17. Misuse of the Supper is assembling to detriment rather than benefit.

19. “Necessary,” dokimoi: Is Paul accepting the necessity of divisions, or is he using these terms ironically? Elsewhere in the context, dokimos refers to those who are proven covenantally faithful, e.g. v 28; contrast with 9.27, where Paul disciplines himself so that he does not become adokimos. But here he is surely ironic, as v 18 clearly implies that the divisions are a bad thing, and divisions are not necessary for the manifestation of proven faithfulness.

20. When you come together it is not to eat the Lord’s supper – implying that is the stated purpose of assembly. But that purpose is lost in the Corinthian situation, because they are treating it as “their own,” i.e. as an instrument to perpetuate division and class strife.

21. The food imbibed involved each bringing his own supper, thus highlighting the haves and have-nots. Cf the ironic dokimoi reference above. Here, the “approved” becomes the socially-approved and well-off rather than the covenantally faithful.

22. Do you not have houses? I.e. if you’re going to eat your own food and keep it for yourself, then do it in your own house. Or to you despise the church of God, and put to shame those having nothing? Clauses are parallel: to degrade the destitute is despite to God’s Church. Shall I praise you? I do not praise you in this. Again, carrying on the dokimos theme reintroduced in v 19, and related to the putting to shame mentioned in the previous sentence. Those seeking approval through flaunting their wealth and shaming the poor are in fact the ones demonstrating their own shame. (The statement also stands in contrast to the items for which Paul praised them earlier; cf v 2.)

23-25. Over against what the Corinthians are doing, Paul contrasts the institution of the Supper by the Lord.

24. Jesus took bread and broke it, saying this is My body, which is for you. The food was Himself, and thus the food was for sharing with His people. This do as My memorial – in Greek, a parallel to Lev 24.7 LXX, where the frankincense on the bread of the presence will be “for a memorial.” Cf Num 1010: ascension offerings (“burnt offerings”) and peace offerings will be a “memorial” of Israel before God. As with the rainbow sign, where God sees the rainbow and remembers His covenant promise to every living creature on the earth that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood, so here too memorials function to remind God of His covenant with His people and to act in terms of that covenant. This covenant is defined by Christ and His work (“My memorial”).

Thus the phrase usually translated “in remembrance of Me” is not primarily about remembering Christ and is certainly not focused on creating mental pictures of the anguish Christ went through on the cross. The memorial is a memorial before God primarily, but of course it also calls for a reciprocal covenantal response from His people – the covenant involves promise and demand. Thus when God’s people call upon Him to remember His covenant with them, they are implicitly recalling that covenant themselves – for better or worse.

In Exodus 2-3 (e.g. 2.24), God remembers Israel and His covenant with her, and delivers His oppressed people; thus the memorial background implies why the Corinthians’ coming together is detrimental rather than beneficial: God’s covenant relationship entails a vindication of the poor and oppressed, and as foretold by the prophets and echoed in Rom 10, those who call on Jesus will not be “put to shame” (cf the putting to shame of those who have nothing in v 22).

25. This cup is the new covenant in My blood. The covenantal overtones of the memorial become explicit and reinforce what Paul has already said and implied. Again backed up with: This do, as often as you drink, as My memorial.

26. For whenever you eat this bread and drink the cup, the death of the Lord you proclaim until He comes. As the “for” indicates, a memorial is a proclamation, a public act. As “My memorial,” this act is a public proclamation of Jesus’ death. In this death, the old creation has died (cf Gal 6.14), so that the Lord’s Supper itself pronounces judgment on the fleshly divisions the Corinthians are perpetuating in their very “celebration” of it.

27. So that whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, shall be liable for the body and the blood of the Lord. “Unworthily” is an adverb and refers to manner. It must be understood in context of the dokimos theme. Those eating in a manner which vitiates faithfulness are making themselves liable for the Lord’s death, because they are perpetuating the fleshly order which Christ’s death pronounces judgment upon. They are warring against Christ. This is why Paul says that the Corinthians are not eating the Lord’s Supper. To be sure, they were doing so in some formal sense, but their very manner of conducting it was waging war against the purpose of the death of Christ, of which the Supper is a proclamation and memorial.

28. But let a man prove himself, and thus from the bread let him eat and from the cup let him drink. The usual translation of “examine himself” is not quite to the point. The problem in Corinth was not a lack of self-evaluation. Rather it was that the Corinthians were abusing the covenant. The term used here is dokimazeto, and thus related to the recurring dok- theme of 9.27 and the sarcastic/ironic usage of 11.19. The sense is not “examine, and then eat;” the term is houtos, “in this way” and stands in contrast to the “unworthy manner” of eating referenced in the previous verse. Thus the point is that eating and drinking must be done on the memorial’s own terms and according to its own covenantal purposes. At issue is not the ability to engage in a certain level of self-aware reflection (as the anti-paedocommunion argument assumes); at issue is whether or not the Supper is being treated as the Lord’s memorial or as some “talismanic” act of the old creation or perhaps worse, as a transparent instrument for oppressing and shaming the poor.

