Dr. Meredith Kline, Prologue, Lecture 24

Toward the end of last week we had moved into an area, and I’ll just back up a little. I think I had begun to jump ahead a little in the Kingdom Prologue treatment of things. It might be easier if we do back up and just follow the sequence of the Kingdom Prologue. What I started to do was to move on from the subject of God’s common grace there after the Fall to deal with one of the common grace institutions, namely the family. We only got so far into that subject as to deal with the text in Genesis 4:15, which I see as the initiation of this institution of the state. So it won’t hurt much if we just back up just a bit and then come back to our discussion of the state as to its functions and so on.

                                            Survey of fall to consummation
            In your Kingdom Prologues then, what I had jumped over I think was material around—I guess it would be around page 96 through 99. So let’s just quickly recap what we were saying there, and introduce the concept of intrusion, which appears somewhere on page 97 I believe. But the way we are working things out then, we come back to our overall chart of these things. We were in between the fall and the consummation. We have then this line which represents what we are talking about now, the common grace of God, so that after the fall things did continue. They weren’t as great as they were, but the world did continue in God’s common grace.
            Then, of course, the purposes of common grace were to provide this space we’re talking about between the fall and the consummation. This interim space, so that God’s eternal purposes in terms of his eternal covenant with the Son might begin to be fulfilled in history as the Son pours forth the Holy Spirit and he’s developing the covenant community, the holy community, which involves the kingdom of God and the people of God. Whereas this common grace program is just going to terminate, it lasts as long as the earth endures, but then it terminates here. God’s holy redemptive operations do not terminate, but they consummate--they achieve the consummation.

                                       Common Grace: Family and State
            Well, that’s the fundamental structure of things and when we’re trying to see particular developments all along the line of each one. But right now we’re just looking at this whole operation of common grace and what then we have already noted is well, where we read about it—where we’ve already dealt with it—was back when we were dealing with God’s judgment on Adam and Eve after the Fall. We saw implicit in his words of curse of them, implicit was already the principle of common grace because the curse wasn’t as bad as it might have been. There was a restraint on it, whether you’re talking about the functions of the woman or the man or the whole thing. God puts the reins on his common curse so that it is tempered. The roughest edges of the common curse are relieved, which is to say that there was a common grace principle that was restrained because fallen man didn’t deserve anything but the complete, intense wrath of God. So any restraint that is put upon that and whatever benefits attached to that restraint is a gift of God’s grace. So that’s the language we are using. It is “common” we were saying in the sense that it is something that is shared. As I was saying, already then in God’s words to Adam and Eve about the common curse, common grace is implicit and right up then until, let’s say, this is the Flood episode, right up until the flood episode. We see that in terms of God’s common grace, there is the institution of the family.
            From what we did already say about the state last week, we saw that already in this period between the fall and the flood, namely in Genesis 4:15, a second institution that the Lord provided in his common grace was the institution of the state. Then as we study this matter presently, of the institution of the state, we see that after the flood when this revelation of common grace is given a covenantal form, that takes place then in Genesis 8:20-9:17. So we will see then that after the flood, to Noah, God takes this whole business we’re talking about and he does now put it in the form of a covenant with a sign of the covenant—the rainbow and so forth. So this is the history of things, with this gradual further revelation with its covenantal organization and so on.
            As we study these texts and the light that they throw on this principle of common grace, what we find then is that this is something which does not involve the production of the holy kingdom, that’s up there. What’s going on here does not involve a called-out, separate, holy people. That’s not what’s going on up here. This involves God’s Holy Spirit working in the hearts of a people and calling them out and they’re being organized as the covenant community within which there is the election and so on. They are the ones who have a special relationship to God. They are the ones that have special hope of inheritance and so on. The holy kingdom of God belongs to them as God’s holy, special people. But none of that applies down here. This is common, no holy people as the covenant people. But unbelievers, believers, select and reprobate, all together share in these benefits as the Lord will resort to be like the Lord who shows his good favors and sunshine and rain and on the wicked as well as to the righteous.
            This is the area of common shared benefits which in the area of the state then involves that there is an arrangement or a pragmatic coexistence of things political then for those who are God’s people and those who aren’t. So common grace then involves that idea, that it is something that is shared by believers and unbelievers. There is no particular weighting of the benefits on behalf of God’s people. In fact, it often seems to go the other way. The unbelievers seem to get the lion’s share of the benefits of God’s common grace. That is underscore for example in Genesis 4 where the cultural talents and so on that are described as being developed in humanity are especially associated with the line of Cain. So shared benefits between believers and unbelievers is the picture that we get.
            Then the other element there that is indicated by the term common is that it’s the opposite of holy. What’s going on out there is holy and what’s going on down here is common. It’s non-holy. So shared between believers and unbelievers and the non-holy; these are the characteristics of what’s going on here that are leading to our calling it God’s common grace.
            Now what aspects of human existence and life are involved here especially now when you come here to the covenantal form. Already where else along the line, what particular aspects, what functions are assigned to this common sphere? Where can we be cooperating as believers and unbelievers in this particular way? Well, it’s in the area of culture. The consistent picture then is that wherever we have biblical revelation concerning common grace, the area of culture is assigned to it. That, of course, then is determinative to the purpose of common grace institutions like the family or like the state. Their purpose, their function is defined in terms of culture by the biblical evidence.
            Whereas on the other hand, the peculiar, the distinctive functions, that are assigned and in terms of the covenantal revelation of top line has to do with the cult--the worship of God. Now this line involves the covenants. Of course, this redemptive holy line involves its covenants: its Abrahamic, its old covenant, new covenant, and so on. Where God himself in his covenants defines what is going on up along that line it’s in terms essentially of cult, and not culture. Of course, with those outstanding examples that we keep talking about where along that top line, there’s the flood, we say that there was a theocracy there. In Israel and later on, Christ comes here, Moses comes here and Israel, there we have a theocracy. But apart from those exceptional typological intrusions into history as we’re going to be calling it, but apart from that what is characteristic always of this holy redemption line is cultic activity. So the scriptural arrangement is actually quite simple, and the line is clearly drawn the function of this covenantal order, and the function of that covenantal order. So we’re talking now about this.

