Dr. Meredith Kline, Prologue, Lecture 30
© 2012, Dr. Meredith Kline and Ted Hildebrandt
Flood as an example of intrusion
So
Gog and Magog gather together all the wicked of the world to besiege the saints.
God intervenes and he gathers all of his saints to heaven and he destroys all
of the armies of Gog and so on. But the gathering together which is augmented
by the theme even of the gathering of all the animals so that there will be a
complete representation of God’s creation with man over the animals and over
the vegetable kingdom. The whole thing is gathered together by God redemptively
into the ark which is his eternal kingdom. So it’s a terrific example of
intrusion into the common grace history an intrusion of God’s holy kingdom, of
God’s holy judgment with clear lines of distinction between the non-covenant
people and the people within the covenant.
It’s not quite the same as final judgment. Final judgment will be a
clear cut distinction between the elect and the reprobate. We’re still within
the ambiguities of history here where all who are in the covenant are not
elect. Among the eight souls in that ark, there’s that one man Canaan who will
receive the curse afterwards and who obviously does not behave as a true child
of the covenant. But it is a clear example of the way in which God’s judgment
discriminates between those who bear his name in history within the ranks of
the covenant and those who are outside. And to that extent, it’s a clear
picture of the separation of the sheep and the goats, the elect and the
reprobate at the final judgment.
Theme of recreation
Along with redemptive judgment there’s the theme we’ve seen of
recreation. The whole thing is told in the form of another creation story
whether you analyze it from the literary point of view, or whether you look at
it from the point of view in which the physical phenomenon of this event
reflects the original creation of the world from that chaotic combination of
waters to the separating of waters and to the emerging of the dry land and the
coming forth of the people and the animals and with a Sabbath theme and so on.
Details are found in the Kingdom Prologue. So from the point of view of
literary parallelism, from the point of view of physical or cosmological
correspondences, clearly the flood episode is told as a recreation event.
Time of consummation of God’s kingdom
The third category we use here is that the prophetic symbolism
includes the idea that when the final redemptive judgment takes place it is an
event of a new heaven and a new earth and their recreation. It is likewise the
time of consummation. The consummation of God’s kingdom. The city of man will
be destroyed and when the city of God will be perfected, it will be consummated.
The kingdom will be consummated and it will be a cosmic temple of God, the
people of God inhabiting the cosmos. They constitute the temple of God. So that
symbolism is very much there.
The ark itself is an architectural representation of a cosmos
conceptualized as a three story universe as it often is in the Bible--the
heavens and the earth, and the waters under the earth. So you have the three
stories in the ark. In the Bible where you get that poetic figurative imagery
of the cosmos as a three storied universe. You also have the details that
there is a window of heaven, this is a beautiful poetic figure. The rain cycle
is described as though there are the reservoirs of water stored up in God’s
chambers. There’s a window there, and he opens the window and the rain comes
down. So that’s one of the details which is actually reflected in the narrative
of the flood itself, “the windows of heaven were opened,” and that thing.
The other detail that you get in the biblical, poetic description
of the cosmos is that the deeps, the waters that are below, that God has set
bounds, and he says a door with a bar and everything. But the window of
heaven, and the door, the windows are holding in the waters above at bay, the
door of the deep holding them at check. Now in the course of the flood that
precisely the window was open and the door was open and the flood waters come
from both places. But that imagery of the cosmos, the window of heaven and the
door of the deep are both reflected in the architectural detailing of the ark. Not
many details are given, you see. But these are. So clearly what’s being
pictured here in the ark is the world, the whole creation of God, heaven, earth
and under the earth. So here is the kingdom of God, and here is the kingdom of
God in its final consummated stage.
The people who have been in there are prototypes of the people who
will be in the consummated kingdom. They are the ones who have overcome death.
The ones who are the ultimate overcomers, the ones who will experience
resurrection and so on. That’s depicted as we were just noting, in the ark.
Then finally, the idea of kingdom consummation is expressed in
various ways in the Sabbath theme. You would expect it as part of creation
anyway, the Sabbath theme, and it’s there, not only in the seven fold
structure, but in other details as well. It’s in the seventh month that the ark
comes to rest and ends the prevailing of the waters over the mountain. Then
there are other Sabbath details, please read Kingdom Prologue. So it is
a magnificent portrayal then of the ultimate purposes of God redemptively in
Christ. This is what he is to do, the day is coming when God will do that for
his church and he will deliver it.