29. The foregoing observations are underscored by the follow-through: For the one eating and drinking, judgment to himself eats and drinks [if he is] not discerning the body. “The body” here is the Church; the omission of “and blood” is intentional. In 10.16-17, Paul passes from the usage of “body” to refer to Christ’s own (physical resurrected) body to a usage referring to the Church (“participation in the body of Christ… we who are many are one body”), he does likewise here. In context, the Corinthians (or more particularly the wealthy and “approved” in the world’s terms) are dividing the body rather than discerning it. To discern the body entails accepting and embracing what Paul has said concerning it in 10.16-17: those who eat together are one body (cf Gal 3.28). Christ died to fashion for Himself one body, and to have divisions in the assembly, at the very memorial table, is a despite, not only to the poor but to Christ who died to include them in His new creation body. This opposition to Christ’s purposes is an invitation to judgment.

30. On account of this many among you are weak and ill and a number [even] sleep.

31. Now if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. Paul employs the middle voice of the verb used in v 29. Here we come a bit closer to the notion of self-examination so commonly linked to v 28, but even here the point is not about introspection, but engaging in a self-judgment that first of all evaluates one’s covenantal conduct at the table; i.e. the Corinthians should be judging their own practice of shaming Christ’s people, and this self-judgment will prevent them from being judged as in v 30.

32. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, in order that with the world we may not be condemned. Even the judgment of v 30 is not a final judgment; it is the Lord’s discipline aimed at bringing the sinners to repentance. Thus although the liability mentioned in v 27 is startling and serious, even so Christ employs temporal judgments in order to recover His people for Himself. Yet we should not look at this as a promise that temporal judgment automatically negates eternal condemnation, since Paul says that it is a discipline-in-order-that. That is, the destiny of such unfaithfulness genuinely is condemnation with the world, and discipline is a corrective aimed to avoid that “proper” outcome. Those who harden themselves against that discipline thus have no hope offered to them here.

33. Therefore, my brothers, in gathering together to eat, welcome one another. Given the context, the term probably means welcome, or receive, rather than the more usual “wait for,” unless underlying this is that the rich and self-sufficient were eating before the poor and slaves (who worked or worked longer) could arrive. But even that does not seem satisfactory, as Paul has said they were eating their own food rather than sharing. Thus it seems more likely that he is making a call to share if they are going to make a meal of this.

34. If anyone is hungry, in his home let him eat, so that you do not gather together for judgment. Probably implying that if someone is so hungry that he cannot be satisfied with the shared meal, the assembly is not the place for it.

Yesterday, William Hill of the online Covenant Radio did an interview with Venema on the subject. The audio is available here.

In turn, I’ve written this response. Enjoy.

Thank you for your question. I am glad to see that you are concerned to
follow the Bible in this way. I hope you don’t mind if I take a few
paragraphs to talk about this.

Paul mentions baptism which includes infants in 1 Corinthians 10.2. Of
course, he is referring to an Old Testament event, but as he continues, we
find that he says that the Red Sea and wilderness partaking of water from
the rock and manna were of the same pattern as baptism and the Lord’s
Supper. To be more precise: he uses the language of “tupos” in verses 6 and
11, which is more than “example;” it refers to a pattern or matrix. And this
pattern of Israel was set for “us” (new covenant believers, including
Gentiles), who partake of the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 10.16-22).

The overall context of the passage has to do with faithful living, and Paul’s
point is basically this: Just as Israel was baptized and ate and drank
spiritual food and drink, and yet came under judgment when they tested
Christ, so too with us who fit into the same pattern: we are the body marked
by baptism (see 1 Cor 12.12-13), and we eat and drink spiritual food and
drink, but we must not provoke the Lord to jealousy as Israel did, or we too
will be subject to judgment.

So Israel (including the little children) experienced baptism in the event
of the exodus.

Baptism started long ago, under the old covenant. In fact, Hebrews 9.10
refers to the washings in the Mosaic law as “various baptisms.” Under the
old covenant, in the case of males, circumcision was an entrance into
cleansing, which granted one access to the tabernacle (later, the temple).
(The case was slightly different for females; instead of circumcision -
which obviously belongs to males – they were cleansed through the
purification of their mothers. I can’t go into that here, but it’s based on
Leviticus 12.) That cleansing could be lost in various ways (e.g. sin, as
well as contact with “unclean” things such as dead bodies etc) but was
restored largely by way of these washings. Part of the point of the fact
that under the new covenant there is “one baptism” (Ephesians 4.5) is that
that complex structure of cleansing is no longer necessary under the new
covenant. Rather than circumcision plus baptism after baptism after baptism,
there is now only one baptism.