                                 The Cultural task re-issued: e.g. Sabbath
            Now the fact that this is a non-holy area we can relate to our discussion earlier on of the Sabbath. We took the position that the Sabbath is a creation ordinance to be sure. But here before the fall, it was a creation ordinance, but it was a sign of God’s holy covenant. Later on, when he renews the Sabbath to Israel—that’s in Exodus 31—the Lord reminds them that the Sabbath is a berith olam. It’s an everlasting covenant. It’s a sign, O Israel that I am sanctifying you because I’ve called you out of the profane world out here onto myself to be consecrated to me. So the Sabbath is a sign of holiness. The Sabbath is a sign of the holy kingdom order. The Sabbath conveys the promise that you people who have this Sabbath sign are destined for the eternal holy kingdom of God. That Sabbath sign is given as you would expect to this program up here.
            And as you would also expect, it’s completely missing from the revelation whether you look at Genesis 3:16-19 or chapter 4, whether you look at the covenantal description of it in Genesis 8 and 9. No matter where you look, where God is defining this particular order, he gives the cultural task, or at least a cultural task, he gives assignments that on the surface formally are somewhat similar to the cultural task that he had given back in the Garden of Eden, namely, procreation and exercising of dominion over the world. There is a cultural task that is given again. Underscore, let me say once more, a cultural task not the cultural mandate. The cultural mandate was one where by the procreation and the dominion would lead to and have as its goal development of the holy city of God. That is not the goal, as we’ve been emphasizing, of the cultural activity that goes on down here. But cultural assignments are continued in God’s common grace, assignments that will lead to the building of the city of man. This one leads to the city of God. That’s what has been involved in the original mandate, and one that is picked up by Christ the second Adam and carried to fulfillment.
            But my point now is, that in connecting action with this development of the city of man with the common grace of man, developments concerning the Sabbath are missing. This is the work that you must do, but no Sabbath promise is attached to it. This would be a lie for God to attach a Sabbath promise to this particular program because the Sabbath would say, this is holy, whereas a matter of fact, it’s not holy. To attach the Sabbath promise to this would be to say it is through this program that the kingdom of God is going to come. As a matter of fact, no, this program has got to end in judgment. Whatever happens in terms of the city of man has to be cleared off planet Earth in order to make way for the kingdom of God to come eschatologically, supernaturally, down from heaven as the instantaneous gift of God. But this program is not one that holds the promise of leading into the kingdom of God. So it would be a lie to stamp the Sabbath, to attach the Sabbath, to that particular program. That was the position we were taking.

