Was thinking (yes, I know, it’s dangerous) how that, even though there was error in our particular Puritan past that’s hard to unlearn now, we might begin by acknowledging how much truth there really was.

We knew, for example, that the Father and the Son are distinct Persons/Beings (1Cor 8:6), that their oneness consists of unity through the word (Jn 17:22) — not Aristotelian substance (οὐσία), and that the Holy Spirit is not a Person/Being but rather the power of God as expressed through that very unifying word.  And we were not Arians in that we knew that Jesus had not preexisted as an angel — we knew he is now a divine Son sitting at the right hand of his Father in heaven (Ps 110:1), and that he showed the way for us to inherit the same, exact sonship (Rm 8:29).

 

But we erred by not rejecting the trinitarian dogma that had “the God of the Old Testament” incarnated as Jesus.

 

Also, ironically, our doctrine paralleled the gnostic one: whereas we believed that Jesus had preexisted as the God of the Old Testament and had come to reveal a higher Authority (this in spite of Dt 4:35; Dt 4:39; 1K 8:60; Is 45:5-6; Is 45:18; Is 45:21-22; Is 46:9; etc.), the Gnostics believed that Jesus was that higher Authority who had now come to repudiate the mundane status of the Old Testament God.

 

Even though we understood so very much, misunderstanding this one point was but the first link in a chain of misunderstanding.  What erroneous consequences did our old doctrine have?

 

Well — first — because we thought that Jesus was the God of the Old Testament, we mistakenly believed Israel’s marriage to that God was disolved with the death of the Husband (Rm 7:4) — the very error which is also the basis of this so-called “New Covenant theology” so popular among evangelicals.  We were spared the most egregious aspects of the error because we knew that the law was in effect from creation — not just from Sinai.

 

But we did believe that the Sinai covenant was dissolved by Christ’s death.

But if Jesus was not the God of the Old Testament, then his death could not annul the Sinai Covenant, and “a new covenant” (Jer 31:31) cannot represent the cessation of the “old” (Hb 8:13).  Rather the Covenant has a here and now physical side — at Sinai Israel became God’s wife (Jer 3:14) for whom he has a jealous passion (Ex 20:5; Dt 6:15), and all her citizens became his children (Ps 82:6; Lam 1:5) — even though still in the flesh and often rebellious.  And then the Covenant had a spiritual side — even with its own celestial wedding feast —

 

“Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel: And they saw the God of Israel: and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel he laid not his hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.” (Ex 24:9-11)

 

The terms “new covenant” (Jer 31:31) and “heavenly Jerusalem” (Hb 12:22) are ways of referring to this spiritual side of the Covenant — the actualization of the original purpose, the intended outcome of Sinai, which is the birth of sons via a resurrection from the dead.  In this — the spiritual sense — Judah is not the firstborn — Ephraim is (Jer 31:9) — thus the angel said to call Israel’s messiah Joshua ben Joseph (Mt 1:21).

 

Why?

 

Ephraim’s Birthright

Both Peter (Acts 3:35) and Paul (Gal 3:8) derive the promise of salvation from the promise to Abraham (Gn 22:18): “And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.”  The promise was extended to Isaac (Gn 26:4) and then to Jacob (Gn 28:14) — for as God says (Is 61:8-9), “... I will make an everlasting covenant with them. And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the people: all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the LORD hath blessed.”

 

But then after Jacob — to which of Jacob’s sons did the promise go?

 

It’s in Genesis (Gn 48:19) —

 

וְזַרְעוֹ יִהְיֶה מְלֹא־הַגּוֹיִם

wə-zar‘-ô yihyeh məlō’—hag-gôy-im

and-seed-his he.will.be fullness of — the-nation-PL

“and his seed shall be the fulness of the nations.”

 

Paul comments rabbinically on the singular seed (Gal 3:16), “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.”  Thus the seed became Ephraim’s seed who who was to sit on the right hand of the Father in heaven (Ps 110:1; Acts 2:33) — just as Ephraim received the blessing from Israel’s right hand (Gn 48:17).

 

How long does Messiah ben Joseph remain at his Father’s right hand?

 

As long as it takes to reap Ephraim’s blessing of the fulness of the nations (Rm 11:25): “For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.”  That’s also how long Jerusalem awaits her king (Lk 21:24): “And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.”

 

Firstborn of the God

Being born of the spirit (Jn 3:3; 1Cor 15:50-52) is the same as being quickened by the spirit (1Pet 3:18), which is the same as being begotten by the word (Jn 6:63; Jas 1:18).  It was the original intent of the law that it be inscribed in our hearts (Dt 6:6), and it is this that brings us up out of our graves.  “For if,” Paul writes (Rm 5:10), “when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”  Messiah is central in both the reconciliation, which is through his blood, and the salvation which comes through his life being lived in us — which is how God writes his law in our hearts.

 

Israel didn’t become a son at Sinai (Gal 4:25) — Israel was already a son before leaving Egypt (Ex 4:22).  Messiah was first to experience the spiritual birth:

 

“Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Rm 1:3-4)

 

“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” (1Cor 15:20)

 

“And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence.” (Col 1:18)

 

“And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood” (Rv 1:5)

 

Now a legitimate birth implies a Father and a Mother and a marriage contract.  All versions of trinitarianism miss this fundamental point of New Testament imagery.  There is, as it says (Ep 4:6), “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.”  And there is (Gal 4:26) “... Jerusalem which is above ... which is the mother of us all.”  The Covenant is the marriage contract between these two — the words of the Covenant are the Ten Commandments (Ex 34:28).

 

When God revealed himself to Moses (Ex 3:6), “Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.”  And in this Jesus saw the promise of the resurrection (Mt 22:31-32): “But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

 

And thus Peter identifies this same God of the living as the Father of the spiritual firstborn (Acts 3:14): “The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus ...”

 

Being born of the spirit is being begotten through Torah, as it says (Jas 1:18), “Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.”

 

“For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.” (Rm 8:29)

 

Yes, it’s a most fascinating and vital subject — if we can only get all the way past the false doctrine of the Trinity.

 

18 November 2002