Dr. Meredith Kline, Prologue, Lecture 23
© 2012, Dr. Meredith Kline and Ted Hildebrandt
Christ and the Covenant of Works
He has earned the Covenant of Works. He will have
earned it by his active and passive obedience. So there is the exaltation, and
it begins with the resurrection from the grave. The resurrection—the cross is
a victory over Satan, as the accuser of the brethren. The resurrection is a
victory over Satan, as the one who, according to the book of Hebrews, has the
power of death. So here, Christ wins the victory over the one who has the
power of death. To that extent, there is already something of a judgment on Satan
even though the final judgment is going to be over here.
But meanwhile, here at the cross, there is an act of final
judgment. Not Satan’s final judgment or someone else’s, but yours and mine.
Here is where Christ has experienced the final judgment for his people. So
final judgment now is going to be spread out under the Covenant of Creation. There
was to be that one act of final judgment, Satan and his demonic hordes there at
the beginning. Mankind wouldn’t have been involved, but now things are more
complex. Now there is a judgment of the elect that takes place at the cross. Later
on there will be a final judgment of the reprobate, along with Satan and his
demonic hosts at the end of history. But already there has been an anticipation
of final judgment on the cross in the final judgment, just as there is an
anticipation of the final resurrection experience in the resurrection of our
Lord.
But meanwhile then, he has been obedient: “This is my beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased”—the word of approbation that Adam would have heard
if he had passed his probation. The Son hears that word of approbation from the
Father, “You have fulfilled our eternal covenant of works. Well-done, good and
faithful servant. And now I give to you the kingdom that was part of our
covenant from eternity. Come and sit with me at my right hand.” So there is
the exultation now of Christ.
From probation to
conferral stage
So he
enters into now the conferral stage. He’s past his probation, and he moves into
his conferral stage where the kingdom is being conferred on him as the
incarnate Son exalted into heaven. His reward is very much, the promise of
Father. He receives the Holy Spirit, and with the Spirit of glory, the heavenly
reality. The Holy Spirit who will be the one who will effect his spiritual
victories in the hearts of his people. So here’s the fall, but already there in
the Garden of Eden, Christ, in anticipation of his victory later on, is already
winning the victory in the heart of Eve and the heart of Adam. So there they
are giving the evidence of faith already in Genesis 3 and throughout history
then. Christ is reaping the rewards of his obedience by the Father’s grant to
him of the honors of heaven and the power of heaven to gather together as his
bride that people for whom he has come and lived and died and won the victory.
Covenant Community:
Confirmation
So the
Holy Spirit is present working in the earth as a result of which there is now a
covenant community. There is this, as these people of faith come together and
begin to call upon the name of the Lord and so on, God defines how they should
organize themselves in various ways throughout history. But here is this
covenant community then that continues. As a result of Christ receiving the
words of approbation, they now hear it as by faith. They unite with him and
receive it as a gift of grace. So the people of Christ experience approbation,
justification; and not just that their sins are pardoned and they are forgiven,
but that they are told that they have earned the reward of heaven, that they
are beyond probation because Christ has done it for them. All this is imputed
to them by faith so that they now experience that approbation.
They also experience that confirmation in righteousness that Adam
and others would have experienced if he had passed his original probation. Now
with a difference of course, Adam, had he passed his probation, would not have
been involved in any sins at all. Here’s a people that have been dead in sins.
They’re made alive. They are confirmed in righteousness, and they are being
sanctified. But nevertheless there is sin remaining in them and with an ongoing
battle against it. But nevertheless they are confirmed in eternal life in
Christ. So there is this confirmation. It’s spiritual life that they have.
There’s ongoing sanctification. There is the gift of perseverance
that they will indeed continue on to the heavenly reward. All of this is a
manifestation of the reward that Christ is receiving. He is receiving them as
his people as his perfect bride. That whole process is going forward with new
expressions when at last Christ will have come into history and done this and
the Holy Spirit is poured out and there are new evidences then of the presence
of the Holy Spirit doing distinctive things. What I want to emphasize at this
point is the continuity, however, of the work of Christ by his spirit and the
life of the elect all the way through the Old Testament phase as well as New.
The fundamental soteric experience of regeneration with ongoing sanctification
and so on. That basic soteric experience Christ has been bestowing upon his
people by his spirit throughout this whole period until this day.
