To remove the cavil [against our identification of the Mosaic and Abrahamic dispensations] founded on each text quoted against us by a detailed exposition, would consume too much space. It is not necessary. By discussing one of the strongest of them, we shall sufficiently suggest the clue to all. The most plausible objection is that drawn from Jer. 31:32, where the prophet seems to assert an express opposition between the new covenant, which Heb. vii indisputably explains as the Covenant of Grace, and that made with Israel at the Exodus. There is unquestionably, a difference asserted here, and it is the difference between law and grace. But it is the Covenant of Sinai viewed in one of its limited aspects only, which is here set in antithesis to the Covenant of Grace. It is the secular theocratic covenant, in which political and temporal prosperity in Canaan was promised, and calamity threatened, on the conditions of theocratic obedience or rebellion. The justice and relevancy of the prophet Jeremiah’s, and of the apostle’s logic, in selecting this aspect of the Sinai Covenant to display, by contrast, the grace of the new covenant, are seen in this: that self-righteous Jews, throwing away all the gracious features of their national compact, and thus perverting its real nature, were founding all their pride and hopes on this secular feature. The prophet points out to them that the fate of the nation, under that theocratic bond, had been disaster and ruin, and this, because the people had ever been too perverse to comply with its legal terms, especially, inasmuch as God had left them to their own strength. But the spiritual covenant was to differ (as it always had), in this vital respect; that God, while covenanting with His people for their obedience, would make it His part to write His law in their hearts. Thus He would Himself graciously ensure their continuance in faith and obedience. Witsius happily confirms this view, by remarking that, in all the places where the secular, theocratic compact is stated, as a Covenant of Works we see no pledge on God’s part, that He “will circumcise their hearts,” as in Deut. 30:6. There, the ensuing compact is interpreted by St. Paul (Rom. 10:6) as the Covenant of Grace. So, in Jer. 31:33, 34. God engages graciously to work in His elect people the holy affections and principles, which will embrace, and cleave to the promise. But in all such places as Leviticus 18:5; Ezek. 18, the duties required are secular, and the good gained or forfeited is national. In truth, the transaction of God with Israel was twofold. It had its shell, and its kernel; its body, and its spirit; its type, and its antitype. The corporate, theocratic, political nation was the shell: the elect seed were the kernel. See Rom. chaps. 10 and 11. The secular promise was the type: the spiritual promise of redemption through Christ was the antitype. The law was added as “a schoolmaster,” to bring God’s true people, the spiritual seed mixed in the outward body, to Christ. This law the carnal abused, as they do now, by the attempt to establish their own righteousness under it. –Robert L. Dabney, Systematic Theology
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 04:46:12 +0000
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