                                      Sign of the Covenant: rainbow
            The point I’m making now then is that the absence of the Sabbath sign from the revelation of common grace is another indication of the fact that this is not holy. It’s not holy kingdom of God activity. How long does it last? It’s given to all people. The language of the text is universal. It’s made not just with Noah and to his immediate family, but it’s made with all mankind and even with the earth itself, as if with the realm of nature. The sign that God gives of this covenant when he is covenantalizing it in Genesis 8-9, is that sign of the rainbow. Which is a nature sign, you see it’s something—it’s not some ordinance like along this line. The sign of the covenant whether you think of the Sabbath or circumcision or baptism or various other signs in the New Testament, the Lord’s Supper, they are all ordinances that the people of God performed you see and has special meaning for them. But here, this common grace arrangement has its sealing sign something that is part of the order of nature, which man doesn’t perform as some sort of a ritual, just something that God himself establishes up there--the rainbow.
            The biblical language indicates that what is in view here is the military bow, bow and arrow. The picture then that we have is that the divine warrior, who has gone forth to battle with the bow held taut, vertically, ready to shoot his arrows. That’s what he’s done during the flood. He’s gone forth to war. The God of the storm, the warrior God, and he has sent forth his piercing shafts into the world. But now he’s done that, and now after the flood, he is reinstituting once again, his time of forbearance with people, with his putting up with them and tolerating them and allowing even the wicked to dwell with common privileges with the righteous. So now the bow is not vertical and taut and ready to shoot arrows, but now it is held suspended horizontally at his side. So you have the rainbow in the sky is the picture of God’s military arsenal now at rest.
            Interestingly in Assyrian stone inscriptions, there are pictures of—well it’s a double register kind of thing, where in the upper register you have Ashur the god, the god of the Assyrians, then in the lower register you have the Assyrian king. You have pictures of them going forth to war with the bow held that way. Then you have pictures of them returning. By the way, in the way the god Ashur is pictured is replicated in the picture of what the Assyrian king is doing down below. So the god and the human king are both depicted in these terms of going to war and then returning from war. So the rainbow then is the sign of God’s readiness to forebear as I said, to be a patient and not to send floods on the world, at least on that scale, but to give a good measure of rain, and a good measure of sunshine as Jesus also says in that verse we referred to early.
            So that’s the nature then of this particular covenantal arrangement. It is one that involves a cultural task. It’s one that involves all mankind. It’s universal and involves them all. God is ready to be forbearing with all of them.

                 Common Grace Covenant and Salvation Covenant post-flood
            Moreover, it is one that is going to last a long, long time. It’s going to last and the expression is, “As long as the earth endures.” Now when you come to the analysis of this covenant in Genesis 8:20 through 9:17, right after the flood, the common grace covenant, which by the way, I emphasis again, must be strictly distinguished from the salvation covenant. In the process of the flood, there’s a covenant of salvation, the covenant that God does make with a holy set aside family, the family of Noah. There God distinguishes between the profane world, which in fact he’s about to judge and destroy. He sharply distinguishes them from this remnant community, which he is going to save. What he provides in terms of that covenant—which is described in Genesis 6 and 7, especially in the first part of chapter 8—what he is going to provide there is not just some common benefits of various sorts for all people, but a very distinctive experience of salvation for his own holy, called-out people. So it is not to be confused. Yet unfortunately, by most of the literature it is confused. The covenant of the ark, or the covenant of salvation, must be distinguished. Or to put it the other way, this covenant of common grace which follows, which God makes with everyone, must be sharply distinguished from a covenant of salvation.
            This covenant does not bring in the holy kingdom. It does not bestow the kingdom as an inheritance. It just maintains this order, and it does so, however as we are told, in connection with that, as long as the earth endures.
            So when you study this particular section on the covenant of common grace, it has an A-B-A form. It begins 8:20-22. It ends whatever the verses around 8-17 in chapter 9. It begins and it ends with the thought: nature is going to be stabilized. Here’s where you get those promises of seed-time, and harvest, summer and winter. The creator, the governor of the world and his providential control is going to stabilize things so that there will not again be such a catastrophic destruction of the mainstream at least of human history as was experienced in the flood. God commits himself to a more stable arrangement of things of which we were just saying the rainbow is the sign. So he begins and ends his covenantal disclosure with that guarantee which is necessary in order for there to be human history. There has to be a stable order of things for man to exist and to function. So he begins and ends with the covenantal guarantees of that as part of his common grace to man.