Consummation
Now
meanwhile then, the kingdom of God is not taking on earth apart from some
typological exceptions (the ark and Israel), but here in this present church
age. We have a spiritual reign of Christ by his Spirit within the lives of his
people. But the kingdom of God is not yet taking an outward form and his people
are still in earthly bodies, in fact now, in earthly bodies that are mortal and
subject to corruption. Christ is engaged in a spiritual reign within their
hearts, transforming them. But then with the view to the perfecting of his
reward, when it will be given to him to appear in the glory of the Father with
all of the angels, we have power over sin. We have the consummation. We have
the coming of the eternal Sabbath kingdom, metapolis, the new Jerusalem. The
new heavens and the new earth and a spiritual realm we’re talking here about is
a spiritual reign. We’re talking about an external realm. Not something
invisible that Christ is doing by his spirit only within the hearts of his
people, but beyond that now the kingdom of God manifests itself as an external
geophysical reality as a new heaven and a new earth. It then falls to the
people of God then as we have been saying not just confirmation inwardly but
glorification.
So all of those features that we found on our pattern of the Covenant
of Creation, we find are emerging again here but in a different configuration. With
final judgment over here and now again we have final judgment over there--the
final judgment of Satan, the final judgment of the reprobate, then Satan and
all his hosts at this point. The glorified people now constitute the new
Jerusalem, and so on. In other words, here is the eschatology of redemption and
the fundamental components that have been there from the beginning. The
eschatology of creation is still here but with a different sort of shape along
the way.
Now then what has been provided is this line, and this is the one
that we want to then be examining in the detail from Genesis 3 and 4 on, but we
should see it as part of this overall view. We should see it in terms of this
being a messianic accomplishment all along the way. Any questions just on this
overview?
Kline’s interaction with student questions
[Someone from audience asks question].
[Kline’s response] The Kingdom has certainty come from teaching of
John, the forerunner of Jesus, and Jesus’ own teaching certainly. The fact
that the Kingdom was coming in such a special way is already true. I would see
that as finding expression especially in the kingship of Christ which is in
heaven. But then the kingdom has something extra. It simply does not exist on earth.
Yes, it exists as an institution, but not as a territorial domain, an earthly hunk
of turf that is holy.
[Audience member speaks].
[Kline’s response] This is the old classical dispensationist type
of distinction that is discredited. So we’re not making distinctions like that.
I’m just trying to distinguish here between the spiritual realities of this
present world apart from the kind of external theocratic expressions that you
have in Israel, which was an external realm. The church today is not that, and
yet the ultimate goal is that it should be external, although not cosmic rather
than just local Canaanite. So yes, kingdom of God in the sense that invisibly
Christ the king is reigning. In terms of planet Earth, the history that you and
I are involved with isn’t manifested outwardly except in perversions which
would be going off if God’s people attempted to set up a theocracy in the
realm.
[Audience member speaks].
[Kline’s response] Yeah, that’s right, that’s interesting that it’s
the extreme opposite of so much that is hermeneutically in common.
I don’t know how much more we should do. Let’s try to do a bit
more because time’s flying away. We notice only three more sessions. Let’s see
what we can do here.
Yes, what is remarkable is how these themes—the continuity of the
themes over centuries prior. What evidence this is of the primary authorship of
the spirit of the whole thing otherwise you would never have these kinds of
continuities that you are pointing out.
Next toledoth sections and
themes: Gen. 2:4ff
Well,
now then we have dealt with the inauguration of the Covenant of Redemption, we
find, remember in our structure of Genesis after the prologue, then we have the
three toledoth sections leading up to the flood covenant. The first of
them from Genesis 2:4 on deals with the escalation of sin. After the fall there
is an escalation of sin in the world, and that centers very much on the theme
of the city of man.
Then in chapter 5 it backtracks taking us from the flood up to the
fall virtually there then it backtracks to the beginning. In Genesis chapter 5
and following it now deals with the theme of that covenant community. We were
just talking about where Christ is at work by his Holy Spirit winning his
people for himself. So there is the covenant community of faith. Once again the
story goes from Adam up to the flood, and the third section, the climactic one,
deals with the disposition, the breaking of the tension that has developed
between the seed of the serpent who would take over and pervert the city of
man, and the seed of the woman, and how God settles by a heavenly judgment
ordeal in the blood arranged by a covenant with Noah. He brings to an end the
history of the world that then was. Then you go on with the history of the
world that now is.
But the biblical text itself now starts this story of redemptive
history is very much interested just in the general world setting which is one
that is controlled by this principle as we’ve seen of commonness. So we
emphasize the common curse but said that correlative with it is the common
theme of common grace. So that’s again is something that we now want to look at
here as we proceed to follow the biblical narrative and try to catch its
emphasis.
It is very much concerned with the setting in which the people of God
have to work out their historical role. The one I’ll analyze as time allows is what
the historical role of the covenant community is. They are the martyr people;
martyr in the sense of the witness community. But as it turns out because of
this enmity, this hostility, this antithesis, they are also the martyr people
in terms of those who are experiencing suffering and death and the diminution
of their ranks. So that there are only eight of them left by the time this great
covenant of judgment comes.
