How are we who live in the era after the incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascent of Jesus the Messiah to understand God’s revelation that preceded him? What effect, if any, does the revelation of God in Christ have on earlier revelation? In particular, how do we relate what God spoke through the prophets of old with what he spoke through the apostles of the new? The material in this book was first published in the Sound of Grace. It is a series of articles that addresses how we read the Old Testament Scriptures, especially books such as Deuteronomy and Leviticus with their multitude of laws and applications of those laws.

Twenty years ago, John Feinburg edited a collection of essays that explored this issue. Thirteen authors contributed to the book, which approached the idea of continuity and discontinuity through six basic categories: theological systems, hermeneutics, salvation, the law of God, the people of God, and kingdom promises. Feinburg’s opening comments are as appropriate for the beginning of the twenty-first century as they were for the end of the twentieth:

First, there is hardly an issue that is more fundamental to theology and OT and NT studies than this one.… The more one moves in the continuity direction, the more covenantal he becomes; and the more he moves in the discontinuity direction, the more dispensational he becomes.^[1]

Preachers will often say, “The Bible says what it means and means what it says.” Sometimes they say, “The Bible says it, I believe it, end of discussion.” That sounds very pious, and I am sure it is well intended, but neither statement helps us understand what Scripture actually means. The major problem is not in not knowing what the Bible says, but in understanding what it means. Anyone can read the Bible, as well as any other book, and know exactly what it says, but that does not mean they understand what it actually means. A woman once asked me a question about a topic, which I answered by asking her a question: “What does Scripture say?” She replied in exasperation, “Pastor, I know what it says, but I don’t know what it means.” 

God told Israel, in clear understandable language, to do certain things and to refrain from doing certain other things. We who live on this side of the cross have no problem understanding what we read when we read those texts. Our problem lies in knowing what those texts mean for God’s people who live AD. It seems as though much of what applied to ancient Israel no longer applies to God’s people today. How many of the clear and specific laws given to the nation of Israel should we keep today? How do we know which ones to keep and why?

I once met a young engineer who had been converted through reading a Gideon Bible. He did not know any evangelical Christians. He told his wife that they were going to read the Bible and obey everything it commanded. They started reading in Genesis, and by the time he and his wife got to the food and clothing laws, his wife said, “Either the Bible goes, or I go.” In the providence of God, the young man met a Christian at work and learned some things about the New Covenant. It saved both his confession of faith and his marriage.

If we adopt the epistemological premise that the Bible means exactly what it says, we face the same dilemma as that engineer faced. What do we do when we read Matthew 5:29, 30? “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.… And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away.…” (ESV). If you are honest about your sin and you “literally” obey the commandment, you will be blind and without hands in short order. Is this what Jesus wants from his people? Most Christians read this as figured speech—hyperbole—that Jesus uses to make a point about the seriousness of sin. Regardless of which side of the continuity/discontinuity issue a Christian falls, all agree that not every law, ceremony, and promise given to Israel is given to the church. The question is not whether or not some things remain and some cease; it is what rule of hermeneutics teaches us how to know which is which. The question is, “How do I know what continues from the Old into the New and what stops, and just as important, how do I know why it continues or stops in each case?”

We cannot discuss a subject well unless we have first defined it. In this discussion, we need to know how we are using the terms old and new. Scripture states that something old has passed away and been replaced with something new. But what does that mean? Is the old that passed away the Old Testament Scriptures and the new that replaces it the New Testament Scriptures? The answer is no. We do not have one Bible—the Old Testament Scriptures—for Israel and a different Bible—the New Testament Scriptures—for the church. Christians have one Bible with sixty-six equally inspired books. Every jot and title of the Old Testament Scripture is still a part of our Bible.

Is the old that discontinues the Old Covenant? The answer is yes. We then ask, “How much of the Old Covenant is brought into the New Covenant?” The answer is, “None of it is brought over as covenant law.” The New Covenant has different terms than the Old Covenant has; thus, the Old Covenant, viewed as covenant terms, completely ends, along with everything it brought into being. There is total 100% discontinuity of the Old Covenant even as there is, at the same time, 100% continuity of the Old Testament Scripture. It is imperative that we understand that the words Old Covenant and the words Old Testament do not mean the same thing.

Our study involves, among other things, specific laws and practices given to Israel that concerned the Sabbath, tithing, polygamy, and other such things. Do the laws in the Pentateuch govern the life of a Christian in the same sense that they governed an Israelite? Does “one law fit all?” The answer is no.

