Reading: New Covenant God Will Make by Jim Skillen

A New Covenant God

Will Make1

Dr. James W. Skillen directed the Center for Public Justice

from 1981 until his retirement as president in 2009. Prior

to 1981, he taught political science and philosophy at

three Christian colleges, including Dordt College. He ed-

ited the Center’s periodicals and has written or edited 15

books, including In Pursuit of Justice: Christian-Democratic

Explorations (2004), With or Against the World? America’s

Role Among the Nations (2005), and The Good of Politics: A

Biblical, Historical, and Contemporary Introduction (2014).

by James W. Skillen

Israel and the Covenants

In Jeremiah we read, “‘The time is coming,’

declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new cov-

enant with the house of Israel and with the house

of Judah’” (Jer. 31:31). How does that divine prom-

ise relate to the original covenant God made with

Israel? And if Jesus is the embodiment of that new

covenant, as Christians believe, how is it that he

fulfills God’s promise to “the house of Israel and

with the house of Judah”?

In this essay I argue that God’s covenants with

Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David build on one

another in a progressive revelatory way that antici-

pates the new covenant promised in Jeremiah. This

progression is different from imagining that each

of those covenants displaced or replaced the one

preceding it, and it is different from saying that the

new covenant in Christ Jesus displaces all earlier

covenants, putting them in the past tense from the

moment of his resurrection. My thesis is that all

of the earlier covenants, including God’s covenant

with Israel, continue even now to bear witness to,

and anticipate the fulfillment of, the new covenant

God promised to make with Israel and Judah, the

covenant that the apostles proclaim has been re-

vealed in Jesus Christ. To understand this point, we

need to recognize that from our present temporal

point of view, God’s new covenant promises have

not yet been entirely fulfilled. Messiah Jesus has

come, but he has not yet returned. God’s kingdom

has not yet been fully established. With the new

covenant that God promised through Jeremiah,

no one would any longer need to teach neighbors

to know the Lord because “they will all know me,

from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer. 31:34).

That promise also has not yet been realized. Thus,

we need to look again at how the new covenant is

fulfilling the earlier covenants.

God’s covenants with Abraham on through to

David had the character of God’s pledged troth,

which entailed many promises that would be ful-

filled in the future, along the way. Think, for exam-

ple, of God’s covenant with Abraham that included

the promise that through his seed all nations would

be blessed (Gen. 12:2-3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14).

Editor’s Note: Dr. Skillen’s essay is part of a book project, tentatively titled God’s Sabbath with Creation, exploring (1) the

meaning of our creaturely responsibilities in relation to the progressive development of the biblical covenants and (2) the

relation of this age to the coming age—creation and eschatology.

Pro Rege—March 2017 21

And that was before Abraham had even one heir.

Moreover, the same promise was repeated to Isaac

and Jacob. There is a great mystery here, yet the pat-

tern of promise and anticipated fulfillment is clear.

The covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

looked ahead to how and when God would fulfill

promises to them. We also know from the proph-

ets that many of God’s promises, which entailed

curses as well as blessings, have been fulfilled while

many others have not yet come to pass. That is why

the questions that tend to

arise in almost every discus-

sion of God’s covenants, old

and new, tend to focus on

the timing and the mean-

ing of their fulfillment. For

example, God promised to

establish David’s throne for-

ever and to restore Israel and

Judah to right standing with

God. Yet it does not appear

today that a son of David sits

on a throne of Israel or that Israel and Judah have

been fully restored to righteousness before God.

If we are to believe what is written in the Old and

New Testaments, therefore, we must still struggle

with the question of when and how God fulfilled,

is fulfilling, and will fulfill the covenant promises

to Israel. And if Jesus is the promised Messiah,

through whom God is establishing the new cove-

nant, how does (how will) that new covenant reach

fulfillment? Recall the final conversation that the

risen Jesus had with his disciples before ascending

into heaven (Acts 1:1-8). They asked him, “Is now

the time, Lord, when you will restore the kingdom

to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Jesus did not reject their ques-

tion as irrelevant to his mission. He told them that

it was not for them to know the times and dates

God sets but that they would receive power from

the Holy Spirit to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in

all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the

earth (Acts 1:7-8). The disciples’ question to Jesus

is still awaiting a final answer. The dates of fulfill-

ment are for God to decide. So again we ask, how

are God’s covenants with Noah, Abraham, Isaac,

Jacob, and David related to Jesus?

Ben Witherington draws together, in the fol-

lowing way, several of the questions we’ve been rais-

ing. When Paul says in Romans 9:6 that “not all

who are descended from Israel are Israel,” he

does not speak of a ‘new Israel,’ nor does he speak

of the replacement of one Israel by another here.