Genesis 4: the city of man and
common grace
But
meanwhile there is this whole theme now especially in Genesis 4 and picked up
again in the opening verses of Genesis 6 which treats of the theme of how God’s
common grace arrangements are working themselves out in the world as mankind
now works out now not the original covenant, not the cultural mandate but
a cultural mandate as they begin to build a city which is no
longer the city of God but a city of man which becomes a very perverted
thing.
So here we are with the business of the concept of common grace
once again. We’ve already seen how in Genesis 3:16-19 there are intimations of
common grace along with the curse. As we’ve said along with the special
difficulties that a man and a woman would have there still will be the family
with the children, the genealogy. There still will be the book of the
generations of Adam that exist by the virtue of the common grace of God. There
will be a certain degree of success and fruitfulness in the cultural
enterprise. There still will be the actual city that is developed and so God’s
common grace will be in evidenced and very remarkably this is pretty much exclusive
to the line of Cain.
This is the line of Seth. Rather remarkably, the main cultural
achievements that are described in terms of God’s common grace here are
associated with the general city of man which is dominated by the unbelievers.
That sort of emphasizes the commonness of this area. So here we come back again
to our concept of common grace as an area which is one of shared blessings
between believers and unbelievers. But also is one that has to do not with the holy
sphere here. Now the covenant community is an intrusion once again of holiness
in to the picture. But the world as a whole in so far as it is common in
coexistence, pragmatic coexistence of believers and unbelievers is no longer a
holy realm. But common in the sense of profane and non-holy as well as being
common in the sense of shared.
So here then is this phenomenon and the basic purpose of it that we
can understand is that it is not in itself working toward a holy city of God.
It’s just a non-holy city of man but although it is not a holy enterprise and
its goal is not the holy city of God. What it does do is provide an historical
space in which the holy redemptive enterprise can work itself out. So common
grace is subserving its ultimate purpose of redemptive grace even though it in
itself is not producing this. So that’s what the nature of common grace is.
Institutional features of common
grace: family, state….
Now this
next thing that we want to emphasize is some of the institutional features of common
grace. The family obviously is one of them as we have already seen. Implicit in
the idea that we are going to have trouble in bearing children is the thought
that family institution in the bearing of children will be provided again. Then
in addition to the family institution, when we come to chapter 4 verse 15, we
find another common grace institution namely, the state. The rest of this thing
is a development then on that idea. How the state works itself out, how the
city of man worked itself out, that’s what chapter 4 is all about.
Chapter 5 goes back to the covenant community and deals with them.
But as soon as it’s done with that, in chapter 6 more city of man. Chapter 5 is
the covenant community, but chapter 6 following picks up the theme of the state
once again--the city of man. So compare chapter 6 with that.
In addition to that, the history of the world after the flood when God
makes a covenant with all the world, then we have to throw that into the
picture, Genesis 9, or more specifically Genesis 8:20-9:17. This cluster of
passages that we want to look at to examine the biblical teaching on the
institution of the state. It’s obviously a big important one in all of our
thinking. The functions of the state along with that the functions of the
church and keeping these distinct from one another and to have a long
discussion of that. It’s too late to get started on that tonight. But we want
to do a little bit at least with that next time.
Inauguration of
the State
Maybe
just tonight to make the one point here about the inauguration of the state,
that it did exist before the flood in the world that then was in the covenant
that’s made after the flood. It’s organized in the form of a covenant. It
becomes quite an explicit: “Those who shed man’s blood, by man shall his blood
be shed.” So the institution of the state is there in 9:6, but already in 4:15.
In closing just look at that passage there in Gen. 4:15 which I see
as the charter of this common grace institution of the state. It says, “And
the Lord says to Cain”—Cain has just been complaining about the God’s judgment
on him. He says, “Now I’ve been driven off from the face of the ground”—and you
get the Hebrew word “face” used twice here. “I’ve been driven out from the face
of the ground, and I’ve been hidden form your face, O God.” How does he put
that? Cain said, “My punishment is more than I can bear today you are driving
me out from the face of the land, and I will be hidden from your face. I will
be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” Now
that’s his complaint that he’s going to be a fugitive on the earth. He’s been expelled
from Eden not only, but he’s now a fugitive on the face of the earth. Also, he
is hidden from God’s face, which means in the Scripture that he doesn’t receive
God’s judicial oversight. In a word, Cain is complaining that the planet Earth
is going to be a place of complete anarchy where all hell is breaking loose. There’s
no law or order. Moreover he’s afraid that having killed Abel, that all the
rest of mankind sympathetic with Able and hating him for what he’s done will be
out to kill him. So he’s a fugitive on the face of the earth he’s fleeing from
the avenging community of mankind. So that’s what he’s afraid of.