Some theologians divide the law of Moses into three codes of laws: a moral code (by which they mean the Ten Commandments), a ceremonial code, and a judicial code. In this interpretive scheme, there is continuity in the moral code. It remains in its entirety. Within this same scheme, the ceremonial and judicial codes end. There is discontinuity in these two codes. The law of Moses then constricts to just the moral code. For those who adopt this scheme—Covenant Theology—the Ten Commandments written on the tables of the covenant are the “unchanging moral law of God.” The law of Moses (newly defined) is the highest law ever given. 

We should note that the issue of continuity and discontinuity affects not only morals and the Ten Commandments. Is tithing a covenantal duty for a Christian? Are the covenantal land promises made to Abraham and his seed in effect today? If so, how are we to define his seed? Answering these questions involves continuity and discontinuity.

Thus far, we have defined two terms and established three points:

1. The old that is done away IS NOT the Old Testament Scriptures.
2. The old that is done away IS the Old Covenant.
3. These two things ARE NOT the same things.

It is essential that we not do confuse Old Covenant with Old Testament and New Covenant with New Testament. Linguistically, the words covenant and testament mean the same thing. Literarily, however, the term testament, as we use it in the context of the Bible, refers to a collection of books. Furthermore, when we add the words new and old to either term, we create phrases that mean something entirely different.

The phrases, Old and New Testament, as commonly used today, have no biblical basis. Most translations of the biblical text do not contain either phrase. The KJV uses “Old Testament” one time (2 Cor. 3:14) and uses “New Testament” fourteen times. The NIV never uses either phrase. In every case where the KJV uses testament, the NIV uses covenant.

Conflating the literary use and the linguistic use of the terms Old Covenant/Old Testament and New Covenant/New Testament creates problems for understanding what the Bible means. The phrases “Old and New Testament” describe a humanly-devised division in our Bible. It is purely a literary term—convenient, but not inspired. The title page of older printings of the Bible read thusly: The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments. The Table of Contents page of a modern NIV Bible marks the division in this way: 

Contents

The Books of The Old Testament

The Books of The New Testament

It is too late in history to stop using the term Old Testament to refer to the thirty-nine books of the Bible written before Christ came. The usage is too firmly established, even though no writer of Scripture ever referred to those books as The Old Testament. To avoid confusion in our thinking and in our discussions, we should call those texts the books written before Christ came. In the same way, we should refer to the last twenty-seven books of the Bible as the books written after Christ came. Precise terminology might eliminate the problem that surfaces when we start talking about the annulment of the Old Covenant and its replacement by a New Covenant. If, in our thinking, the phrases Old and New Testaments and Old and New Covenants mean the same thing, then when someone states that the Old Covenant has been abolished, we will understand them to mean that the Old Testament Scriptures have been abolished. 

Within what is called the Old Testament—the thirty-nine books of the Bible written before Christ came—there is a specific Old Covenant, established at Mount Sinai with the nation of Israel. That Old Covenant has been completely abrogated—ended—done away with—and replaced with a new and better covenant. The Old Testament—the Scriptures written before Christ came—has not been disestablished in any sense.

We have built upon our definitions and earlier points to establish two points about continuity and discontinuity:

1. The biblical Old Covenant is completely rescinded. If we are discussing covenants, we find complete discontinuity between the Old Covenant and the New. 
2. The literary segment of the Bible we call the Old Testament remains intact. If we are discussing the Old Testament Scriptures, we find that all of them continue as inspired Scripture. We have complete continuity regarding status as Scripture between the Old Testament and the New.

The thirty-nine books of the Old Testament Scriptures were, are, and always will be an equal and essential part of the inspired word of God. Thus, they are part of a Christian’s rule of life: they are useful for training in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16). The fact that we must interpret the Old Testament Scriptures through the lens of the New Testament Scriptures in no way makes these Old Testament Scriptures any less an inspired part of our Bible. We have one verbally inspired Bible that has sixty-six books. I try to remember never to say Old Testament without adding the word Scriptures, and I never refer to those thirty-nine books as the Old Covenant.

We need to fix seven points firmly in our minds as we discuss the topic of continuity and discontinuity.

One: Old Testament refers to the Scriptures written before Christ came. The Old Covenant refers to the covenant that God made with Israel at Sinai. The first remains; the second is gone. The first is in complete continuity, and the second is in complete discontinuity. Do not confuse God’s eternal purpose in sovereign grace to save his one elect people with a theological, but unbiblical, Covenant of Grace. We believe the former and reject the latter. The biblical authors identify the Old Covenant as the covenant that originated at Sinai.