Covenant of Grace with Noah
Now this whole arrangement is cast in the form of a covenant,
and we’re especially interested, of course, in the series of covenants in the
Bible. So here’s one of them. Here is an administration of that covenant of
grace. Christ is the one who fulfills the eternal covenant with the Father.
This reward now is the Lord of the covenant of grace and he administers various
particular covenants and here’s one that he makes with Noah. There will be
others, with Abraham and so on. It’s actually here that the word berith (covenant)
is used for the first time in reference to this experience that we just
described: the salvation in the ark. There was a covenant that defined that
particular arrangement and the point that I develop, well again, we’ll pass
over page 109 and following. It is quite a lengthy description of the language
of the covenant and so on there.
We’ll just skip through to the figure of Noah, the way Noah figures
within this whole episode himself as a sort of a Christ figure, a type of
Christ. The whole episode is typological of the messianic salvation. Noah
himself functions as sort of a prototype savior figure, comparable to Christ. The
whole arrangement, can be regarded as sort of a “covenant of grant” that God
gives to Noah, because of his faithful obedience. Now just as God gives to
Christ the honor and the glory and dominion over the whole world, for his
faithful covenant obedience, that eternal covenant of the Father and the Son
can be conceived of as a “covenant of grant.” A kingdom glory that the Father
grants to the Son on the condition of the Son’s faithful obedience.
So now, in the case of Noah, the language seems to indicate that
Noah is righteous in his generation. “Noah found grace in eyes of the Lord,”
which doesn’t mean that despite of his ill deserts God gave him something good.
That’s not what the expression “grace” means here. It’s the expression that
when the servant serves faithfully, then the master approves. “Well done, good
and faithful servant.” That’s what the biblical expression of finding grace in
someone’s eyes means. God approves of him. Noah has been found faithful. He’s
been a faithful prophet of the Lord. He’s been faithful moreover in obeying all
God’s commands to build the ark and so on. He has obeyed and, now, of course,
he’s a simple fallen son of Adam, the same as all the rest of us, and the same
as anyone else in his own day. If you’re asking about how does Noah get to
heaven, he doesn’t get to heaven because of his obedience. He gets to heaven
because of Christ’s obedience.
Meanwhile, however, here is a typological situation. This wasn’t a
real salvation. This wasn’t real heaven that we’re talking about in this big
episode. It was only a typological episode. So Noah, then in terms of that,
doesn’t have to have the perfection of Christ’s obedience, but God endows
Noah’s exemplary obedience with this quality that he therefore can stand as the
sort of typological representative of what Christ will do later on. It’s
because you were obedient now that I grant you this arrangement whereby you
will save yourself and also your own people. So Noah here can be thought of
then as sort of a type of Messiah as the faithful servant.
As the mediator of the covenant in the sense that the revelation of
this whole covenantal arrangement is mediated through Noah to the others who
participated in it. The book of Hebrews speaks about Noah building the ark to
the saving of his family and the condemnation of the rest of the world. So in
that sense Noah also is like Christ, that he is a savior figure whose obedience
results in the saving of his family and the condemnation of the rest of the
world. So we have some messianic typology present here in the figure of Noah in
this covenant of grace. Which then also I think that about covers it.
On that end, it’s now time to take a break before we go on. Let’s
try to keep it down to five minutes.
Habiru and Egypt
The
pharaoh is asking for help, but meanwhile the Hebrews themselves would have
been in the land and would also have been pestered by these Habiru mercenaries
from the north. As I see it as a matter of fact, what we have in the Amarna
letters is a picture of troubles that are identifiable with the first
oppression of the Israelites rather than being the Hebrews themselves, these Habiru
are the first oppressors of the Israelites who came from the area of Syria. So
it’s a long story, some of which is reflected in Kingdom Prologue, and
the whole larger story I spell out in my doctoral dissertation a thousand years
ago when it got reprinted and it’s available as some off print. But these are
my conclusions but the dominant modern opinion is that the Habiru, they reject
the biblical idea that it has anything to do with Shem with Eber, with any of
that. They repudiate historicity of that. They simply say that the dominant
view is that these Habiru are some social outcasts, lower cast people and that
they are identifiable with the Hebrews. That’s who the Hebrews are, not as the
Bible says that they were descendants of Abraham who were all down in Egypt and
who experienced the exodus and who came as one great people in the name of Yahweh
and conquered the land. Critics reject that whole thing. They say that the
twelve tribes of Israel emerge largely as a result of some peasants revolt, that
they were part of the population of Canaan. They revolt against the dominant
tyrannical rulers of the city-states. So the Hebrews are these lower societal
folk who are engaged in an attempt to throw off their tyrants and to establish
a sort of egalitarian community and so on. In other words, a completely Marxist
interpretation is given to the origins of the Hebrews, the Israelites in the
land of Canaan.