With regard to your question, the point is that this one washing (new
covenant baptism) does not do away with the infant participation that had
always been the case with old covenant cleansing. That’s why when Peter
preaches on Pentecost, he proclaims baptism in the terms already known. He
says, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ,
for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy
Spirit.” And he grounds that statement with this promise: “For the promise
is for you and *for your children* and for all who are far off – everyone
whom the Lord our God calls to Himself” (Acts 2.38-39). That is an echo of
Old Testament passages such as Genesis 17:7 (where God says, “I will
establish my covenant between Me and you and your offspring after you
throughout their generations”). Peter’s hearers, familiar with the way God
worked throughout the Old Testament Scriptures, would have understood
clearly that God was continuing to work under the new covenant in terms of
believers and their children, just as He did under the old.

It is to be noted that this way of God’s working is not only for people with
Israelite ancestry. Israel was never strictly about blood; Gentiles often
joined with Israel even under the old covenant. In particular, when Israel
left Egypt under Moses, they left as a “mixed multitude” (Exodus 12.38),
meaning that many of those people were not of ethnic Israel. In connection
with 1 Corinthians 10, which I mentioned above, it is also important to note
that shortly after the Exodus, the people in the wilderness were living as
Gentiles in many basic respects. There was no circumcision between the
exodus and the entrance into Canaan 40 years later (see Joshua 5.2-5), and
even Passover was only celebrated the first year after the exodus. (Males
could only participate in Passover if they were circumcised.)

So it is no accident that Paul draws a parallel between Israel’s experience
in the exodus and in the wilderness and the experience of the Gentiles in
Corinth. They were both baptized with water, and their “spiritual” food was
bread (Israel’s spiritual food would normally include meat; for example, the
Passover lamb). As I said, while in the wilderness Israel was functionally
Gentile in many basic respects; and the inclusion of a “mixed multitude”
then pointed forward to the great “mixed multitude” that has come into the
people of God since the Pentecost after Jesus’ ascension. God is the
covenant God of believers and their children, now in the new covenant for
Gentiles, just as much as under the old covenant with Israelites.

That’s why it’s no surprise when the New Testament says that a household
head was baptized along with his/her household (for example, Acts 16.15,
33). So in 1 Corinthians 7.14, Paul describes the children of believers as
“holy ones” – “saints,” whereas the children of unbelievers are “unclean.”
You see that the term “unclean” draws from that old covenant language,
referring to those not eligible to worship God at the tabernacle; the
children of believers, on the other hand, are those who are cleansed for
worship. Which fits completely with everything we have already seen
regarding baptism above.

I apologize if that seems like a rather long and complex answer, but the
Bible is a very rich book, and must be read in terms of its own story, not
in bits and pieces. So I hope that is of some help. I can refer you to an
online essay I wrote about infant baptism if you ever wish to read more:

http://www.biblicalstudiescenter.org/ecclesiology/infantbaptism.htm

In the face of a feminist culture, the Church struggles to respond in a biblical fashion. Of course, many virtually cave in to the surrounding ethos.

Others, however, resort to various levels of patriarchalism. Given the mess of our society, this can look quite attractive.

And I suppose that my own viewpoint would be considered patriarchalism of a sort, as well. It’s a tag I’ve been given by unbelieving folk, at any rate. I’m appalled by women who neglect their families for the sake of getting “fulfillment” through their careers, and by a great deal else that characterizes our culture. And on a more general level, I’m disturbed by women who talk like men, adopt manly mannerisms, and are offended if a man wishes to defer to them by opening a door.

Assumptions of Hyper-Patriarchalism

Still, there are some (to put it prejudicially) oddities out there on the “patriarchal” side of things – oddities frequently arising out of questionable assumptions or insufficient attention to biblical detail.

Along these lines are certain notions that women are always supposed to be under the familial headship of a man. (An article written a few years back by a single gal ran under the headline, “My Daddy Owns Me.”) Either a female belongs to her father, or she passes into the hands of her husband. Appeal is made to biblical examples where women are given in marriage by family arrangement, along with more general appeals to obedience of children to parents.

Biblical Culture vs Common Assumptions

Now, while I am very sympathetic to some form of the courtship model, and am a strong advocate of a return to biblical respect for authority, there are certain problems with the assumptions noted above.

First, the general call for obedience to parents is equally encumbent upon both male and female, and the overarching command is honour of one’s parents, which in the case of adults is not going to look like adolescent obedience. If an adult male is not under parental headship, it is not at all clear why an adult female must be.

