Explaining - once again - the doctrine of the republication of the Covenant of Works on Sinai

Reading a debate on the republication of the Covenant of Works on Sinai over at the PuritanBoard is like listening to Marxists discuss the American economy. You just want to find a gun and shoot yourself in the head.

Here is a salient point that transcends both groups: until you both begin to recognize the typology of national Israel vis-a-vis Jesus Christ you just simply can't be taken seriously in the discussion. And neither side seems to want to or be able to recognize that typology and what it means regarding the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace.

Jesus came to fulfill what fallen Adam failed to fulfill. That same Covenant of Works Adam failed to fulfill was republished on Sinai in obviously elaborated form for Jesus to be born under and into so that He could follow God's command to a 't' and fulfill the Covenant of Works. *This* is the Covenant of Grace for us (and the Israelites).

Prior to Jesus accomplishing this national Israel - AS A TYPE OF THE COMING MESSIAH - was under the republished Covenant of Works in a typological way ..... to (slow down and get this) to SHOW THAT MAN CAN'T FOLLOW THE LAW AND TO SEE HOW WE NEED THE COMING MESSIAH FOR SALVATION.

What is confusing you now? This is confusing you (read carefully)---

THERE ARE THREE ***UNIQUE PLAYERS*** IN GOD'S PLAN OF REDEMPTION: pre-fall Adam, national Israel, and Jesus Christ Himself.

Oh! but you say, not Israelites! they were in the same position as us but only needing to have faith in the coming Messiah like we have faith in the already come Messiah! Yes. Correct. Regarding salvation they were just like us. But regarding their role in God's plan of salvation they very much were not like us. We aren't tasked with bringing the word of God through time and space and history; and further, we have never been tasked with being the VERY HISTORICAL SUBSTANCE of the word of God. And have never been a type of the Messiah. Among other things.

What God has national Israel doing, even as some individual Israelites were being saved by faith in the coming Messiah, was performing in the Historical Theater of Redemption a grand object lesson on how fallen man can not save himself by following the law.

Why are you so confused? Because false teachers have confused you at the source, the Covenant of Works in the garden. They've taught you in your too-easily-duped state that it is 'pious' and 'good' to deny any merit in the Covenant of Works, EVEN THOUGH GOD POSES MERIT HIMSELF TO ADAM.

Another source of confusion: those vicious to protect their favorite Romanist fetish infant baptism sense (in a way that is always too hazy for me to remember even after I've figured it out before) infant baptism will have its legs cut out from it if this subject is understood as it is presented biblically. These are the ones who refuse to even recognize the Covenant of Redemption made from eternity because it shows the foundation of the Covenant of Works and Grace (i.e. they 'fold it in' with the Covenant of Grace because this conveniently separates it from the Covenant of Works which is their main demand). When pressed, they are also the ones who don't like any mention of a Covenant of Works at all and will rename it at the drop of a hat to further confusion (in fact, even though many of them know the doctrinal issues, they would sacrifice justification by faith alone to SAVE their precious Romanist fetish infant baptism, which is really just to say to save their salvation by ritual demands because they hate the sovereignty of God in regeneration. This is why it is so easy for dopes like the Federal Vision crowd to annoy Reformed paedo-baptists.

Yes, obviously I and many others lost patience in the debate long ago. We understand Federal Theology. We understand Jesus came to fulfill what Adam failed to fulfill. We understand that the Covenant of Grace is Jesus Himself fulfilling the Covenant of Works as the anti-type of national Israel. We understand there is ONE WAY to be saved: works. Either your own, or Jesus Christ's appropriated by faith in Him. Good luck with your own works. Adam in the garden had the ability, we, after the fall, don't. That is the plan of God. False teachers hate it.

Ironically what those who argue against republication of the Covenant of Works at Sinai accuse proponents of that doctrine with (works righteousness) they are guilty of themselves. They can't see that they are seeing everything upside down, and that it is the false teachers who have confused them. Those that are, in fact, genuinely confused, I should say, because many of them just simply have the devil in them and are consciously speaking falsehood.