The biblical view of redemptive conquest in the name of God is
rejected. So there’s a lot of stuff going on there involving massive
reconstructions of the biblical picture that you will read. You will encounter
it if you read the literature and I’m sorry we can’t spend more time right now
on it. I tried to give some hint of it in Kingdom Prologue if you read
through that.
Alright, back of all this by the way is one other big episode that
I wish we had time to discuss more. But before you come to the end in chapter
nine here… oh yeah, way back here, even before we came to the end of that third
section, which had the story of the flood, which goes through in chapter nine,
before you came to the end of that, is a very important passage there. There
was the covenant of common grace. There was the Ark Salvation Covenant. We
discussed that. Then there was the Covenant of Common Grace, which is dealt
with in the beginning of chapter nine and in the previous weeks we discussed
that. Then in the final episode here, before you even come to the end of that
third section is the oracle of Noah in chapter 9 verses 24-27.
All I’ll say about it now let’s say we hope next, what is this,
next fall term, Lord willing what we hope to do is to teach a course on
prophets, all right? Is this right? In the course of the prophets then, one
passage I always like to deal with on the basis of the Hebrew text, and you
will have become Hebrew experts by that time, by taking Hebrew this next term. Then
you can deal with prophets which will be based on Hebrew next year and also
then with Psalms and wisdom literature when that comes along. So when we’ve
got the Hebrew to work on that and we’ll work on that and discuss at length
this passage of Noah’s oracle as one of the messianic prophecies.
But just quickly, so you know what it is. Noah pronounces curses
and blessings on his sons. He pronounces curses on Ham, which will be realized
through the branch of Canaan, and is fulfilled obviously in the dispossession
of the Canaanites, the judgment on the Canaanites. Then he deals with Shem and
he pronounces a blessing on Shem. That’s what I had in mind, that when Abraham
is called a Hebrew, it means that he is one of this line that goes back to
Shem, on whom Noah pronounced the blessing that Shem, which means “name”--“you
will be the bearer of God’s name.” Here’s that theme of “the name” again, you
see. Here’s the people that call on the name of the Lord. So the Shem (“name”)
that’s your blessing. In other words the promise of covenant relationship to
God is the blessing on Shem that is pronounced.
Jepheth’s Blessing
Then it goes on to Japheth and on his name too and it says, “may
God open it for Japheth.” The imagery is that of the tent and the blessing of
the covenant had been pronounced on Shem, he occupied the covenant tent. But
then the days are going to come, the New Covenant, when the Gentiles come in,
the descendants of Japheth come in. So the promise, the blessing on Japheth
that Noah pronounces is after the covenant, the law that Moses, the Old
Testament arrangement, then may the day come when the tent doors will be thrown
open. Isaiah described it especially that the day is coming when God’s
purposes will explode all over the place, and the Old Testament tent won’t be
big enough and you have to expand it and open it up so that all of these others
can come in. So that’s what the blessing is on Japheth, it’s a messianic
promise in terms of its anticipating the messianic days and the flowing in of
the Gentiles especially by the mission of Paul to the descendants of Japheth, which
were the Greeks and so on.
So there’s that wonderful oracle of Noah which sets the stage for
the whole history on this side of the flood. Just as Genesis 3:15, at the
beginning, was a programmatic statement for all the rest of history, so now
after the flood, in the world that now is, God gives another prophetic
revelation on a big scale through the mouth of Noah. So there’s all that that
takes place and here it begins to unfold.
But it’s especially the blessing on Shem that is going to be
bestowed on Abram. Shem means “name” and the blessing is that you are going to
be the people of the name of God, the people with whom God identifies, that he
is known as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. See his name is associated
with them, they call on him and so on. That’s what we come to now then with
Abraham.