His argument is about the way the one true people

of God have developed through history. He does,

however, redefine who the people of God are,

countering both popular Jewish notions about the

claim Jews had on God because of their physi-

cal descent..., but at the same time countering

attitudes that some Gentile

Roman Christians seem to

have had that suggested that

Gentiles had replaced Jews

as God’s chosen people

(11:19).2

If we follow Withering-

ton’s reading of Paul, where

will it lead us? How does

Paul understand the relation

of Israel to Christ and his

disciples? How can God remain faithful to Israel

and at the same time do something so new, so final

and climactic, that it redefines the people of God?

Creation, Election, and Covenant Promises

To get our bearings, look with me at the Bible’s

opening chapters together with the openings of

John’s Gospel, Hebrews, and Colossians. For we

cannot grasp the meaning of God’s covenant with

Israel and its relation to the revelation of Christ Jesus

apart from God’s creation purposes. According to

the biblical witness, all things have been created by

God through and for the Son of God, who became

flesh in Jesus Christ. All things hold together in

him (John 1:1-4; Col. 1:15-20; Heb. 1:1-3). God’s

creation order and purposes stand at the founda-

tion of all the judgment-redemption covenants

of the Old Testament and the New. “Part of the

point of covenant renewal,” writes N.T. Wright in

reference to Paul’s letters, “is that this was God’s

intended way of renewing creation itself; this is the

larger framework of thought within which Paul is

operating.”3

In the Genesis account of creation we can rec-

ognize an originating covenant4

in the sense that

it is God’s bond with the creation, including the

If we are to believe what is

written in the Old and New

Testaments, therefore, we must

still struggle with the question

of when and how God fulfilled,

is fulfilling, and will fulfill the

covenant promises to Israel.

22 Pro Rege—March 2017

terms of God’s commission of the human genera-

tions to serve as the stewards, rulers, prophets, and

priests of creation. In it, humans are appointed to

love and walk with God throughout their genera-

tions, exercising the responsibilities God has given

them. The orientation of their lives and the whole

creation is toward the praise of God, whose sab-

bath blessing will be their inheritance when all has

been fulfilled in righteousness (see Heb. 4:1-12).

That order of creation still stands and bears wit-

ness to the creator God. This is true even though

human disobedience has alienated the human gen-

erations from God and subjected them to the curse

of death. Yet God did not immediately carry out

the full penalty of death (Gen. 3) that would cut

off the continuation of the generations of human-

kind. Instead, God mercifully upholds the human

generations in order to fulfill the creation purposes

(Gen. 3:21-24), and the forthcoming judgment-

and-redemption covenants have everything to do

with that fulfillment.

The great flood-judgment (Gen. 6-8) nearly ac-

complished God’s curse of death on unrighteous

humanity, but in the act of saving the righteous

man Noah (a second Adam), God establishes a cre-

ation-renewal covenant with blessings and prom-

ises for the continuation of humankind’s earthly

stewardship and the creation’s continued fruitful-

ness (Gen. 9:8-17). God’s election of Noah and his

family makes possible a fresh start in the exercise

of human responsibility in accord with the origi-

nal creation covenant (Gen. 9:1-7). This covenant

again opens the way for the human generation to

anticipate fulfillment in God’s consummation of

creation. The Noachian covenant did not displace

or replace the creation order but builds on it and

takes place within it. We also see that the disobedi-

ence of Adam has not yet been eradicated from hu-

mankind, and the generations of Noah soon show

themselves to be as unfaithful to God as the earlier

generations were.

In God’s covenants with Abram/Abraham, we

see the next historical “calling out” (election) of a

representative from among the nations, but this

time it does not go hand in hand with the destruc-

tion of all others, as when God saved only Noah.

God’s purpose in electing Abram is again to restore

a righteous humanity—a great nation—that will

hear and trust and follow God and be the chan-

nel of God’s blessing to all nations on earth (Gen.

12:1-3; Ps. 47).5

God’s election of Abraham forces

the next question: what now comes of God’s earlier

promises to Noah for all of humanity, including

those not in the line of Abraham? Clearly, Abraham

is a son of Noah, not a replacement for Noah in

the sense that the Abrahamic covenant abrogates

the Noachian covenant. To the contrary, God’s

covenant with Abraham builds on the Noachian

covenant and will unfold within the same creation

order (see Is. 54:9-10). And part of what this means

is that through Abraham’s seed, all nations will be

blessed (Gen. 12:3).