                          Common Grace Institutions: the family and state
            Then in between there, in the middle section chapter 9 verses 1-7, he takes up the theme of the benefits of common grace that will be expressed in terms of these special functions of the family and the state. So in this covenant we have a summing up again of all that was said before the flood. Now it’s being put together in a covenantal form and these two institutions once again emerge.
            So the middle section Gen. 9:1-7 is also in this sort of A-B-A, or chiastic as we call it, concentric structure. So that verse 1 and verse 7, the beginning and the end of this middle section, deal with the family and the function of procreation and so on. So it’s part of God’s common grace blessings. The family will go on, there will be children and so on. So we have that.
            Then the middle section here verses 2-6 deal with the other theme of man’s dominion and his labor, that we’ve seen from the beginning, was one of his basic assignments, fill the earth and subdue it. That dominion, that subduing, is still something that goes on in terms of God’s common grace. Verses 2-6 deal with that. The first few verses 2, 3 and 4, deal with man’s general authority and dominion over the animal world. Then verses 5 and 6 move on to that specialized form of man’s dominion, that we have in mind when we’re talking about the institution of the state. That’s where, in verses 5 and 6, you get that business about “the one who sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” That classic statement about the institution of the state, which as I’ve argued is not the original instituting of the state but the reinstituting of the state. So we have argued that before the flood, back in 4:15, God had already instituted the state. What he’s doing now is he’s simply summing up all of that, including that particular element.

Benefits of Common Grace
But there’s the content then of common grace all put into the form of a covenant. Various guarantees, various benefits, none of them deserved by man. Some of them including the order of nature. Some of them including the order of society in the nations. It’s not heaven, it’s not the holy kingdom of God, but it’s an order of life that makes history possible, in particular, that makes possible a history of redemption. It’s an order of life then, in which we have to recognize that we as God’s people have no particular advantage or benefit over others but we should learn to coexist with others here and particularly in the matter of the state and so forth. It is an order that’s going to last as long as the earth endures. Even the coming of Christ, as significant as the coming of Christ is, and the new covenant order with whatever changes that brings to pass does not terminate or abrogate this common grace covenant. This common grace is as long as the earth endures, which means up to the consummation. At which point it does end; we said it ends with catastrophic judgment. God puts up with wicked men. Of course, what we find is that this goodness, this patience, this longsuffering of God comes to progression here in all these common grace arrangements.

City of man: human rebellion
Man, of course, despises and he spits in God’s face and throws it back at him. Man perverts all of this. So the city of man becomes a beast and cultural man turns the city of man into the cult of man, because he proceeds to deify himself instead of thanking the Creator for these benefits. He despises the Creator and he stamps on God’s name and he exalts his own name, as we see when we read through Genesis 4 and Genesis 6. Because he does that, human culture, the city of man infests the ground, and has to be wiped off from the ground, as we said, in order to make way for the coming of God’s holy kingdom at last. So that’s what we were talking about now by this order of common grace.

                          Intrusion: injection of the Holy Kingdom of God
            Now that’s, you might say the normal. Actually it’s all, anything after the fall is, very abnormal. But once you recognize having said that, then nevertheless you can speak about the common, the non-holy, as sort of the normal. Looked at from that point of view, what’s going on up here, is the unusual. When into this normal situation, where believers and unbelievers are treated the same. God intrudes. It is a program that gives expression to the fact that an election has taken place between reprobate who are going to be damned forever, and the elect people in Christ who are going to be saved and inherit the holy kingdom of God. When you see how different that is from the common situation, then you sort of need a word for it. So I coined the word “intrusion.” Intrusion is the breaking in of holiness, the breaking in of the redemptive principle, the injection of the holy kingdom of God into the midst of this common, non-holy world. That’s the intrusion, that’s the exceptional thing.
            So here on page 96 or -7, whatever it is, I tried to develop a little bit of this idea of intrusion that we will be working with further in the course of this evening, I trust. A little later, especially then coming back to it, in terms of using intrusion as a way of accounting for some of the great ethical problems that have confronted biblical-theological scholarship. Especially as they deal with these squares here, with these theocratic instances, like the ark and the flood and the nation of Israel and all of the strange ethics that attend, particularly those ethics in history. The ethical problems we will want to be returning to a little later on. But this concept of intrusion involves more than just those ethical problems it’s a broader deal.
            Let’s see if I can put my finger on it here in page 97. Well, let’s pick it up if we just read a bit here. Toward the bottom of page 97, there’s a paragraph that starts, “in the coexistence of the holy and common.” In the coexistence of these two lines, the holy line and the common, lies the peculiar character of the present world eon. Want to understand what’s going on in the world, you’re not going to understand it unless you see it in terms of these two principles, these two programs, that are going on there.