Abrahamic Covenant
So in the history of the covenants, now we have this whole
series of the administrations of the covenant of grace. The ark covenant was
one of them. And there was the covenant with the Sethites and there’s the
covenant with the descendants of Shem. Leading up now to this huge arrangement,
this Abrahamic covenant and all the rest of the Bible is really a development
now of what we find here in Genesis 12 and following, God’s covenant with
Abraham. As we will be studying, and next time we’ll be dealing with the
promises of the kingdom, God makes a covenant with Abraham in which he gives
him various promises which are to be fulfilled and granted in terms of what the
seed of Abraham, the messianic seed, will do for them. All the nations of the
earth will be blessed in him which is simply and extension of what Noah said. Noah
said that the Japhethites will come into the covenant. Well then the Abrahamic
promise that’s expanded, not just the Japhethites, all the Gentiles will find
their representatives coming into the Abrahamic covenant and being blessed in
the seed of Abraham.
So that the kingdom promises then, looks forward, beyond the book
of Genesis which is the Kingdom Prologue, to Kingdom Come. Kingdom Come in the
Mosaic covenant, but then the Kingdom Come in the messianic covenant, the New Covenant.
In the New Covenant there are the two stages A and B.--first coming of Christ,
second coming of Christ. Stage A, the kingdom comes in terms of Christ’s
spiritual reign with his Holy Spirit in our hearts. Stage B, second coming of
Christ, the kingdom now comes as an external reality corresponding to the Old
Testament external reality. But in other words the Abrahamic promise then
encompasses all the rest of history, all the rest of the Bible, all the rest of
the biblical covenants, the Old Covenant, New Covenant, and so on as the Covenant
of Grace marches along here to the consummation.
Alright, so now then we are concerned with various aspects of the
Abrahamic covenant, and I’ll pass over for the moment the obvious facts of it
being a covenant of promise and there’s that whole subject, of it being as Paul
insists, promise as over against law and the fact that it is a covenant of
promise as over against that second layer of the Mosaic Covenant where works
reign. It is brought out by the fact that this covenant with Abraham is
ratified by a divine oath. After the fall, if a covenant is ratified just by
divine oath, then it’s a grace arrangement, not a works arrangement. Now when
you come to the Mosaic Covenant, that covenant at Sinai it is ratified by a
human oath. So the human oath signalizes the fact that that this is a works
arrangement. But the Abrahamic covenant is not ratified by a human oath, it’s
ratified in Genesis 15 by God taking an oath, and that whole episode is one we
would like to spend some time on. Kingdom Prologue does spend some time
on it and maybe next week we can come back and say something about that.
Elect and the Covenant
But with whatever time we have left tonight I wanted to do then
this one other thing. So here God arranges his people on earth throughout the
covenant of grace. This is an intrusion then of redemptive holiness into the
world. God’s eternal purposes to save an elect people are being worked out, the
Holy Spirit, as we said, is already present in the world gathering out a people
for the Lord, those who are the ones for whom Christ will come and preform his
mission of active and passive obedience. These are the ones who will be the
citizens of heaven forever.
But meanwhile here they are on planet Earth in the midst of this
history of common grace and ambiguities and so on, and the question is then the
relationship between the election and the covenant. What we observe is
constantly then what I keep representing in terms of this little two circle
business that the covenant is the institution of the covenant community--the
outward institution. It is something that is broader than election. So yes,
the elect are there, that faithful true remnant of God, the ones who are truly
the people of the Lord, believers, Christ’s bride. They are there, they are
part of it, the remnant is always there. But they don’t constitute the whole
covenant community, election and covenant are not coextensive. By reason of
one thing and another, there are more within the covenant that the elect. This
comes up over and again in the Bible on a big scale, of course, in Israel where
Paul is looking back and asks have God’s promises failed. No, they haven’t
failed because they’re not all Israel (elect) who are of Israel (covenant). So
the thesis that we’re trying to establish here is right on the surface of the
Bible and that text for one brings it out. Our going back to the patriarchal
times and that will get us more right into our subject of circumcision and
baptism.
Going back to patriarchal times there’s Jacob, and there’s Esau.
Both of them are in the covenant. Esau is in the covenant too, but “Esau have I
hated.” Esau is reprobate, he is not elect. Covenant includes more than election.