Second, it is simply not the case that a woman was always under familial male headship – or was supposed to be. The obvious counterexample is that of widows. In certain circumstances (poverty was obviously a big reality for widows), a widow could return to her father’s household – but she didn’t have to. And as far as remarriage, Paul explicitly says she may marry whomever she will, only in the Lord (1 Cor 7.39). (As an aside, note that he doesn’t tell her to ask her pastor to be her surrogate father, whether for the sake of finding and evaluating a potential suitor or anything else.)

Third, the apparent parental control of marriage in Scripture is in fact more limited than is sometimes supposed. We aren’t told, for example, that Isaac had to marry Rebekah; and as for her part, she was asked whether she would go with the man sent to find Isaac a bride. In truth, she left when her family was dragging their heels. In any case, there are a variety of courtship models displayed in Scripture, and it is not quite convincing to appeal to the handful of so-called “arranged” marriages as the norm. (Funny how nobody in the patriarchal camp champions Ruth’s womanly pursuit of Boaz as normative. Any woman who makes the first move is obviously “unfeminine.”)

Moreover, girls in ancient Israel apparently married at an average age of 12-16 years old. Which means that they were never single adults at all. Hence it is no real surprise that they were under male headship until they become widows. The real question is whether the norms applied to adolescent females ought to be applied to grown women who happen to remain single. (Another question is whether old covenant norms on this matter ought to be applied across the board into the new covenant situation, given the new accent upon singleness in the Lord’s service; more on this below.)

Looking beyond such issues to matters of whether women should be active in the business of society (yes, that is sometimes questioned), it is to be observed that the godly wife of Proverbs 31 is not only industrious within her own four walls, but carries out a real estate transaction on her own, and deriving from that field she makes sufficient living to plant a vineyard (Prov 31.16). She markets her goods (31.24) and bestows help upon the poor (31.20). She is, in short, a very public figure, and makes many big decisions of her own accord.

Patriarchalism vs Single Service

Tying these two threads together, it is to be noted that the New Testament, in particular, places a high premium upon single servants of Christ (e.g. 1 Cor 7.32-35), both male and female. There is a sort of hyper-Protestantism that is almost embarrassed by this, and it is a reality that doesn’t fit all that well with the notions considered above. Phoebe, for instance, travels widely – all the way to Rome – as a “deacon” of the church at Cenchrea, near Corinth (Rom 16.1-2). Contrary to the apparent assumptions of some, an unmarried woman is not consigned to (caricature alert!) sitting inside Daddy’s house reading and doing needlepoint; it may well be that God has very special, and quite public, service marked out for her.

In an age of feminism, the Christian counter should not consist in running to the opposite extreme, but rather in seeking to understand the whole Scripture, and to be faithful to it in all its facets. The role of women in our times has become virtually interchangeable with men – or at least, that is what is attempted – but our response must not be reactionary. Over against most of the cultures which has surrounded the Church throughout history, our faith has been liberating for women, providing them avenues of service that would not have been thinkable outside the body of Christ. It is untrue that kneejerk patriarchalism returns us to more pristine Christian practice; rather, it is more a departure into the non-Christian realm altogether.

Of course, this is not the problem of most of the Western Church. On the whole, our biggest problem is individualism; and just as the antidote to feminism is not hyper-patriarchalism, neither is the antidote to hyper-patriarchalism anything like the disrespect of all authority – whether parental or otherwise – that so epitomizes our times, even in the Church. I want to make it clear that the frequent carelessness of Christian children regarding what their parents may think of their boyfriends, girlfriends, or fiances, is a blight upon them (and in many cases, a blight upon their parents, for failing to nurture respect, for failing to parent with any sort of gravitas), just as the wife “wearing the pants in the family” is a blight upon both husband and wife. But we should not cripple the God-given power of women simply because of the common usurpation of power He has not given.

Our standard, after all, is not 21st century individualistic culture, not feminism, not patriarchalism, but the Word of God Himself.

It is interesting to read this attempt at an alternative reading that will supposedly deflate the paedo case.

I have devoted an entire chapter to 1 Corinthians 11 in Feed My Lambs, as well as articles online, so I won’t explore all the facets here. But there are some pertinent things to say with regard to Clark’s post that I think I should address.

Note first of all that Clark frames things in a vertical versus horizontal/sociological cast. Now, this places a certain colour upon the discussion from the outset, since the implication is that the Church is simply a horizontally related body, an object of “mere sociology” (Clark’s own dismissive phrase).