Puritans vs. the modern academic Reformed regarding provocation to duty

In The Christian Soldier, or, Heaven Taken by Storm (a title which itself causes modern academic Reformed to giggle) Thomas Watson writes about how we are to provoke violence to ourselves (our fallen nature). He lists two things, one well known, the other not:

1. He must offer violence to himself -- This self-violence consists in two things:

1. Mortification of sin.
2. Provocation to duty.

It's a good part common shallowness but also a good part their cultural Marxist educations that make modern academic Reformed deny the necessity of really both of those things, but especially the latter of the two. (Their mantra: we don't have to do anything! in fact it's not about us!)

What is provocation to duty? Unfortunately in a modern context it's more difficult to know what it is because the faith is now so separated from anything resembling the practical level. Something the Devil has been working hard to do through educating his ministers in colleges and universities and seminaries now fully taken over by cultural Marxism and getting them to write numerous shallow books and articles and to even preach it from the pulpit.

Provocation to duty is something you have to do regarding things where you don't have an external or instinctive stimulus to force you to do something. Homelessness is an external stimulus that makes you get up every morning and go to work. Hunger is an instinctive stimulus that makes you do what you have to do to have food to satisfy hunger. Getting a good grade in a class is an external stimulus to make you read a book. Without the class and necessity of a good grade as a context you are less likely to read the book. If you are wealthy already you are less likely to get up early every morning to do an eight-hour shift. Etc.

Now here is where I have to list practical aspects of the faith to give an example of things that require inward motivation to get done (that require a provocation to duty). I could do this using extra-biblical language (Fourth Way, Work language), or I could choose a command from the Bible, the New Testament let's say, that everybody has heard a million times without ever seeing it at the practical level (or valuing it at the practical level), thus the example will most likely go in one ear and out the other.

Anyway, I'll try the latter... Let's take the command to love your enemy. Nothing external forces you to do this. You might think that self-preservation (not wanting to get in a fight, not wanting to lose a job, etc.) is an external motivation to love your enemy, but it's really not because you have to love your enemy in your thoughts and emotions as well as your will and actions. So this command requires inward motivation. The motivation to do it has to come from you. You have to understand and *value* the command, and you have to desire to practice it. You have to provoke yourself to this duty. I.e. it doesn't just mechanically happen. It has to consciously happen.

Another example: the Bible speaks of wakefulness, or the necessity of being awake (Rom. 13:11, Now it is high time to awake out of sleep... That is not head-on-pillow-sleep Paul is talking of). In everyday life we can get along very well without ever being awake in the biblical sense. We're sleepwalking through life, yet so is everyone else, and things get mechanically done. The effort to be awake is an effort that has no external stimulus. We have to provide the stimulus. The effort. The motivation. The valuation for the practice and goal.

This is what *provocation to duty* means. Modern day academic Christian leaders and educators not only do not teach this, but they don't understand it or even know of its necessity (or even of its existence as an idea or activity).

Thomas Watson puts provocation to duty alongside mortification of sin as the two things we need to do when engaging in spiritual warfare against our fallen nature. I.e. it is not a small thing in the practice of the faith.

For my Fourth Way acquaintances out there this is a big idea and practice to remember. Our valuation to make efforts in the direction we know we have to make efforts in is never very high, or is rarely high. We have to know that provocation to duty is a part of it (they're called conscious shocks for a reason). Doing things solely from inward motivation or stimulus is hard. Reading articles on the internet is easy; reading Thucydides is hard. The latter requires inward motivation and a greater degree of effort and attention. We know this, but it is good to know that Christianity knows this too, yet the practice has been lost in the modern era where shallowness (and intentional misleading) in the faith abounds.

Provocation to duty along with mortification of sins can even be seen as *the* two conscious shocks necessary for getting into the realm of higher emotion and real will and increasing real understanding. And they also apply in the war with the world and the Devil just as with our inner fallen nature.