From the seed of Abraham, only Isaac is elected

for God’s covenantal line, but that does not mean

God’s covenant with Abraham is abrogated when

Isaac is born or that all who are not of Isaac are

damned for all eternity. Ishmael, too, is protected

and blessed by God (Gen. 21:8-21). Then, from

the seed of Isaac only Jacob (Israel) is chosen. Yet

that does not mean the elimination of Esau from

God’s purposes for Israel and the nations. Nor

does it mean that God’s covenant with Isaac is su-

perseded when Jacob is elected. God’s blessing of

Jacob confirms as valid God’s faithfulness to Isaac

and Abraham. All too soon the children of Israel

find themselves enslaved in Egypt, and when God

liberates them from captivity, he sets them up as a

nation whose covenant elaborates the true way of

life for the redeemed. The children of Israel are to

shine like a light for all nations; they are to show

what righteous humanity ought to be. God’s cov-

enant with Israel is a further expansion and elabo-

ration of the meaning of God’s creation purposes,

God’s covenant with Noah, and God’s promises to

Abraham and Isaac. As Wright puts it,

Israel is to be God’s royal nation of holy priests,

chosen out of the world but also chosen for the

sake of the world. Israel is to be the light of the

world: the nations will see in Israel what it means

to be truly human and, hence, who the true God

is. For this purpose, Israel is given Torah.6

God does this not as a reward for the superior

character and worthy deeds of Israel but to reveal

God’s faithfulness, righteousness, redeeming love,

and glory (see Gen. 14:4; 15:1-21; 19:3-6; Deut.

Pro Rege—March 2017 23

9:1-6; Jer. 16:14-21; Ps. 106:6-12; 115:1).

These historically revelatory covenants do not

answer all the questions we might ask about God’s

final, eschatological disposition of every individual

person. The election of Jacob and not Esau does

not imply that every child of Esau is bound for

hell for all eternity and that every child of Jacob is

saved for eternity. That is not what this covenantal

history is all about. God’s

election of Abraham does

not imply that every person

outside Abraham’s blood-

line is condemned to inherit

God’s disfavor for all eter-

nity. Stanley Stowers offers

a helpful comment in this

regard:

Paul’s point [in Romans

9] is not that Ishmael and

Esau were damned. They

were not. Rather, Isaac and Jacob were made

instruments ‘so that God’s purpose of election

might continue’ (9:11).... Thus chapter 9 tells us

that one cannot find membership in a lineage by

works. Rather, God decides on the lines of de-

scent, and membership in the lineage comes by

birth.7

There is much about God’s election of covenant

partners that remains a mystery to us. Yet the

Scriptures are clear that God’s election of Israel

had in view other nations, the whole creation, and

God’s glory above all (see, for example, Is. 34-35

and Jer. 46-51).

In the wilderness after the Exodus and in the

promised land, Israel showed that despite God’s

special covenant with them, they too continued in

the line of sinful Adam and Noah. Part of the Sinai

covenant is God’s promised blessings and curses

of the chosen people, depending on how they re-

sponded to God’s will for them (Ex. Lev. 26:1-46;

Josh. 23:14-16; Ps. 50; 78; Is. 1:27-28; Jer. 16:10-

15; 17:5-8). After God’s judgment of Israel by the

Assyrians, only Judah and Benjamin were spared

for a time. In other words, even before the exile of

Judah, not all of Israel continued as “Israel”; God

kept only Judah and Benjamin in the land. Judah

was not all of Israel, nor was Israel all of humanity,

but each was chosen for the sake of God’s judging,

saving, and consummation of creation to reveal

the glory of God. Jews as a people of common de-

scent from Israel continue to bear witness to God’s

special covenant with Israel (as Paul emphasizes in

Romans 9:4-5). God’s covenant with Israel has not

been set aside, even with the curses carried out on

them; God’s judgments of disobedience are inher-

ent in the terms of the covenant.

The New Covenant is the

Eschatological Covenant

Again and again, God’s

faithfulness to the cov-

enants with Abraham on

through Israel at Sinai is

on display in the cutting off

of some and the saving of

a remnant in fulfillment of

God’s promises. Covenant

history unfolds histori-

cally under God’s protection and judgment, under

God’s blessings and curses, under the Lord of heav-

en and earth who is enthroned above. That is why

God’s covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

point in promise and hope to a consummation of

creation beyond this age and not limited to certain

future events in this age (see for example Is. 54-58).

God’s covenant with Israel continues to stand in

testimony to that which God has been doing and

will do in fulfillment of it. That covenant stands as

an anticipatory witness to the new covenant that

God will make with the houses of Israel and Judah.

The preview of that consummation is seen

throughout the Scripture. In a dream, Jacob caught

a glimpse of the divine throne room (Gen. 28:10-

22). When God met with Moses, the glory of the

Lord was so great that Moses was not allowed to

see God’s face (Ex. 33:12-23), and thereafter Moses

had to wear a veil in the presence of the people be-

cause his own face was so radiant (Ex. 34:29-35).

