Читать книгу A Bible History of Baptism - Baird Samuel John - Страница 10

The interest attaching to the Sinai baptism is greatly enhanced by its immediate and intimate relation to us. The covenant then sealed is the fundamental and perpetual charter of the visible church. The transaction by which it was established was the inauguration of that church. It was the espousal of the bride of Christ, whose betrothal took place in the covenant with Abraham. So it is expressly and repeatedly stated by the Spirit of God in the prophets. (See Jer. ii, 1, 2; Ezek. xvi, 3-14; xxiii; Hos. ii, 2, 15, 16.) It is true that this is controverted. It is asserted that the relations established by the covenants between God and Israel were secular and political, not spiritual; that the blessings therein secured were temporal; that they conveyed nothing but a guarantee that Israel should become a numerous and powerful nation, that God would be their political king, the Head of their commonwealth, and that the land of Palestine should be their possession and home. How utterly at variance with the teachings of God’s Word are these assertions a brief analysis of the record will prove.

The covenant of Sinai was the culmination of a series of transactions which began with the calling of Abram from Ur of the Chaldees. “The Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee; and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.” – Gen. xii, 1-3. Respecting this record, the following points are made clear in the New Testament: (1) That under the type of Canaan, “the land that I will show thee,” heaven was the ultimate inheritance offered to Abram; and that it was so understood by him and the patriarchs. (Gal. iv, 26; Heb. xi, 10, 14-16.) (2) That the blessings promised through him to all the families of the earth were the atonement and salvation of Jesus Christ; and that this also was so understood by Abram. (Gen. xvii, 7; Gal. iii, 16, John viii, 56.) Thus, in his call from Chaldea, and the promises annexed to it, God “preached before the gospel unto Abraham.” – Gal. iii, 8. So far, certainly, the transaction is eminently spiritual.

About ten years after the coming of Abram into the land of Canaan, the promises were confirmed to him by being incorporated into covenant form, and ratified by a seal. Respecting this first covenant, the record of which is contained in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, the following are the essential points:

1. The interview was opened by the Lord with an assurance so spiritual and large as to be exhaustive of every thing that heaven can bestow. “The Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” Whatever else was promised or given, after an assurance thus rich and comprehensive of time and eternity, must evidently be interpreted in a sense subordinate to it. No minor particulars can ever exhaust or limit the treasury thus opened. Henceforth God himself belongs to the patriarch.

2. An innumerable seed was assured to him, as heirs with him of the promises; and he is told that not to him but to his seed should the earthly Canaan be given. (Vs. 5, 18; and compare xvii, 7, 8.)

3. Abram’s faith was the condition of the covenant. “He believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness.” – Vs. 6.

4. The promises thus made and accepted were confirmed by a sacrifice appointed of God, and his acceptance of it was manifested by the sign of a smoking furnace and a burning lamp, passing between the pieces. (Vs. 8, 9, 17, 18.)

5. It was an express provision of the covenant thus ratified that, so far as it concerned the seed of Abram, its realization was to be held in abeyance four hundred years. (Vs. 13-16.) It was the betrothal, of which the marriage consummation could only take place when the long-suffering of God toward the nations was exhausted and the iniquity of the Amorites was full.

About fifteen years afterward God was pleased to appear again to the patriarch, to renew the covenant, and to confirm it with a new seal. (Gen. xvii, 1-21.) Of this edition of the covenant the principal provisions were: (1) That he should be a father of many nations. (2) That Canaan should be, to him and his seed, an everlasting possession. (3) That God would be a God to him and to his seed after him. By the first of these promises, as Paul assures us, Abraham was made the heir of the world, and the father of all believers; of the gospel day, as well as before it; of the Gentile nations, as well as of Israel. (Rom. iv, 11-18; Gal. iii, 7-9, 14.) Hence the name given him of God, in confirmation of this promise (Gen. xvii, 5), Abraham, “Father of a multitude,” Father of the church of Christ. But the central fact of this transaction remains. The covenant was epitomized in one brief word: “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.” – v. 7.

1. The covenant thus set forth is “an everlasting covenant;” no lapse of time can alter or abrogate its terms.

2. By it the Godhead assumed toward Abraham and his seed relations peculiar, exclusive, and of boundless grace. God, even the infinite and almighty God, can do no more than to give himself. Christian can conceive no more, and the most blessed of all heaven’s ransomed host will know and enjoy no more than this, which was first assured to Abram, in those words, “Fear not; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward;” and is now concentrated into that one word, “Thy God.” What can there be, not spiritual, in a covenant thus summed? And what spiritual gift or blessing is not comprehended in it? But this is not all. Whilst Paul testifies that all who believe are the seed of Abraham, and heirs with him of the promises, he also declares that Christ was the seed to whom distinctively and on behalf of his people they were addressed: “To Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds as of many, but as of one: And to thy seed, which is Christ.” – Gal. iii, 16. It thus appears that the promises in question were addressed immediately to the Lord Jesus, and they indicate all the intimacy and grace of his relation to the Father, – the relation which he claimed, when, from the cross, he appealed to the Father by that title: “My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?” It follows, that the title of others to this promise is mediate only: “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ… And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” – Ib. 27-29.

It was with a view to this relation of the covenant to the Lord Jesus, that circumcision was appointed as a seal of it. In that rite was signified satisfaction to justice through the blood of the promised Seed, and the crucifying of our old man with him, to the putting off and destroying of the body of the flesh. (Deut. x, 16; Jer. iv, 4; Rom. vi, 6; Col. ii, 11, 12.)

Upon occasion of the offering of Isaac, the covenant was again confirmed to Abraham in promises which do not mention Canaan, but are summed in the intensive assurances: “In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” – Gen. xxii, 16-18. What seed it was to whom these promises were made, we have seen before. The assurance to him of triumph over his enemies renews the pledge made to Eve, through the curse upon the serpent, “Her seed shall bruise thy head.” – Gen. iii, 15. Of the same thing, the Spirit in Isaiah says: “Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.” – Isa. liii, 12. Of it, Paul says: “He must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.” – 1 Cor. xv, 25.

The covenant thus interpreted, was confirmed to Abraham with an oath (v. 16), of which Paul says: “Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath; that, by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus.” – Heb. vi, 17-20. Here, again, it appears that the covenant with Abraham comprehended in its terms the very highest hopes which Christ’s blood has purchased, – which he, in heaven, as his people’s forerunner, now possesses, and which with him they shall finally share; and that the oath by which it was confirmed contemplated these very things, and was designed to perfect the faith and confidence of his people, in the gospel day, as well as of the patriarchs and saints of old.

It is thus manifest that while the Abrahamic covenant did undoubtedly convey to Abraham and his seed after the flesh many and precious temporal blessings, it was at the same time an embodiment of the very terms of the covenant between God and his Christ; that its provisions of grace to man are bestowed wholly in Christ; and that it is, therefore, exclusive and everlasting. There can be no reconciliation between God and man, but upon the terms of this covenant. There can, therefore, be no people of God, no true church of Christ, but of those who accept and are embraced in, and built upon, that alone foundation, “the everlasting covenant” made with Abraham.