is it scriptural to say, that “the promise” and “the new covenant” are convertible terms, though they may be intimately blended.
But we can heartily agree that unconditionality stamps the Abrahamic covenant, as the apostle so strongly insists in Gal. 3 It is evident that, when the Judaizers insisted upon the law, the apostle could appeal most powerfully to the promises of God, given so many centuries before the law (Gal. 3); when they insisted upon circumcision, he could triumphantly point to the faith which their father Abraham had, being yet uncircumcised (Rom. 4). If therefore God now justified the uncircumcision through faith, it was no more than He had done in the case of faithful Abraham. Nor could any objections be more completely silenced. But to say that the Abrahamic covenant is the channel of God’s grace to us argues an inadequate view of our wretchedness as outcast dogs of the Gentiles, as well as of the bright heavenly atmosphere into which we are brought, when baptized, Jews or Gentiles, by one Spirit into one body.
On the head of glory, Eph. 3:2121Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. (Ephesians 3:21) seems to show that the church, as the reflection of Christ’s heavenly glory, will not lose its singular blessedness “throughout all ages, world without end.” And Rev. 21:1-81And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. 2And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 4And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. 5And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. 6And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. 7He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. 8But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. (Revelation 21:1‑8) appears to confirm the idea that, even in the everlasting state, the holy city, new Jerusalem, is distinct from though connected with the men who people the then purged universe. It is true that the Old Testament speaks of Jehovah marrying Israel, and Israel’s land. Is it really meant that this equalizes them or their land with the Bride, the Lamb’s wife? But here one may pause. The grand principle has been already asserted.
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