But of course his opponents do not think that way at all. We believe, as Paul himself writes in the preceding chapter, that the bread and cup shared are our mutual participation in Christ Himself. The whole vertical/horizontal structure is suspect to begin with. While we clearly must distinguish Christ from His people, nonetheless Paul writes, the Church is Christ’s body, “the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Eph 1.22-23). To speak of a Church-oriented interpretation as having to do with “mere sociology” is an affront, not merely to paedocommunion advocates, but to the Church of the living God.

Second, Clark correctly, but nonetheless rather astonishingly, writes this: “In its nature, the Supper is Christ’s covenant with his people.” That is exactly right, and follows very nicely from the analogy to Genesis 17. But I say it is astonishing, because if this is the case, Clark’s anti-paedocommunion position entails the denial of the covenant to the children of believers, whether elect or non-elect, regenerate or not. In effect, the covenant is for adults, or at least, those old enough to profess faith to his satisfaction. This is not the Reformed position, and never has been.

Third, Clark attempts to isolate “what is signified and sealed” in the Supper as the point at issue with the reference to the body of the Lord in 11.29. He assumes that this is the logical course of interpretation, simply because the crucified body of Christ has been mentioned in the preceding. He writes,

If, in n v.24, “body” means “the risen, glorified, natural body of Christ,” then there is no reason for us to think that it now means “the congregation.” The meaning of “body” has already been established.

However, Clark overlooks the fact that in the preceding chapter, Paul has set all of this up in precisely the same way, and has no problem moving back and forth (in an even more abbreviated span) between the body of Christ which was crucified and raised, and the body of Christ, the Church (10.16-17). Thus there is a prima facie case to be made for understanding the “body” reference (sans mention of the blood) in 11.29 to have to do with the Church.

Nonetheless, what is even more significant is that I suspect most paedocommunion advocates do not interpret 1 Corinthians 11 as narrowly as Clark assumes; much less is it the case that we must interpret the passage in such a fashion for our position to “work.” In Feed My Lambs, I point out that no matter how strongly we interpret 1 Corinthians 11 as a whole – indeed, in its component parts, even to the point of adopting Clark’s “vertical” model as one aspect or at least application of the text – the chapter simply does not bar paedocommunion, because it stands wholly in accord with the long-established shape of God’s covenant and its rites.

This is why Paul lays the groundwork for the whole of 1 Cor 11.17-34 in chapter 10 (actually, the passage commences in 9.24ff), when he appeals precisely to the old covenant history. The judgment spoken of in 1 Cor 11 (most specifically and explicitly in 29-32, 34) is a live eschatological example, a realization of the set of judgments laid down in the matrix (tupos) fashioned in Israel’s history. That is the significance of the Pauline typology in 10.1-11.

The point once again is that Clark, as with anti-paedocommunion teachers generally, has avoided the sticky issue, which is simply this: Paul has placed the matters of judgment, of covenant-keeping, of (sacramental) memorial within the context of an existing covenantal structure – a structure which clearly welcomed children to the covenantal table and counted them as qualified participants. The old covenant too required “proving” (or, if you will, “self-examination,” in that sense), as I – again – showed clearly in my book, from numerous Old Testament passages (e.g. Isaiah 1.10-17; Amos 5.21ff). There is nothing new in this passage which all of a sudden changes the landscape and debars children. That can only arise out of a prejudiced reading of the text, a reading that demands a new standard of prerequisites for sacramental participation in the new covenant, and finds it only because it presupposes it.

To be sure, I recognize that on the face of it, my “nothing new” appears a rather extravagant claim. Ready to hand is the substance of Clark’s own discussion: the body and blood of Christ. I do not believe in an eternal incarnation or crucifixion; Christ became man – enfleshed and “enblooded” – at a given point in history. Indeed, those who have read much of my material regarding Paul and Torah will know that I tend to stress the progression of the covenant, the newness of the new covenant, more strongly than do many Reformed theologians.

However, it must be recognized that precisely at the point of the structure of the covenant relationship (the relational typology, if you will), and specifically in connection with the sacrament, Paul affirms continuity explicitly. That is the point of his citations in 1 Corinthians 10, both of Israel’s history and of the realities connected with the altar. By appealing to “our fathers” as “types” (1 Cor 10.6, 11) and connecting their experience to the new covenant sacraments (as he does by using baptismal and eucharistic language in 10.2-4), he reveals that he sees that history as providing a controlling matrix for our own.