Alright, so that is the thing that we have to face all the way through and in
today’s terms everyone who is in the institutional church is not the elect.
There are those who are hypocrites within the church along, of course, with
always the true people of God. There is the remnant.
Sign of the Covenant: circumcision an baptism
So that is the basic reality we’re dealing with. The question
of who belongs within the covenant. Because now we come to a place where in his
covenant the revelation, God institutes a sign of membership in the covenant.
God gives to Abraham in Genesis 17, a sign of incorporation in the covenant. What’s
the meaning of that sign? Who is to receive it is the question. So we face it
in those terms. Then as those who are ministers of the New Covenant, believers
in the New Covenant. We want to know what is the relationship, what kind of continuity
or discontinuity is there between the Old Covenant and, mind you, not just the Old
Covenant in the sense of Israel, but it goes back to Abraham. What’s the
continuity or discontinuity between circumcision as instituted with Abraham and
the patriarchal age and baptism in the New? Our thesis will be, that in terms
of the symbolism of circumcision and baptism, there’s parallelism between the
two. They both symbolize the same thing. In terms of the theological
significance of this rite, there is correspondence between circumcision and
baptism.
Then also in terms of the function of this rite, namely as a sign
of consecration in each case, or membership within the covenant, the holy
covenant community, there is parallelism. Then finally, the question will come
up as to the proper recipients of the sign. So here is the sign, what it
symbolizes, what it conveys theologically, how it functions within the life of
the covenant institution. Then who is to use this particular sign? Here again
we’ll be saying that just as there is parallelism between circumcision and
baptism in respect to its meaning and so on, so there is again continuity in
terms of the proper recipients.
So in doing this obviously I’m going to be arguing for the
traditional Presbyterian view of this matter over against the baptistic
approach. Then, on the other hand, I’m going to be repudiating the usual
Presbyterian argument for their position because I don’t think it’s defensible.
Then I’ll argue for a non-traditional view. So that in practice, what I’m
maintaining is a Presbyterian position, but in terms of biblical explanation
for the practice, I think that the traditional Presbyterian position and the
language used in our usual liturgy for the rite also needs correction. So
okay, I make enemies then both with the Baptists and the Presbyterians in the
process. Now, we do arrive at the truth which is what we’re after.
Now the first question then is: what does circumcision symbolize? Let
me direct you to where we are in the Kingdom Prologue p. 191. Toward
the end that I make some progress then should we skip a bunch and get to the
end? So 191, you can look on and I’ll just try to convey the main ideas. What
is happening in Kingdom Prologue is a condensed version of what was in
my book By Oath Consigned. I don’t get By Oath Consigned
reprinted in spite of a lot of pressure because I would like to revise some
things in it because I wrote this 20, 30 years ago. I’ve been battling this
battle of law and grace through the ages, and I’ve had opponents on this flank
and that flank. If I had had them there, thinking of them when I wrote this, I
would have phrased things differently. Now in the light of a couple of decades
or so of working through this thing I would like to rephrase things clearly
here to ward off various errors that I have seen since then. In Kingdom
Prologue then, although it’s condensed, more strictly the way I would want
to present the matters today. Both with respect to these matters and also to
the matters of the proper recipients which, by the way, comes in a little later
in Kingdom Prologue around page 220. If you want to it is on p. 191 and
following for the meaning of the rite, and then around page 220 and following
for the administration of the rite. So what I’m about to discuss you can check
me out for yourself there.
Genesis 17: circumcision a cutting ritual
What does circumcision symbolize? Genesis 17 is where God
comes and institutes this rite. It could well be understood in terms of the
background of Genesis 15 and also of Genesis 22. Circumcision is obviously a
cutting ritual. It is a rite, R-I-T-E that involves the knife. It’s a knife
rite or instead of speaking of a knife, it’s the sword. It’s a cutting ritual.
It is a sword judgment ritual if you will. Now back in Genesis 15, we have the
episode that I was referring to when I said that the Abrahamic covenant is
ratified by a divine oath. You remember that very dramatic episode where
Abraham is commanded to take the different animals and it’s a knife rite. It’s
a sword of the Lord that he must apply to these animals in judgment. He kills
them and he cuts them in half and he lays the parts over against each other,
creating a passageway of death.
