NEW COVENANT

NEUROSIS

Miles J. Stanford

Monday

18 May 1992

Dr. Rodney J. Decker

Calvary Theological Seminary

15800 Calvary Road

Kansas City, MO 64147-1341

Dear Dr. Decker

By way of introduction, I am a long-time friend of Harold Freeman. My wife and I are also friends of Calvary Bible College, and through the years have guided a number of students thereto.

I have been listening to your taped April message on Contemporary Dispensationalism, Workshop #2, with keen interest and appreciation. You are certainly in good company when you state:

The New Covenant related to the Church is a major improvement over the two distinct new covenants.

Their ["progressive dispensationalists'"] treatment of the New Covenant [as being related to the Church] I think is legitimate. I don't see a problem with that; the NT very specifically refers to the New Covenant as related to the Church.

As far as I can determine, every dispensational leader, from John Darby all the way to Rodney Decker, relates the Church to the "spiritual blessings" of Israel's New Covenant.

Oh, they all valiantly insist that the New Covenant is alone for the house of Israel, and the house of Judah; and that they alone will fulfill that covenant in the future [here-and-now] Messianic kingdom. But, in the meantime, they make the Church recipient of some of the same.

But I must say that all who would so much as touch the tar baby, Israel's New Covenant, are paying too high a price for so low a product. The heavenly member of the Body of Christ cannot afford the cost. Besides, who needs it?!

This illegitimate encroachment of the heavenly Church upon Israel's earthly New Covenant ground has opened and sustained the means for Covenant theology to overwhelm the naturally law-prone Church.

As for the so-called "spiritual blessings" that the Church would relate to and partake of, we might well consider several--such as the Blood, the New Birth, and the Holy Spirit.

THE BLOOD -- The first step is the mis-step. Just because the shed Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed both the Church and New Covenant Israel, it has been taken for granted that this provides common ground between them. Nothing could be further from the rightly-divided truth!

If you are going to "relate to," or appropriate, or purloin the "spiritual blessings" of Israel's portion of the Blood of the Cross, what are you going to have? In anticipation of His eternal Son's Cross, God said to the house of Israel and the house of Judah, "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more" (Jer. 31:34).

Would you have the heavenly Body of Christ settle for this--sins forgiven? This is about as far as the leadership has led the poor, grounded Church--all the way to Romans Three.

Or, would you add this in order to supplement that which the Body already has in the Blood of the Lamb?

"But now in Christ Jesus ye who once were far off are made nigh by the Blood of Christ" (Eph. 2:13).

"Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the Holiest by the Blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh" (Heb. 10:19,20).

To the extent of my present positional knowledge and realization, that is where I live--"hidden with Christ in God" (Col. 3:3). Israel, in all her coming kingdom glory, will never know this--even in eternity. Moreover, the Church will never come to know and appreciate her present Blood-bought benefits in heaven if she is distracted by Israel's earthly fare. A heavenly entity cannot be nurtured by earthly kingdom blessings.

THE NEW BIRTH -- In her regeneration, New Covenant Israel will be renewed.

"Then [in the kingdom] will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean; from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.

"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh" (Ezek. 36:25,26).

However glorious the Jew's new birth, or regeneration, proves to be, it will never begin to compare with that of the Christian. Should I covet that, for this?:

I, as a lost sinner, was judicially identified with the Lord Jesus Christ, who, at the Cross, was made to be (my) sin in His death unto sin (2 Cor. 5:21).

I was crucified with Him (Gal. 2:20), and thereby released from the fallen first Adam, who was my life (death). I was then recreated (not renewed) in the Last Adam and hence identified with Him in His new-creation, resurrected and ascended life (Rom. 6: 4,5). I have been raised up, and made to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph. 2:6).

The glorified Lord Jesus Christ is now my Christian life; I am a new creation in Him. I have died, and my life is now hidden with Christ in God (2 Cor. 5:17; Col. 3:3).

What of this, and infinitely more, will Israel ever know or enter into? Absolutely nothing! She will never be in Christ, never have Him as her Life--His Beloved Bride and Body having been completed prior to the Rapture.

Being blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in the Lord Jesus Christ, accepted in the Father's Beloved Son (Eph. 1: 3,6), should I be the recipient of Israel's earthly blessings? Would that it were the other way around!

THE HOLY SPIRIT -- Concerning the New Covenant Jew, God prophesied, "I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep Mine ordinances, and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God" (Ezek. 36:27,28).

Yes, the Spirit of God will indwell the Millennial Jew, but to what end? It will be to write the theocratic kingdom-law in his heart, to enable him to walk in His statutes and keep His kingdom ordinances. "After those days, saith the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts" (Jer. 31:33).

But how does this compare with the Holy Spirit's indwelling of Christians? He does not write the law in their hearts--Dr. MacArthur, Dr. Showers, and all Covenant theologians notwithstanding. The Spirit of Christ ministers Christ in the heart (spirit) of the Christian. "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2).

"Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone but in the fleshly tablets of the heart" (2 Cor. 3:3).

The Christian is "always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life [not law] also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body" (2 Cor. 4: 10).

Why should the law be written in the heart of one who has died to the law? "For I, through the law, have died to the law, that I might live unto God" (Gal. 2:19). "Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ ... that we should bring forth fruit [not works] unto God" (Rom. 7:4).

Whatever "baptism in, or by, the Spirit" that Israel might undergo, it will certainly not be into Christ, into the already completed Body of Christ. There will never be another Pentecost!

As John Darby said,

Blessings of the Jews in earthly places under the King will be fulfilled in the future kingdom; but for the Christian it is "all spiritual blessings," and "in heavenly places," and "in Christ" Himself, even now (Ephesians, p. 122).

Dear brother, Christians need to be taught who and where they are, and what they have in the glorified Lord Jesus Christ. He has given all that truth exclusively to His Bride, through Paul, in his Church Epistles. Nowhere else in the Word will that be found, and certainly not in Jeremiah nor Ezekiel! We are still to rightly and spinefully divide the Word of truth.

Stoop to Israel to conquer? "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors in Him that loved us" (Rom. 8:37).

"If ye, then, be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.

"For ye have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our Life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory" (Col. 3:1-4).

Resting in Him,

Miles

Part II - Letter dated 13 October 1995

MJStanford

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(Materials by Miles J. Stanford are republished here under exclusive permission from the author.)