Two: The Old Covenant was given only to Israel; it was not for the Gentiles. It established Israel as a nation, a body politic. It included a land grant, a system of government, and regulations for worship. The Israelites had always been the children of Abraham, but they had not been a nation—a body politic—until they entered into a special covenantal relationship with God at Sinai.

Three: Everything established by the Old Covenant ended when Messiah came. It ended because it was fulfilled.

Four: Nearly all components of the Old Covenant (the priesthood, the Passover, the Sabbath, the people, the land, and other such things) were described by the biblical authors as being eternal, or lasting forever. The way in which these things were everlasting or eternal was that they found their fulfillment in Christ and the New Covenant age.

Five: Dispensationalism insists that the promises concerning the nation of Israel and the land of Palestine are eternal and unchangeable. Therefore, those promises are still in force. They see complete continuity in the land promise to Israel but complete discontinuity in the law.

Six: Covenant Theology posits total continuity between Israel—the Jewish church—and the Christian church. They also see total continuity in the law—“the commonly called moral law”—which enables them to bring the Ten Commandments, including the Sabbath, into the covenant with the church.

Seven: Everything that is totally new in the New Covenant was prophesied in the Old Testament as coming in the age of the Messiah. We do not start at square one with Matthew. We begin with Genesis 1:1.

Feinburg called this issue fundamental to theology and to testamental studies. Why is the topic of continuity and discontinuity an issue—why is it so difficult? One reason is that continuity is so wedded to Covenant Theology, and Covenant Theology is a major systematic theology. It is impossible to discuss biblical continuity and discontinuity without discussing Covenant Theology and vice versa. The presupposition of the category moral law in Covenant Theology clouds any discussion of the law of God or of the covenants that God has made with human beings. Let me give you two illustrations. First, a quotation from the Westminster Confession of Faith:

A. “Besides this law, [meaning the Ten Commandments] commonly called moral…”^[2]

That is how Covenant Theology accomplishes continuity between covenants. They adopt as a fact a theological term, moral law, which has no exegetical basis in the Scriptures, and then state, without supporting textual evidence, that this term is interchangeable with the term Ten Commandments. Since the phrase, the Ten Commandments, is a biblical term, it is legitimate to use its equivalent term, moral law, as though it were also a biblical term. The concept of the term Ten Commandments being “commonly called the moral law” effectively takes the discussion of the law of God out of the realm of biblical exegesis and puts it into the realm of logic and systematic theology.

Here is another illustration:

B. “Man by his fall having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the Covenant of Grace.”^[3]

Again, we find that Covenant Theology has created an extra-biblical term and granted it authority through consensus (the appeal to “commonly called”). They link the new term, Covenant of Grace, to the word of God, thus granting it the status of a biblical term. No writer of Scripture ever used either of these terms, moral law or Covenant of Grace. One wonders, then, who did commonly use these terms, and why those users were accorded such authority. What the Confession actually means is this: “The idea of a Covenant of Grace and an unchanging moral law is how we make sense of the Bible. Therefore, it is essential to our system of theology. We have no actual textual evidence for either of these ideas, but both terms are widely accepted and used in theological discussion.”

The concept of a Covenant of Grace offers support for certain practices that have no explicit biblical warrant, such as infant baptism. Why does anyone believe that God requires that his people practice infant baptism? John Murray gives the standard answer. Notice the centrality of the word continuity in his argument:

The crucial issue concerns the baptism of infants, and on this Baptists offer vigorous dissent. The argument in support of infant baptism is based upon the essential unity and continuity of the covenant of grace…

…the conclusion derived from the unity and continuity of the covenant of grace is that the same privilege belongs to the infant seed of believers under the new covenant…. These considerations [the “commonly called” declarations] are the ground for the propriety and validity of infant baptism.^[4]

Murray frankly admits that the grounding for infant baptism is (1) a theological term, the commonly called Covenant of Grace, which we know is never called that in Scripture, and (2) the unqualified continuity of that covenant throughout all ages. If we ask a Covenant Theologian if there is a specific Bible verse that commands infant baptism, they will answer no. If we ask if there is a specific Scripture verse containing a clear example of an infant being baptized, again the answer will be no. The Covenant Theologian will then offer a series of statements, supported by the concepts of continuity and good and necessary consequences, which is supposed to prove that there is one unchanging redeemed people of God under one single Covenant of Grace. This system teaches, again with no textual evidence, that baptism has replaced circumcision as the sign of that one covenant. Since the covenant is the same for Israel and for the church, and since infants (but only the boys) were marked with the covenant sign, then it is the responsibility of Baptists to show in the New Testament Scriptures where God commands us to stop marking infants (and now including girls) with the covenant sign, which has been changed from circumcision to baptism. The logic is beautiful. The premises upon which the conclusion rests are unbiblical, but the argument is still beautiful.