He’s complaining to God this is too much to have this complete
anarchy here and I’m exposed to all of this. People with impunity will be
killing me. Well, it’s what you deserve. But nevertheless God comes to him and
he says, “Yes, you’re going to be a fugitive alright, but it’s not going to be
complete anarchy. There will be a system of law and order in the world and what
God says to him is not so. You’re complaint isn’t all together sound. As a
matter of fact now if anyone kills you Cain, you will suffer vengeance seven
times over.”
Now as I try to develop in an original article some place in the
condensed Kingdom Prologue, what’s being said here is a reference to a
divine arrangement of justice, the sevenfold vengeance is the divine
arrangement. It’s the divine provision of judgment in the world. So if someone
kills you Cain—now, mind you he doesn’t guarantee that no one ever will kill
Cain, why should he get that guarantee? But what God is saying is that
nevertheless, it’s not the way you think that anyone can do it with impunity.
As a matter of fact I’m going to set up a system of law and order. In other
words, I’m going to set up the state, the city of man, which will wield the
sword of God as a minister of God’s friend. I’m going to set that up and so not
everyone will be so ready to kill you, because there will be the deterrent
power of this system of sevenfold divine vengeance.
Then the text goes on to say something—and this is what has misled
everyone through the ages--it says, in this translation unfortunately, “Then
the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one who found him would kill him.” Here
the Hebrew word for “mark” is the Hebrew word ’oth. The curious thing
is that the Hebrew word ’oth finds its proper translation in the
English, word “oath.” So what is actually being stated here is not that God
put some sort of a brand mark on Cain, what in the word that would be or what
good it would do has never been very clear to anyone in the first place. But that’s
not really what it’s saying. It’s saying simply in the first part, that God
gave a solemn affirmation to Cain that things would not be complete anarchy,
but that there would be a divine order of justice. Now the second part of the
verse, simply summarizes that and restates it again. Yes, God gave a solemn
oath, he made a solemn affirmation. It has nothing to do with some visible sign.
It is an oral, verbal affirmation that God gave Cain. So thus, the Lord gave
this oath to Cain to the effect that not everyone who followed him would be out
to kill it. It wouldn’t be complete anarchy.
So Cain went out in the Lord’s presence and he lived in such and
such a place. Verse 17 speaks about him having a son and building a city. So
verse 15 is actually then the charter of the city. That God comes to Cain in
answer to his original complaint that there was no law and order. He says, “Ah
no, I am going to establish the state, I am going to establish the system of
law, justice and order.” Yes, and the Lord solemnly gave his commitment to
Cain that that would be the case. Cain understood it. Two verses later it says
he took advantage of it, and proceeded to build a city, which is the embodiment
of such a system of law and order. So there’s the beginning of the state
already in that early generation, long before the flood. So things went along
and Genesis 4 tells us how this good institution—and it is good, it is
legitimate. It is a gift of God’s common grace—how he then took it and he
perverted it.
City of Man (state) elsewhere in Scripture
So the rest of the Bible is then describing this two-sidedness,
the concept of the city and the concept of man. So that you come to Romans 13
and Revelation 13. In Revelation 13 the state has become the great beast and in
Romans 13, nevertheless Paul says it is the minister of God. So there are the
two things: as an institution it is instituted by God it is legitimate and good.
As perverted by man, it takes the form of a beast that persecutes the saints.
But then nevertheless it maintains it’s legitimacy and we as God’s people with
the Bible open before us, should know enough to respect the state. I Timothy 2,
I Peter 2, Jeremiah 29 and Romans 13 all tell us to respect the state. It is
legitimate. Nevertheless we shouldn’t be naïve even and be expecting that this
city of man is going to develop into the kingdom of God on earth in a utopia or
something. We should have our eyes alerted to this hostility that’s going on
that’s underneath it, the beastlike character that when it gets its opportunity
it’s going to persecute the daylight out of the saints if it can. But that’s
the balanced kind of picture the Bible gives us to live with and struggle with
in our relationship with the state.
So we’ll try to do something more with that when we have time. Next
time I’ll say something about the proper functions of the state. That will be
leaving us soon enough then to proper functions of the church over well against
these others. Our thesis will be that the church should be the church and stick
to its cultic functions. Let the state be the state and stick to its cultural
functions. That would be biblical, but most of the evangelical world doesn’t
want to do it that way. It wants to give cultural functions to the church, and
it wants to give cultic functions instead to the state and that’s all wrong.
Transcribed by Michelle Myers
Rough edited by Ted Hildebrandt