Even though God called Moses to lead Israel out of

Egypt and into the promised land, God did not al-

low Moses to enter the land. Moses saw it only from

a distance (Deut. 32:48-52). But what he saw and

had come to expect of God was more than what

the earthly promised land could ever offer (Heb.

3:1-6).8

Even in building the temple, which David

was not allowed to build, Solomon was aware that

From the seed of Abraham,

only Isaac is elected for God’s

covenantal line, but that does

not mean God’s covenant with

Abraham is abrogated when

Isaac is born or that all who are

not of Isaac are damned for all

eternity.

24 Pro Rege—March 2017

it could not truly contain God: “The heavens, even

the highest heaven, cannot contain you [Lord].

How much less this temple I have built” (I Kgs.

8:27). When the Lord blessed Solomon and prom-

ised to “establish your royal throne over Israel for-

ever, as I promised David your father when I said,

‘you shall never fail to have a man on the throne of

Israel’” (I Kgs. 9:5), we again hear the promise of an

eternity. But within several generations the kings

of both Israel and Judah are destroyed, and Israel

and then Judah are driven into exile. The reason for

God’s judgment against Israel was offered in God’s

very pledge to Solomon: “But if you or your sons

turn away from me and do not observe the com-

mandments and decrees I have given you and go

off to serve other gods and worship them, then I

will cut off Israel from the land I have given them

and will reject this temple I have consecrated for

my Name” (I Kgs. 9:6-7).

Nonetheless, God’s promise to restore a rem-

nant and to establish David’s kingdom forever still

rings out from the Psalms and the Prophets. God’s

ways are not our ways, and they reach beyond the

confines of our earthly generations and sense of

timing. It is not for us to know “the times or dates

the Father has set by his own authority” (Acts 1:7).

The future king that Solomon is to anticipate will

rule forever and will be more than any human king

could ever be: “He will endure as long as the sun,

as long as the moon, through all generations.... He

will rule from sea to sea and from the River to the

ends of the earth.... All kings will bow down to

him and all nations will serve him” (Ps. 72:5, 8,

11). Isaiah, called by God to announce judgment

on Israel, also holds out the vision and hope of an

heir of David who will save his people: “Of the in-

crease of his government and peace there will be no

end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his

kingdom, establishing and upholding it with jus-

tice and righteousness from that time on and forev-

er. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish

this” (Is. 9:7). In the midst of Jeremiah’s prophecies

of judgment on the nations, including Judah and

Jerusalem, the Lord swears on his “covenant with

creation” (Jer. 33:20), “I will fulfill the gracious

promise I made to the house of Israel and to the

house of Judah. ‘In those days and at that time I

will make a righteous Branch sprout from David’s

line; he will do what is just and right in the land.

In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem

will live in safety. This is the name by which it

will be called: the Lord Our Righteousness’” (Jer.

33:14-16). Just as God assured Abraham and Sarah,

who were well past the childbearing age, that they

would have a son (Gen. 18:10-14), so God can see

through and beyond the desolation of Israel and

the destruction of throne and temple all the way to

the fulfillment of covenant promises made long ago

to those chosen from among the nations.

It is abundantly clear from the New Testament

witness that God’s covenant in Christ is the new

covenant prophesied by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Yet

it is equally clear that the new covenant builds on

and fulfills the earlier ones; it does not discard them

at historical points in this age and leave them in

the past as no longer valid. Even after the coming

of Jesus and his death and resurrection, the end

has not yet come. Paul and the other apostles of

Christ Jesus—just like Abraham, Moses, David,

Solomon, Isaiah, and Jeremiah—saw with eyes of

faith something that is still not yet, something that

in its fullness transcends the time and scope of both

genealogical and historical possibilities and expec-

tations (see Heb. 11).

The revelation of Jesus as Israel’s Messiah, the

seed of Abraham through whom all nations will be

blessed, began with his incarnation, death, resur-

rection, and ascension. But the culminating full-

ness of God’s new covenant has not yet been dis-

closed. Jesus has not yet returned. The eschatologi-

cal fulfillment of the revelation of God’s glory is

still something we anticipate by faith. And all the

while, the testimony of God’s creation order, of the

rainbow sign to Noah, of God’s covenant promises

to Abraham, of God’s chosen people Israel, and of

the promise that David’s throne will endure for-

ever—the testimony of all of these—continues to

bear testimony to God’s covenant faithfulness that

is now reaching eschatological fulfillment in Christ

Jesus, until all is fulfilled.