Then we are told that there is a theophany scene. This is sort of
anticipatory of the later theophany of the glory cloud and the pillar of fire
because you have a furnace, with the smoke of the furnace going up and you have
a torch with the leaping flame of the torch. So you have a column of smoke and
a column of fire. It is an embryonic anticipation of the later glory cloud
columns. So in this form of presence, God walks and the pillars, as we said
earlier, are called in the Hebrew the ammadim, standing things. They
represent anthropomorphically the legs of God sometimes as he stands there to
take an oath.
Here as he walks the oath because the picture then here is the
death passage represented by these animals that have been circumcised, they
have been cut into two parts here. Now God walks the death passage between them
and what’s he saying? He’s saying: may God do so to me and all more also
Abraham. See Abraham’s wondering will the promises ever be fulfilled? Yes,
Abraham, they will be fulfilled. I, God, tell you so. If I don’t fulfill these
promises to you Abraham, may it happen to me what is illustrated by these
animals that you have just killed and laid in a path.
So God takes an oath which he dramatizes the curse of the oath that
will befall him if he were to break his covenant to Abraham. Of course, he
won’t break his covenant to Abraham, but then of course, the remarkable
redemptive gospel irony of the thing is that in order to be true to his
covenant with Abraham God must walk the death passage. In Christ he must walk
the passage of Golgotha which is the ultimate circumcision cutting off of
course. It’s a wonderful passage, the condescension of God, in taking an oath
upon himself by which he ratifies the covenant a note to the effect that may he
be circumcised to death, may he be cut off, like these animals, if he breaks
the covenant. Christ must undergo precisely that crucifixion cutting off in
order for God to keep the covenant. So the whole wonderful story is involved
there. But what we have is the context of cutting rituals and so against that
background.
Genesis 22: Akedah
Genesis
22 later on is that other one where God again takes an oath to Abraham and says
“Abraham because you’ve done this then I swear that I will fulfill my covenant
promises to you. And then that whole episode takes the form of God sealing the
arrangement by providing the substitutionary ram, Christ who will be crucified,
to be the sacrifice on the altar. So that before and after Genesis 17, we have
these cutting ceremonies, which in each case, clearly, they symbolize death.
It’s a death judgment. The blow of the sword, the cutting of the sword, the
cutting off, the execution from life from God, from everything. Death is what
is symbolized from circumcision.
So it’s the sword of judgment. It’s nothing short of that. It is
not just some hygienic operation or anything of that sort. It is definitely
this sign of the terrible judgment of God, of the sword of the Lord cutting off
in death.
Of course, when we come to baptism we will want to argue that
that’s precisely the meaning of baptism, and that baptism is not, at least not
primarily, a washing away. It’s not primarily a bath, a washing. It is a flood.
I mean baptism is a flood. What’s a flood? A flood is a judgment. In fact in
the flood episode, the waters, which the New Testament refers to as a baptism,
the waters are described as “cutting off.”-- the same language, as “cutting off.”
That’s used in circumcision. It has already been used in the flood, the cutting
off, which represents what? It represents the cutting off of the wicked world
in death, by the waters of the flood. So the waters of the flood are a fluid
knife. A fluid knife that God used to cut off in death the wicked of the world.
So the flood was both the original baptism and the original
circumcision. It was the original water ritual ordeal, and at the same time the
original circumcision cutting off, all cutting off combined in one. The
subsequent covenant rites then just elaborate on one of the aspects of that. So
we’ll come to that, the evidence for taking baptism as also primarily a sign of
death afterwards.
Meanwhile, here then is a sign, which we’ll see as a sign of
entrance into the covenant, which symbolizes death. You undergo circumcision
nowadays when you undergo baptism, what you are doing is recognizing that your
life is being put at the disposal of, and under the judgment of the Lord for
his final disposition of the thing. So you enter into the covenant with a realization
that there’s going to be a day of accountability in which then the Lord of the
covenant will pronounce judgment on you.