Charles Hodge makes an amazing admission in his Systematic Theology that demonstrates the importance of the concept of covenantal continuity when discussing infant baptism. 

The difficulty on this subject is that baptism from its very nature involves a profession of faith; it is the way in which by the ordinance of Christ, He is to be confessed before men; but infants are incapable of making such a confession; therefore they are not the proper subjects of baptism. Or, to state the matter in another form: the sacraments belong to the members of the Church; but the Church is the company of believers; infants cannot exercise faith, therefore they are not members of the Church, and consequently ought not be baptized. [JGR: This is not my criticism of infant baptism; this is Charles Hodge’s clear and frank admission. It seems as though he has no valid grounds for infant baptism. Consider, then, his next statement.]

In order to justify the baptism of infants, we must attain and authenticate such an idea of the church as that it shall include the children of believing parents. 

Hodge and his pedobaptist brethren invented a doctrine of the church that included infants as bona fide members. Here are “good and necessary consequences deduced,” not from Scripture, but from theology. The grounding for infant baptism is the continuity of the one people of God, in which Israel is the church.^[5]

Hodge then argues, “It is not the purpose of God that the visible church on earth should consist exclusively of true believers.” It is true that we can never guarantee that everyone in any local assembly is a true believer. Human beings cannot know about the experiences of any other human beings. We accept what they tell us unless we have evidence to the contrary. But Hodge equates the circumstance of a local assembly that knowingly receives unsaved people into membership with the circumstance of a local church that is deceived by a hypocrite with a false profession.

The WCF contains more examples of theology derived from the concept of covenantal continuity. G. I. Williamson, commenting on Chapter 19 of the WCF, discusses the liberty that a Christian has when compared to an Old Covenant believer. Note how his argument depends on the idea of covenantal continuity.

There is an increased degree of liberty belonging to the New Testament believer. But this increase of liberty is due to the abrogation of the ceremonial law (which was borne by the Old Testament believer and not the New Testament) and not because of any essential difference in their deliverance from the moral law, [JGR: there must be continuity of the moral law] from sin, or death.^[6]

Compare this with a quotation from John Stott on Galatians 5:1.

This freedom, as the whole epistle and this context makes plain, is not primarily a freedom from sin, but rather a freedom from the law. What Christ has done in liberating us, according to Paul’s emphasis here, is not so much to set our will free from the bondage of sin as to set our conscience free from the guilt of sin. The Christian freedom he describes is freedom of conscience, freedom from the tyranny of the law, the dreadful struggle to keep the law, with a view of winning the favour of God. It is the freedom of acceptance with God and of access to God through Christ.

Since ‘Christ has set us free’ and that ‘for freedom,’ we must ‘stand fast’ in it and not ‘submit again to a yoke of slavery.’ In other words, we are to enjoy the glorious liberty of conscience which Christ has brought us by His forgiveness. We must not lapse into the idea that we have to win our acceptance with God by our own obedience. The picture seems to be of an ox bowed down by a heavy yoke. Once it has been freed from this crushing yoke, it is able to stand erect again (cf. Lev. 26:13).

It is just so in the Christian life. At one time we were under the yoke of the law, burdened by its demands which we could not meet and by its fearful condemnation because of our disobedience. But Christ met the demands of the law for us. He died for our disobedience and thus bore our condemnation in our place. He has ‘redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us’ (3:13). And now He has struck the yoke from our shoulder and set us free to stand upright. How then can we dream of putting ourselves under the law again and submitting to its cruel yoke?^[7]

The great freedom of the New Covenant is freedom of conscience that gives boldness to approach the throne of grace (Heb. 4:14-16; 10:1-22). If Williamson is correct, then Christ’s atoning work purchased for us the great liberty that allows us to eat bacon with our eggs—to be free from the ceremonial law. Williamson is correctly expressing the doctrine of the WCF. The following quotation from the WCF is a classic example of the way in which the concept of covenantal continuity denies the reality of the unique blessings of the New Covenant.