In addition, it is to be noted that, while Christ was obviously not yet made flesh during the wilderness rebellions of which Paul speaks, and although he speaks apocalyptically regarding the Church’s place in covenant history (we are the ones “upon whom the ends of the ages have come,” 10.11), the apostle nonetheless does not shrink from saying that Israel drank from Christ Himself (10.4). Moreover, he adds that under the law, those who eat the sacrifices are partakers of the altar (10.18). If, therefore, it is suitable to understand 11.29 to be a call to discern the sacrificed Christ (a reading which remains highly debatable, but let’s grant it for the sake of argument), rather than as a reference to the Church, it is much plainer that the sort of discernment called for in chapter 11 was already required of Israel, both in her partaking of Christ in the wilderness, and in her participation in the sacrificial altar. In short, even if we take 1 Corinthians in the fashion Dr Clark suggests, we have nothing new in the relational typology. But that means that any inference which necessitates the barring of children from the sacramental table is illicit. If the same realities in the covenant’s relational structure did not bar children under the old covenant, neither do they bar them under the new.

To conclude: It is no accident that Clark says that the Supper in a real sense is the covenant. And the truth, whether wittingly or unwittingly, has come out: the entire logic of the anti-paedocommunion position is that the children of believers simply are not members of the covenant.

That is the inescapable tangle that the anti-paedocommunion position entails. If the table is, as Paul says clearly, the table of the body (1 Cor 10.17), then those denied the table are implicitly denied membership in the body.

What the opponents of paedocommunion must face is simply this: their position does not derive from 1 Corinthians 11. Paul’s own logic stands wholly in accord with the covenantal matrix to which he has appealed, and he provides not a whiff of a hint that he wishes to challenge or alter the longstanding covenantal inclusion of the children of believers. The anti-paedocommunion position remains, at its heart, a denial of the rightful place of believers’ children in God’s gracious covenant. It remains a claim that the covenant is really only for those who have reached a certain natural capacity, and that God’s covenantal grace is null, or at least severely restricted prior to that point. (If this is not a form of salvation by works, it is at least a form of salvation by native capacity.)

In short, the anti-paedocommunion position remains a denial of the very thing that it claims to guard: the Reformed faith. Much more importantly, it is a misuse of the biblical text and a denial of the norms Jesus Himself gave us: “Let the children come unto Me, and do not forbid them… for of such is the kingdom of God.”

As I’ve noted elsewhere, in the Gospels “the kingdom of God” is specifically a new covenant term, which is why, in Matthew 11.11, Jesus says that the least in the kingdom is greater than John. Thus, when Jesus says that “of such is the kingdom of God,” He is saying very clearly that new covenant membership belongs to believers’ children.

The new covenant table, therefore, does as well.

Nothing original for the blog, so here’s a bit of a piece I wrote in response to an English Baptist on a discussion forum. The overall topic was whether the Church is the new Israel, and whether old Israel was the Church. The gentleman I am responding to is focusing upon the issue of the Church not being the physical seed, which is all Israel was.

——————————————————————–

Both above and later, you’re assuming that the issue is physical vs spiritual. That is a subtle but fundamental misreading of Paul. The issue is flesh vs Spirit, which is very different, having to do with the contrast between two ages, not a contrast between two metaphysical principles.

The New Testament has absolutely no qualms about extending spiritual promises to the children of believers. Children are raised and nurtured in the Lord, not into the Lord; Peter bears witness to the new covenant gift of the Spirit at Pentecost by upholding the ancient principle that the promise is to his hearers’ children – a statement that makes sense only within the context of the ancient promises, characterized by the classic covenantal principle, “I will be God to you and to your children after you.” If Peter is not reinforcing that, he has zero reason to say such a thing; and if he believes what you do, he has every reason not to.

The hermeneutic I’m hearing from you is, at its basis, afflicted with at least a touch of dualism, because it assumes that man’s problem has to do with physicality. Everything is made to denigrate physical descent.

The Bible’s analysis of the situation is quite different.

Man’s problem is a fallenness that pervades man in every aspect of his being (not just the physical). And corresponding to that, redemption is not a sacrifice of the physical for the sake of the “spiritual” – far from it, the foundational Christian confession is the redemption of the body. If redemption cannot occur from the womb, then your system is tainted with an unbiblical dualism, and also makes redemption weaker than the fall. (In order to make up for this, generally a new doctrine called the age of accountability is created ex nihilo to save infants and young children. So one unbiblical error is “corrected” by creating another.)

When Jesus says of the littles ones that of such is the kingdom of heaven (Mt 19.13-14), He is speaking of children that have been brought to Him, and the term generally refers to infants and toddlers. Let me ask you this: Were they “of faith” or not? If not, then how can the kingdom of heaven – which is all about faith (cf Rom 14.17) – belong to such as them as its paradigmatic members?

Now, personally, I’m a bit ambivalent about saying that the Church = Israel. I think there are senses in which that is true, and senses in which it is not true. I would rather say that the Church belongs to the one company of the people of God that He began to gather from the beginning, and that the old covenant patriarchs are “our fathers” (1 Cor 10).

