Crucial in understanding the Mosaic Covenant is...

Crucial in understanding the Mosaic Covenant is to distinguish between individual Israelites and National Israel as a unique entity. Individual Israelites were just like us, salvation by faith alone, in the (for them) coming Messiah. National Israel though is very much not like us (or not like fallen man). National Israel is prototypical of the coming Messiah. So in that sense national Israel (again, not individual Israelites!) very much *could* fulfill the Covenant of Works (*through the anti-type Jesus Christ*).

People are afraid of typology that brushes up against such central, important doctrine, for some reason.

In this sense *National Israel* was as *unique* a player in God's plan of redemption as pre-fall Adam and Jesus Christ Himself. (I believe this is why the apostle Paul struggles to explain in Romans why his fellow Jews are just like any other fallen individuals *yet* at the same time are a bit different.)

I am not a prototype of Jesus Christ, and no fallen man pre or post the Incarnation is either. National Israel *was* a prototype of Jesus Christ. National Israel was *unique* in the plan of redemption.

Jesus was *born under the law.* Had to be. The law given on Mt. Sinai was obviously the Covenant of Works in elaborated form. Jesus came to fulfill what the first Adam failed to fulfill.

The relationship of individual Israelites to that republished law was as a student/school teacher relationship. The laws also played a unique part in keeping the royal bloodline from Adam to Christ pure, and keeping the Israelites unified. They had unique responsibilities not the least of which was their very history became the substance of special revelation which had to be lived, recorded, and kept pure and whole and shepherded down through the centuries, etc.

Follow the law, stay in the land, fail to follow the law, get exiled from the land, all that is played out at the level of National Israel, mostly focused on the various kings and their behavior. The big fact is this: when the northern Kingdom and the southern Kingdom were eventually exiled *there were saved individual Israelites in those exiled populations.* They weren't kicked out because they didn't have faith in the coming Messiah, they were kicked out because their kings and the corporate *national level* of Israel failed to follow the law. But they weren't exiled forever because the fulfillment of National Israel was the incarnation of Jesus Christ who *did* follow the law and accomplish what the first Adam failed to accomplish. It was a long historical object lesson for all of fallen man, engrafted as special revelation.

There is a lot of ignorance and misguided piousness and - not a small thing - intentional false teacher confusion-sowing regarding this relatively simple doctrine of basic Federal Theology. Those who attack the central doctrine of justification by faith alone despise any notion of a Covenant of Works in the garden to begin with and demand it be done away with. Many don't see this. Much naivety (and the false teachers grin at how easy it is to muddy up the waters and sow confusion). Those false teachers currently would be people like the Federal Visionists.

Federal Theology is simple and complete (plain) and *powerful.*

Academics who are always learning and never able (or who just petulantly never want) to come to understanding of the truth also have a hand in sowing endless confusion over this simple doctrine. It's fairly maddening. Also, some of the slower thinkers in certain internet environments tend to take the lead in policing everybody on this particular subject. Again, it is basic Federal Theology, but basic Federal Theology isn't grasped in the sense of understanding the parts in relation to the whole by many people currently.

I'm not saying everybody is stupid but me, but there is definite frustration when going up against people on this subject. I think R. Scott Clark gave up trying and left the internet partially over this subject alone. You have to both take on the false teachers *and* all the people who have been severely confused by the false teachers, and it's the latter who tend to be very pious and ultimately unteachable.