The Nations (Gentiles): Not Plan B!

Dispensationalists talk about two purposes and two peoples of God.  For example, Charles Ryrie says that one of the essential teachings of dispensationalism is that the church and Israel are distinct and that God has two distinct purposes (see page 46 of Ryrie’s Dispensationalism). For several exegetical, hermeneutical, and Reformation reasons, I don’t think these distinctions are biblical.  On this topic, here’s a section of Christopher Wright’s The Mission of God which is helpful.  (The opening quote is from Christopher Begg).

“‘It is especially striking to observe…how the texts [discussed earlier - texts such as Is. 2.3, 19.22, 45:14, 60:7, 61:6, 66:19, 23, etc.] foresee the nations as Yahweh’s worshippers, entering fully and equally into the privileges of Israel.’  Striking indeed.  And so we must finally turn to this climactic point.  For, to visit my earlier metaphor, the Old Testament is not content merely to portray the nations as the spectators of the great drama being played out between YHWH and Israel, not even as clapping spectators who perceive that the drama is ultimately for their own benefit.  The most radical part of the Old Testament vision is yet to come.  For the divine director intends eventually to bring the spectators out of the stalls onto the stage, to join the original cast and then to continue the drama with a single, though infinitely enlarged, company.  The nations will come to share the very identity of Israel itself.  God’s people will burst the boundaries of ethnicity and geography.  The very name ‘Israel’ will be extended and redefined.”

“These things were not the ex post facto [after the fact] theological rationalizations of the apostle Paul seeking to justify the inclusion of the Gentiles in the church.  These things are unambiguously stated in the Old Testament itself as part of God’s mission in relation to the nations of the earth.  As the following survey of texts, drawn again from the Psalms and the Prophets, will demonstrate, when God accomplishes his great missional project for history and creation, the nations of the world will be found to have been 1) registered in God’s city, 2) blessed with God’s salvation, 3) accepted in God’s house, 4) called by God’s name, 5) joined with God’s people.  No more comprehensive inclusion could be imagined.”

Wright goes on to discuss Psalm 47, Isaiah 19.16-25, 56.3-8, Amos 9.11-12, and Zechariah 2.10-11 to give more detail to these points.  He notes that just as people from all nations will be judged if they do not repent and believe, there is hope for all who turn to Christ in faith.  This isn’t God’s plan B – it was his original purpose and plan even before he created the world (Eph. 1.3-4).  It’s woven into the covenant of grace (Gen. 17.4-6).  Here’s how Wright ends this chapter (and how I’ll end this post):

“The distinctiveness of Israel from the nations within their Old Testament history was essential to the mission of God.  But the mission of God was that the distinction would ultimately be dissolved as the nations flowed into unity and identity with Israel.  Only the New Testament gospel would show how that could happen.  And only New Testament mission would show how it did and will continue to happen until their ingathering is complete.”

These quotes were taken from pages 489-490 and 500 of The Mission of God.  All the italics are in the original.

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The Covenant of Works – Dutch Reformed Theology

If you go back in history, Dutch Reformed theology echoes many of the same biblical and Reformation truths as the Westminster Standards.  For example, read how Wilhelmus a Brakel explains the covenant of works and the imputation of Adam’s sin.

“The relationship with Adam consists in this, that the human nature of the human race, at that moment solely existing in Adam, was created as being in the covenant of works.  Adam did not enter into the covenant of works subsequent to his creation, but was created in this covenant, being in this covenant from the very first moment of his existence.  At the very moment that he formulated his first thought, he was conscious of God and the covenant, and could not but approve of this covenant.  Therefore, the human nature and its totality, as well as the entire human race in Adam, were created in that covenant.”

“For this reason all men are still born within this covenant of works discussed above [earlier in volume 1].  Upon Adam’s breach of the covenant, the human nature in its totality, that is the entire human race, broke the covenant.  It is therefore righteous [just] that this nature of the human race is rendered guilty, and that every human being, every person, by virtue of having this same nature, has the covenant breach imputed to him, and is deemed worthy of condemnation.  From this it is clear that only Adam’s breach of the covenant and not his subsequent sins are imputed to his descendants.  This is not merely because they are partakers of the same nature but because they were created in the covenant of works and have broken it in him.”

Brakel goes on to discuss, in some depth, Romans 5:12-18 for exegetical grounding of his explanation of the covenant of works and imputation of Adam’s sin.  If you’re interested, you can also read the WCF 6.3 and WLC Q/A 20-27.

The above quote from Brakel is found on page 384 of volume 1 in The Christian’s Reasonable Service (which he wrote in 1700).

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They Shook The Dust Off Their Feet…

Several times in the New Testament Jesus tells his disciples to shake the dust off of their feet when a town rejects them and their message of salvation (i.e. Matt. 10.14, Mark 6.11, Luke 9.5, and Acts 13.51).  In his commentary on Luke 9.5, Joel Green has a nice summary of what this means.

“…Jesus warns them [the disciples] of the possibility of rejection, which he himself had experienced (e.g. 4:28-30), by advising them on how to respond in the case of the refusal of hospitality.  ‘Dusting of the feet’ was an act connected to ridding oneself of defilement, such as when one had traversed Gentile lands.  Ordinarily an action related to self-purification, here it is specifically interpreted as a performative testimony against the village – designed not, then, to render the traveler clean (again), but to declare the village ‘unclean.’  That is, Jesus’ instructions, albeit in a subtle way, circumvent ordinary rules of purity by turning them on their head.  Jesus performed no such act of self-purification upon his return from the land of Gentiles and the domain of the unclean in 8:40, for he had found responsive faith even in the midst of impurity and rejection (8:26-39).  No longer working narrowly with an ethnic definition of Israel as the people of God, he now declares that those who refuse the salvific visitation of God – present not only in his [Jesus'] ministry but also in the extension of his ministry via these twelve envoys – are to be regarded as though they were outside the people of God.  As in jesus ministry so with the apostles,’ to receive the kingdom of God was to receive its heralds.”