The liberty which Christ hath purchased for believers under the gospel consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin, the condemning wrath of God, the curse of the moral law; and in their being delivered from this present evil world, bondage to Satan, and dominion of sin, from the evil of afflictions, the sting of death, the victory of the grave, and everlasting damnation; as also in their free access to God, and their yielding obedience unto him, not out of slavish fear, but a child-like love and willing mind.

I can hear some folks saying, “John, I hope you are not going to criticize that part of the WCF! That is exactly what I believe.” It is also what I believe. I agree with it. However, the next line takes away what it has just granted:

All which were common also to believers under the law; but under the New Testament the liberty of Christians is further enlarged in their freedom from the yoke of the ceremonial law, to which the Jewish Church was subjected; and in greater boldness of access to the throne of grace, and in fuller communications of the free Spirit of God, than believers under the law did ordinarily partake of.^[8]

When we think about Old Covenant believers, we must avoid making two mistakes: One, we must not treat the Old Covenant believer as if he sat in his tent and read the WCF. Two, we must not treat the Old Covenant believer as if he sat in his tent studying the notes in the Scofield Reference Bible. To do either is to treat the Old Covenant believer anachronistically.

In the section quoted above, the Confession is biblical until it describes the state of the Old Covenant believer. The Confession then eradicates the heart of the New Covenant. Covenantal continuity demands that the Old Covenant believer experiences the same blessings that the New Covenant believer does, including access into God’s presence in the Most Holy Place. Notice what Hebrews 9:7-8 says.

7 But into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people.

8 The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing.

According to the author of Hebrews, the veil that closed off the Most Holy Place actually closed it off completely. It was not opened just a little bit during the Old Covenant era and then opened a bit wider in the New Covenant era. The “new and living way” was not opened at all until Christ offered his all-sufficient sacrifice. The WCF and Hebrews 9:8 and 10:19, 20 contradict each other on this point.

Look at John MacArthur’s comments on this subject as it is addressed in Hebrews 6:8.

One of the key theological themes in Hebrews is that all believers now have direct access to God under the New Covenant and, therefore, may approach the throne of God boldly (4:16; 10:22). One’s hope is in the very presence of God, into which he follows the Savior (6:19, 20; 10:19, 20). The primary teaching symbolized by the tabernacle service was that believers under the covenant of law did not have direct access to the presence of God (9:8), but were shut out of the Holy of Holies. The book of Hebrews may be summarized in this way: Believers in Jesus Christ, as God’s perfect sacrifice for sin, have the perfect High-Priest through whose ministry everything is new and better than under the covenant of law. ^[9]

As already noted, the words “commonly called” and the phrase “one covenant with two administrations” takes the discussion of continuity and discontinuity out the realm of biblical exegesis and moves it into the realm of logic and systematic theology. In Covenant Theology, the two administrations of the one Covenant of Grace do not differ in substance (See WCF, Chapter 7, Section 6). In reality, the Covenant Theologian does not have a real and true New Covenant. He has an older and a newer version of one and the same single Covenant of Grace.

All of this leads to certain important conclusions. (1) Upon the basis of this one covenant, there is one true Church extending through all ages (Acts 7:38, Eph. 2:11-20; Rom. 11, etc.) ^[10]

A covenant new in nature and substance is not possible in Covenant Theology. There must be covenantal continuity—a continuity of the single Covenant of Grace that exists in all ages for all people. Yet, the very term “New Covenant” necessitates discontinuity. You cannot have an Old Covenant replaced by a New Covenant without having discontinuity. Replacement entails discontinuity. This is why Covenant Theology cannot accept the two biblical covenants (the Old Covenant made at Sinai and the New Covenant established by Christ, Heb. 8:6-13 and Gal. 4:24, 25) as the two major covenants around which the bulk of Scripture is built. Covenant Theology adopts two non-biblical, theological covenants; a Covenant of Works with Adam before he fell and a Covenant of Grace with Adam after he fell, as the two major biblical covenants. They proof text their view with Gen. 2:17 and Gen. 3:15 despite the fact that neither text mentions or implies a covenant. In so doing, they have disowned the New Covenant as a true new and different covenant. Its status is reduced to merely a new administration of a previous covenant. 

In the next chapter, we will look at several key texts of Scripture that have a direct bearing on the subject of continuity/discontinuity.

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