He said, I said

He: Most "christians" pretend to believe in some sort of "god." They can't face the reality and finality of death, so they pretend to believe in some nonsense story about a "savior" offering "everlasting life."

I: Christians are Christians despite themselves. We get zapped by the Holy Spirit, it's not our doing. The living, quickening word of God is the wild card in the process though. And a mature curiosity for the mysteries of existence.

Macaulay on the Puritans

"The Puritan was made up of two different men, the one all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of the king."

I post this to show that it is not just some kind of aberrant American hyper-individualism, as the modern academic Reformed scholars claim, that rejects the authority of man in religious matters. It is the trait of a Bible believing, Holy Spirit inspired and discerning Christian. A prophet, priest, and king.

Something about real will

>My heart is best guarded from sin when it is submitted to the loving care of others.

As a regenerated Christian, a born again believer, you should need no external force to not sin. The fruit of your regeneration and sanctification (not talking of perfectionism) comes from within you; from your new heart and new nature. You shouldn’t be in the fallen situation where you want to sin, but an external constraint keeps you from sinning. You should be in a state where you no longer desire to sin (and if you fall you don’t desire to stay in sin but desire to get back up and out of it as fast as possible; you find it abomination, and with each fall you are more likely not to fall again and by lesser and lesser degree). You also begin to realize you are on a battlefield, a spiritual battlefield, where mistakes are costly, and you develop as a soldier of Christ to no longer give the Devil and the world and your fallen nature any victory over you by your own mistakes.

We are known

We're not unnoticed by God here on the landscape.

God sees us. The Holy Spirit sees us. Prior to our regeneration He sees us.

I get these very firm and striking thoughts when I read liberal, or 'progressive' theologians. How they are me, me, me. "What is Christianity in terms of what I want? How can I re-vision Christianity to make it appropriate to what I demand? I am the measure."

God can see us when we aren't like that. When we are moving about on the landscape searching for influences, things to learn from, getting closer to school knowledge, to being able to see and understand and *accept* real biblical teaching.

He sees us not because we are special, or more special than others, but because we are determined and moving about despite all the mocking and abuse we are taking, much of it self-inflicted but inevitable for an innocent in a fallen world.

God sees the development and tempering of a soul that will - that can - live in His Kingdom.

vs. John Piper

I left this comment at this interesting blog called Spiritual Authority:

This is an excellent subject for a blog.

One theme involved in this subject that I’ve thought about recently is preaching. I read somewhere that when preaching is mentioned in the Bible is invariably refers to preaching to the unconverted. The implication being that preaching really is not an activity that needs to be done to the converted in a church. In a church there should be more of an environment of discussing and learning and growing in understanding of the faith and growing in strength in the faith.

A counter to that is, I recently came across, John Piper who says the church is not a classroom, per se, but is for worship of God, and what the pastor does is more an inspired performance to facilitate the worship of God.

I would counter with C. S. Lewis when he stated that he found biblical doctrine (serious works of biblical doctrine) to be the most truly devotional works as opposed to the softer kinds of things we normally associate with devotional literature.

Thus reading and discussing the Bible and biblical doctrine as believers – getting greater understanding of it all – becomes an actual act of worship in a church environment or any environment. This has been my experience. If anyone needs biblical support for understanding of the Word of God and biblical doctrine - yea the study of God Himself - as acts of worship be prepared to catalogue thousands of verses and passages.

Just some thoughts…

Me, Him, Me

ME: In hell the tortured become torturers. Torturers become the tortured. No escape, no let up, no grace from God. An existence devoid of the grace of God. Avoid it.

HIM: In Candyland tumors become gumdrops.

ME: Let me explain, young dupe of the world... Right now you are experiencing God's common grace. When you die you will no longer have that. You will experience total alienation from God and from anything and everything good that comes from God's creation. You are like a fool right now with a full belly making fun of hunger. Think.