Circumcision and Deaths
Moreover, we are all covenant breakers from the word go. So we all
know that what we deserve from the word go is the curse of God and not the
blessing of God. We all deserve to undergo this judgment as something in which
we perish. But that’s not the whole story. It symbolizes death, but it comes as
part of the message of the gospel, it comes as part of the administration of a Covenant
of Redemption. So in the theological significance of this symbolism, death
let’s say is the generic meaning of the sign. Generically it’s death. But now,
the way things work out, in terms of the gospel and so on, there are two
specific ways in which that circumcision, death, can be experienced. This then
brings out the theological significance of the two possibilities. You can
experience death in yourself, in other words, apart from Christ, and if you do,
death will be the last word on the subject. It will, if in your experience, you
never connect with Christ genuinely, even though you are a member of the
covenant, but you are not an elect and don’t have genuine faith and are not
identified with Christ. Then you are going to stand on your own when the day
comes when this circumcision ordeal must overtake you. In that day, if you are
not in the ark, if you are not in Christ, if you are floating around there out
with the rest of the world outside the ark, then the death ordeal will overtake
you and slay you, and death will be the ultimate word in your experience.
But the gospel comes in here. This is an administration of
redemption and it comes with an invitation. So you enter into the covenant,
receiving this sign knowing that you must undergo death, but being invited,
look--enter the ark, enter into Christ, who undergoes that circumcision for you.
Colossians 2, Paul uses the language of circumcision for the crucifixion of Jesus.
So Jesus undergoes this circumcision judgment for his people. If you identify
by faith with Jesus, if you undergo this ordeal of death in him, then death
will not be the ultimate word but only the penultimate word that beyond that
there will be the word of resurrection. Because in Christ, death is experienced
in the crucifixion but it is overcome in resurrection unto the justification of
Christ’s people. So death is what is symbolized, but death you can experience
either apart from Christ, and that’s the end of you, or you can experience in
Christ, identifying by faith with him, in which case, his death will serve as
yours. God will raise you up by the power of the same spirit by which he
raised Jesus.
So there are these two specific ways in which the circumcision
death can be experienced. Of the two, it isn’t just take it or leave it, one
or the other, you don’t present this matter to God’s people that way--take it
or leave it. This is part of the administration of the gospel. You come to them,
urging them, with the invitation. This is what’s going to happen to you apart
from Christ, accept Christ, come to Christ, get into the ark. By faith, get
into Christ in which case you will emerge from the ark on the other side of the
death passage with Christ and so on. So that’s the invitation and therefore
this is the proper meaning. So there are two possible meanings, two possible
applications, but this is part of redemptive history and therefore the proper
purpose of redemptive history is to save people. Just as, let’s say you have
these general statements about why did Jesus come into the world. Of course, if
you want to tell the whole story the effect of Jesus coming into the world is
this. I mean he’s a savior of death unto death and he’s the savior of life unto
life. He comes into the world not to bring peace, he calls us to a sword,
separating parents from children and so on in the world. In terms of those who
reject him, he comes to bring condemnation into the world but when it’s talking
about what’s the proper purpose of his coming at the same time the Bible will
say he came into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through
him might be saved. So it depends on whether you’re trying to give a total
picture of the effects of Christ’s coming or whether you want to concentrate on
the proper purpose for which he came into the world. Then you have to say both
of them, not just the one.
Now the
tendency in analyzing both circumcision and baptism is to come down on the side
only of its proper meaning but to miss the total picture and what I think I’m
trying to do is be true to all the evidence in the Bible and to try to
accommodate it all in this particular way. Yet I’m wanting to emphasize that
this is after all the proper meaning of it.
Circumcision as a sign of inclusion into the
covenant
Now, so here is this ritual, this is what it means, these are
the possible outcomes, its function. What are you doing when you undergo this
rite? So here is the function. Clearly what it’s functioning as is a sign of
being incorporated into this holy covenant. So here is the common world out
there all around and out of that common world, God is bringing people into this
holy covenant this institution that we’ve just been talking about in Genesis 5
with the Sethites and Genesis 11 there toward the end with the Semites. They
are the people that bear God’s name. These are being gathered out of the world
into a recognizable objective organization and institution.
Not just the invisible mystical body, but there is an actual
visible institution on earth, that’s the covenant we’re talking about and
here’s a sign of your membership in it. So the function then of circumcision is
to signalize your right to and your membership within the covenant. It’s a mark
of your status as a member of the holy covenant. Obviously not necessarily indicating
that you are elect. Not necessarily indicating that you are elect, not
necessarily indicating that you are presumptively regenerate or anything of that
sort. But nevertheless indicating that you are in the covenant.
Transcribed by Abby Swanson,
Rough edited by Ted Hildebrandt