Coexistence of two principles and passing away of the common
They are so different. There’s a huge antithesis between them as we’ve seen. So I say that such is the difference, such is the antithesis between the holy and the common, that the perfecting of the universal theocratic kingdom at the consecration of the holy redemptive program it terminates the common grace order. What I’m saying here is, look, when you come to the end of this holy program, and when it takes over on a cosmic scale, now you have, not just a garden of Eden theocracy, but when you have a cosmos theocracy, where everything is the holy kingdom of God, there’s no room anymore for commonness. These are opposite, the holy and the common. So once the holy becomes universalized, once it becomes “cosmicized” (if there’s such a word), there’s no room within that anymore for the common. So once this principle takes over, then there’s no room any more for this one. But meanwhile, until that point, these two principles are coexisting in the world because neither one of them comes to a complete global takeover expression.

                                          Consummation and intrusion
            Meanwhile, before the final consummation, the partial presence of this holy eternal reality is from the perspective of common grace, thinking of common grace as the normal, is an intrusion into this general world order. It’s an intrusion from two directions, you can think of it either way. If you’ve been reading in the Vos material, —he doesn’t use the language of the intrusion—but he brings out the way in which the heavenly reality. As we’ve been saying these last several weeks together, heaven has existed right from Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” So here is that upper register, that realm invisible to us--the Sabbath realm. The heavenly realm that has existed all along. It’s the goal of history. So when you come to the consummation, that heaven that has existed “up there” as it were in all this history, that’s the takeover of everything, the goal to which it is coming.
            Now then, what’s going on along this line can be thought of as a projection down from the upper register into the lower register. So if you think of it spatially that way. This intrusion is an intrusion of the reality of heaven down into the lower register, earth. Or if you look at it temporally, eschatologically, what’s going on along this line is an anticipation. It’s a proleptic experience. It’s a breaking in of the future. So we’re talking about the whole history of redemption here now as indicating that heaven won’t wait. That’s what it is. Heaven’s there, heaven’s going to takeover at last, but heaven won’t wait. It comes breaking in beforehand. It comes charging down through the clouds and it comes to expression here on earth pointing to heaven, pointing to the heavens to come. So that things happen all along this line which are prophetic of the final outcome of things.
                                   Christ as consummation intrusion
            So “intrusion” is the word we’re using for this. Now what kinds of things are intruded, we go on to try to say. Bottom of page 97, last paragraph. Intrusion of the principles and powers that characterize the eschatological judgment and the consummate kingdom assume a variety of forms, some realistic, some symbolic.

You take the supreme example of intrusion of heaven into this lower, common grace world, and there you have it in Christ. The heavenly Son of God in the incarnation appears here on earth. This is the very person of deity who is intruded down in a particular, specific, incarnate way. This is a decisive supreme instance. In the incarnation of the son of God, the heavenly world entered into earth history by way of personal, divine presence. Thus, Christ’s priestly ministry on earth is regarded in the book of Hebrews, and some of these Vos points out, in the book of Hebrews as a service of the heavenly tabernacle itself. Christ brings heaven to earth. So the ministry that he performs on earth is therefore, described in Hebrews and identified as a ministry carried on in the heavenly tabernacle, because he brings heaven with him.

                    Consummation: Final judgment and resurrection
            Also, Christ’s redeeming death was the first act of the final judgment. As we said, the future breaks through into history beforehand. Now the future involves all kinds of things. I’ve been emphasizing the future holds that holy, blessed kingdom, which gets anticipated here and there along the way. But of course, the future also involves final judgment, the final satisfaction of God’s wrath against the sinners. It involves resurrection and other things. But right now we’re talking about final judgment. The final judgment also was intruded in connection to this presence of Christ, was it not? So the cross then becomes an intrusion of the actual final judgment of the world. As I think we were saying the other week, at the cross, you and I experience final judgment. The elect experience their final judgment in the bearing of our sins by our Lord there on the cross. Now the final judgment down here, which is anticipated at the cross which is intruded in the cross will be a final judgment against Satan, against all the demons and against reprobate men. But that principal of final judgment already got intruded there at the cross.
            This is another dimension there of our Lord’s ministry anticipating the world to come. Let’s see. Also, Christ’s redeeming death was the first act of the final judgment, and his resurrection was the actual beginning of the final resurrection. So as we say, the consummation will involve final judgment. It will involve resurrection, but the resurrection of Christ is an intrusion into pre-consummation history of that power of resurrection. He is the first fruits. Before his death and before his resurrection, in connection with the personal presence of Jesus, the Lord from heaven, the restorative powers that will produce the eschatological cosmic renewal.