Strictly speaking, however, the Church was founded upon the apostles and prophets (Eph 2.20), and a building cannot be erected before its foundation is laid. This takes us back to what I mentioned at the beginning – the contrast between two ages that is fundamental to the whole structure of Paul’s thought. (Not to mention other NT books, not least John.)

The time before Christ produced real believers, but it is nonetheless the age of flesh (and outside of Christ, this is still the case). The new covenant is marked by the gift of the Spirit, and thus inaugurates a new aeon. Pentecost is thus the birth of the Church, although I would also insist that it is fundamentally wrong-headed to ignore the long gestation period that spanned over so many preceding centuries, and act as if this new work God does in the Church is (at best) tangentially related to what has gone before. Otherwise, it is nonsense to call Jesus “Christ,” meaning Messiah – nothing could be more intimately related with Israel’s whole purpose, identity and hope.

The point is that what we have at issue here is not whether the new covenant is spiritual, even in comparison to the old. Paul posits a spirituality for the new covenant that he does not grant to the old. But that emphatically does not mean that he sees no continuity, and precisely on the level of what I call relational typology.

First Corinthians 10 is a prime example of this, and of course Paul uses the tupos language explicitly in that passage twice. He speaks of the judgment of the Israelites in the wilderness and places the Corinthians (and even himself, in context; see 9.27) within that same typology. The wilderness episodes function as a warning to the Corinthians precisely because the covenantal structure is similar enough that there can be covenantal inclusion and participation in Christ, and yet have a fallout of apostasy and judgment.

In summary, it’s not so much that the Church is Israel (although again, there are senses in which that is true, and Paul says as much in Gal 6.16) as that the Church is Israel’s destiny, its goal, just as Christ is the telos of Torah (Rom 10.4). The Church is the one people of God for the new age of the Spirit, the people which God had in the works through the one long story of salvation that He began long before.

I’ve talked about this before (albeit some time ago), but this week I have occasion to preach a sermon on part of this chapter (3.14-21 is the Gospel for the Lenten readings), so I’ll offer a few scattered reflections.

When Jesus announces rebirth/birth from above by the Spirit, He is – surprisingly enough – announcing what He calls “earthly things” (3.12). Yet these “earthly things” are themselves a mystery even to Nicodemus, who is (shall we say) sympathetic. Why? Because he is not yet born from above, and therefore cannot even see the kingdom of God (3.3).

I’ve waffled back and forth over whether “see” there is simply synonymous to “enter” in 3.5, but I think it is more basic than that. John, after all, frequently comments on the matters of sight and blindness; similarly, Jesus as “the Light” is a major theme, including in this very discourse (vv 19ff). Those not born from above cannot so much as recognize the kingdom (cf 1 Cor 2.14).

I’ve earlier commented on the fact that being “born by water and the Spirit” refers to water baptism (with a first referent to John) and Pentecost. It is by these means that the kingdom has come, and it seems unforeseen and unintelligible, even to Nicodemus.

But this is no surprise: that born from the flesh is flesh; that born from the Spirit is s/Spirit (3.6). This is a redemptive-historical, and not simply an individual, statement. The best of the saints living at Christ’s arrival were “flesh”; the opportunity had not yet come to be “born from above.”

It is my opinion that verse 8 is one of the most radically misunderstood verses in the passage. It is usually read along these lines: “The wind blows and you can’t see its origin or its destiny, and the Spirit is the same way.” But that is not what Jesus says. There is no comparative in the verse (“just as… even so”), and neither is it likely that the wind is referenced at all. At most, it is a resonance (something akin to Ezekiel 37, where Spirit, breath and wind are interchangeable. (In Greek, pneuma refers to all three: Spirit, breath, and wind.) Moreover, 8b is not strictly about the Spirit, but about the one born from the Spirit.

Again, Jesus has already just been talking about the Spirit (3.6: “That which has been born from the flesh is flesh, and that which has been born from the Spirit is spirit”). Verse 8 can be literally rendered, “The Spirit ‘spirits’/blows where He wills, and His sound you hear, but you do not know whence He comes and where He goes: thus is everyone who has been born from the Spirit.” Verse 8 is not a comparison, but an explanation: this is how the Spirit acts, and thus this is how those born from the Spirit have their existence.

The inexplicability of the birth into the kingdom stands in contrast to those born from the flesh. The members of the kingdom will not, as it turns out, simply be all the members of Israel head for head. The kingdom arrives and doesn’t simply incorporate the whole nation. Instead, the Spirit chooses whom He will, and brings them to baptism, and ultimately, to Pentecost.