With that in mind, read Paul’s sermon in Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13.  There many of the Jews reject, revile, and persecute Paul and Barnabas even though the Gentiles received the message of salvation with joy and gladness.  Paul and Barnabas left Pisidian Antioch after shaking the dust off their feet.  They weren’t shaking the dust off their feet because they came into contact with “unclean” Gentiles.  They were shaking the dust off their feet as a symbol that the unbelieving Jews had “thrust aside” the word of God and judged themselves to be unworthy of eternal life (Acts 13.46).  Or, in the words of Luke Timothy Johnson, “Those who reject the kingdom are themselves rejected from it.”

The above quote by Green was taken from page 360 of his NICNT commentary on Luke.

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Apostolic Preaching in Acts

I’ve been using Dennis Johnson’s commentary on the book of Acts as I preach through Luke’s second book to Theophilus.  Though the layout of Johnson’s book is sometimes tough to follow (it is topical rather than verse by verse), the content is outstanding.  I especially appreciate this summary Johnson gave on apostolic preaching in Acts.  He said, “the preaching in Acts is truth-centered, revelation-centered, God-centered, and Christ-centered.”  (Note: the following is an edited summary of pages 159-161 in Johnson’s book).

“Truth-Centered: The primary aim of the apostles’ preaching was not to contribute to people’s emotional health – not to train them how to cope with stress, to talk themselves out of despair, or to cultivate family relationships.  The apostles’ message was good news, eliciting ‘great joy’ in those who believed it (Acts 8.8; 13.52), but their goal was not to make their hearers feel better. It was to tell the truth: about God and his plan, about humanity and our sin, about Christ and his victory, about the present opportunity for faith and the future certainty of judgment.”

“Revelation-Centered: The apostolic proclamation of truth was derived not from human experience or speculation, but from God’s self-disclosure.  The apostles testified to the convergence of God’s prophetic promise spoken in the Scriptures, on the one hand, and his eschatological fulfillment in Jesus the Messiah, on the other.”

“God-Centered: The preaching in Acts focuses on one relationship that has gone wrong and on what God has done to set it right.  …It is the broken relationship between us and our Creator that lies at the heart of the matter, and this is the relationship that apostolic preaching addresses first of all.  Its aim is not to enable people to function better at work and  at home while they persist in their hatred toward God; rather it is to bring us home to our Father, who will remake us in the Son’s image by the Spirit’s power, so that we reflect his love and holiness in all our relationships.”

“Christ-Centered: The pervasive, dominant theme in the sermons of Acts is Jesus – who he is and what he has done.  This makes sense in view of the central relationship – our relationship to God – that apostolic preaching addresses. …The preaching that builds people toward spiritual maturity does not take them beyond Christ.  Rather it takes them more deeply into Christ, so that their thoughts, attitudes, values, desires, reactions, words, and behavior are transformed by their death with Christ to sin and their resurrection with Christ to life and righteousness.”

If you want a great study of the main themes of Acts, this book must be on your shelves: The Message of Acts in the History of Redemption by Dennis Johnson.

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Read the Bible or Feed the Baby? (Hint: Vocation)

I’m sure you’ve run into people who are hyper-spiritual.  These are well-meaning and usually serious Christians who have the tendency to be more pious than Paul or Peter.  They’ll be late for work because of a good “quiet time” they were having.  They’ll see Satan behind everything that interrupts daily devotions or prayers.  They’ll feel terribly guilty if they forgot a memory verse they learned in the past.  When my wife and I were talking about this a few weeks back, I showed her this section of Gene Veith’s God at Work.  We both loved it.  Here it is.

“A woman told me about getting involved in a Bible study that demanded strict commitment to the study of God’s Word.  ‘You should make the Bible your number one priority,’ she was told.  That meant getting up early and the very first thing in the morning doing Bible reading and having a quiet time with the Lord.  She did this, but to her consternation every morning as she would start to read her Bible, the baby would wake up.  She found herself resenting the interruption.  Here she was, trying to spend time with God, and the baby would start fussing, demanding to be fed and distracting her attention away from spiritual things.  After a while, though, she came to understand the doctrine of vocation.  Taking care of her baby was what God, at that moment, was calling her to do.  Being a mother and loving and serving her child was her vocation, her divine calling from the Lord.  She could read the Bible later.  She did not have to feel guilty that she was neglecting spiritual things; taking care of her baby is a spiritual thing! (p. 141).”

Well said.  We don’t have to get hyper-spiritual and say that Satan was using the baby’s cries to distract the mother from the Bible.  The baby’s cries were due to a hungry stomach (or wet diaper!) and not Satan trying to pry the woman from the Bible.  Veith is right.  The woman can read the Bible later.  Furthermore, it would be a sin for a mother to neglect her hungry child.  The doctrine of vocation is important for us as we navigate through this world as pilgrims.

Therefore, get this book: God at Work by Gene Edward Veith.  (But feed your baby and change her diaper before you read it.)

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