                                      Consummation as restoration instrusion
            What are we looking for at the consummation? We’re looking for restoration. The theme of paradise restored up to a point expresses truth. Consummation is more than paradise restored, it’s paradise glorified. But nevertheless it’s restoration, blessedness of all kinds. The blessedness of heaven, the healing that will take place, that total healing involved in resurrection and glorification that was intruded into earth history beforehand in the ministry of Jesus. The restorative powers that will produce that broke through beforehand in the form of the miraculous healing, as a prophetic earnest paradise restored and perfected.
            Likewise, moving beyond the Son of God to the Spirit of God. Likewise in the presence and the operation of the Spirit, the second person of the Trinity breaks into history in the incarnation, the Son of God and the Holy Spirit, of course, also—and the Spirit about which we have said so much. We’ve attempted to get something of the biblical flavor and concept of heaven and we’ve seen how closely it is identified with the idea of the Spirit. Especially then if we think in terms of what I’m trying to develop, the idea of the end, the heavenly temple being identifiable with the endoxation of the Spirit, the manifestation of the Spirit, there is so much the reality of heaven itself. The Spirit, of course, breaks through into earth history down here. The exalted Son already from the beginning pouring forth that Holy Spirit. That Holy Spirit has been operative all along this line that we are calling “the Holy Redemptive Line.” So this whole thing, this whole line is intrusion.
            Everything that happens along this line is an intrusion into this otherwise non-holy, common world. So all of the inward soteric application of the benefits of Christ to the people of God, regenerating them and bringing them to all of these things are the breaking through beforehand of the heavenly holiness and into the lives and hearts of God’s people. The presence and operation of the Spirit, the common grace order, is penetrated by the reality of the heavenly eschatological order, which is peculiarly and preeminently the order of the Spirit. To be in the Spirit is to be in the celestial realm of divine glory. The work of spiritual renewal which the Spirit has been accomplishing in the elect from the woman on through all subsequent generations of her seed (Genesis 3:15) has been a continuing pre-experience of the reality of the everlasting life of heaven. It is a pre-experience of that within this present, otherwise common grace, common curse eon.
                          Intrusion of heaven in Christ and the Spirit
            So intrusion of heaven and the person and work of Christ, intrusion of heavenly realities and the presence and operations of the Holy Spirit. As I indicate then, intrusion is just not the New Testament phenomenon. Intrusion is a pre-Messianic phenomenon. It’s a phenomenon that I say has to do with this whole line, the whole redemptive program right from the fall on. Eschatological intrusion then was a feature of pre-Messianic times, even though the advent of Christ inaugurated a distinctive epic in that development, he was there before.
            In fact, under the old covenant, the marvelous intrusions we’ve just been talking about in connection with the presence and work of Jesus, but even before that, some very remarkable intrusions were taking place, especially if we just focus on the Old Covenant order and what God was doing there. There was indeed under the Old Covenant, a comprehensive projection of the heavenly eschatological domain into earth history in kingdom form in the theocratic kingdom of Israel. In a way, more comprehensive then we are now experiencing. Maybe you’d want to say that what we’re now experiencing in the Spirit poured out by Christ is a more intensive intrusion of the heavenly reality to the experience of God’s people. But what’s going on now in the history of the church, if we can could find out where that would be in this rendering here. Here’s Christ and here’s the church. So between the incarnation and the consummation, this line gets organized on earth in the form of the church, which is not an external kingdom. So that whole aspect of heaven as an actual geophysical, cosmic solid reality doesn’t come to expressive intrusively on earth during this church time, but it did in Israel. And of course, it did back in the ark. So what I’m saying is that you get intrusion even more comprehensively in the Old Covenant.

Transcribed by Michelle Myers

Rough edited by Ted Hildebrandt