Thus far, Jesus says He has been speaking of “earthly things” (3.12), as we noted. But now He speaks of heavenly: the Son of Man who ascends and descends with reference to heaven (3.13). Thus even more mysterious than the unpredictability of the Spirit’s kingdom work is Jesus’ own identity. But if this is a reference to the eternal existence of the Son of Man (as the language of descent would seem to imply), it also seems to be bound up with one strange form of ascent, as Jesus commences to speak of the Son of Man being “lifted up” (on the cross), with the result of giving eternal life to those who believe in Him (3.14-5).

3.16 is, of course, the most well-known verse in the Bible. God thus loved “the world,” that He gave His only-begotten Son, so that every one who believes in Him should not be destroyed but have eternal life. John has a very strong “world” (kosmos) theme, and it begins already in 1.9-10: “That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him” (there’s our “unseeing” theme again!).

Incidentally – is v 9 speaking of Jesus giving light to “every man who comes into the world,” or is it referring to the light coming into the world, giving light to every man? [The Greek nominative neuter participle - from "light" - is the same in form as the masculine accusative - which would correspond to "every man."] The latter, I suggest, is the point; since it is Jesus who is spoken of throughout John as “coming into the world.” This is cinched by our passage in 3.19: “And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”

John’s use of “world” seems self-contradictory to us. For example, the world is something that was made through the Word (1.10) and which is the object of God’s love (3.16), and Jesus gives His life for the life of the world (6.51) – and yet elsewhere it is the world that hates Jesus and His disciples (7.7; 15.18-9; 16.20), cannot receive the Spirit (14.17), and is about to be judged (12.31). Are these simply two radically different ways of using the same term?

I think the answer is yes and no. Keep in mind that kosmos is an order-word (I’ll explain a bit in a moment). We must hold together at least three things here: 1) the creation of the kosmos; 2) the fallenness of the kosmos as it now is; 3) the concept of two ages. In John’s usage, it seems to me that kosmos refers to the ordered reality of the first age, including its people. This ordered reality is thus corrupt and corruptible (i.e. subject to weakness and death), sinful – and also comprised of the very people Jesus came to save. Thus the negative and positive uses of the term are not entirely antithetical but complementary within a global concept of two ages, two orders.

(There is considerable overlap here with the term flesh in Paul – and to some degree, in John as well, as here in 3.6. Even Paul can use the flesh-terminology in a positive sense corresponding to John’s world-language: Christ is of the seed of David “according to the flesh,” for instance [Rom 1.3].)

Jesus comes simultaneously to judge and to save the world – and this is so, quite apart from the issue of condemnation. (Actually, Jesus says He does not come to “judge” the world in that sense – 3.17; 12.47 – although such condemnation is a by-product of His arrival: those who do not believe are indeed condemned: 3.18-19.) This is because Jesus is the bringer of the kingdom – that is, a new order of things, a new age. For “the world” to be saved, it needs to meet its “judgment” in the cross (12.31). As the same verse notes, this “judgment” upon the world involves the “casting out” of the “ruler of this world.” In other words, the Satan can only have power to rule in the kosmos, not the kingdom. So the judgment of the world in Christ’s flesh (and I use that term in its fullest sense) amounts to the defeat of Satan: “the world” that believes in Christ passes from being kosmos and thus out of Satan’s dominion.

Anyway, we have now wandered a bit astray from John 3. Returning there, with regard to the earlier concept of “not seeing”: the point is that those who have not yet been born of the Spirit remain fully within the kosmos. As such, because they are fully in the first age, they cannot “see” the kingdom.

(Jesus will later tell His disciples that they are “not of the world” [e.g. 15.19], even though He has not yet died, nor has the Spirit come. That may seem a bit of an anomaly, but not really, since Jesus is present, and He also distinguishes between how the Spirit is present with the disciples, but will be in them [14.17]. Perhaps we might say that those who believe upon Christ prior to His death, resurrection, and Pentecost, have been given authority to become the sons of God, but have not yet entered fully into that sonship; cf 1.12.)

With regard to 3.16, however, we see God’s love for the world. He sends His Son to judge the world in His own self-giving death, which will in fact be life for the world. The judgment upon the world will be a sort of destruction (in Christ), but that will be the necessary abolition which provides the possibility of resurrection. Thus the only-begotten Son finds the “destruction” that those who believe in Him may not. (In 3.16, we usually translate the word perish, but less arcane language, it means destruction. Sometimes, abandoning an archaic term will help us hear something afresh.)

So, as John the Baptizer preached, the coming of the Son of Man into the world is judgment (“the axe is laid to the root of the trees” etc). And yet that judgment will not entail destruction for those who believe in the Son of Man. That is the good news of the kingdom, a kingdom which is entered by water and by the Spirit.

Well, that is enough for tonight. Perhaps there will be more to come; we’ll see.