The End of the Age? PART I

A common interpretation of the ages in Preterist thought is that there are two ages described by the New Testament: the old covenant age and the new covenant age. However, this isn't quite the case. It is also not accurate to talk about the "telos of the ages" as the idea that necessarily expresses that an age is over.

Let me briefly address the latter idea first, since I will deal with it at length in Part II. The New Testament knows nothing of an end of the ages in terms of their being over. It actually speaks of many ages, both in the past and future (the phrase translated as "forever" is literally "into the ages," implying that multiple ages exist in the future). We may speak of an age of the old covenant and the age of the new, but this is theological language, not that of the NT's use of the terms. The NT also uses the terminology to describe the current state of the world versus the eschaton (where two ages actually are used), so we'll look at those texts too.

WHAT IS THE OLD COVENANT?

The old covenant is not the moral law or the idea that God wants His people to do the good of the law; nor did God work one way in one age and now works differently in another in terms of how he saves people or what He requires of His people in terms of their character. I believe Christ is the fulfillment of the law, and as its fullest expression, it continues on through Him and in all of those who are in Him. Sacrifices are not done away with in the absolute sense. The individual sacrifices that foreshadowed and pictured Christ's sacrifice have been done away because they have seen their fulfillment in Christ's sacrifice. The Passover is not done away with. It has seen its fulfillment in Christ's sacrifice and the communion, etc. So these things have not been abolished, but fulfilled, and we fulfill them by being in Christ. So the idea of the external rituals of the law being done away with are talking about our need to perform them or have these visual aids in order for us to learn about the holiness required by God, how we are made clean, etc. These existed to bring us to Christ as their fulfillment. They are external pictures, the shadows cast by the substance, that are no longer necessary since the substance has now come.

So when the Scripture speaks of the old covenant which passes away, it is referring to our need to maintain the external pictures: the sacrifices, festivals, ritual purity laws concerning food and bodily fluids, the tabernacle/temple maintenance, etc. It is not saying that the law passes away. There is no Scripture that tells us the law passes away while this world stands. On the contrary, the law stands to this very day to judge all those who are outside of Christ. There is no fulfillment of the law for them except in their punishment for not having obeyed it and being directed to Christ by it. This constant confusion between the law and the old covenant has bred many a false doctrine.

What passes away is the old covenant in terms of the external display of the law that existed in using tablets of stone, a temple, altars, ritual washings, etc., since Christ has now come and fulfilled all of it. His human body is the temple, His people become the temple when joined to Him, His altar is the cross, the ritual washings are His blood, and our joining in His death is our baptism, etc. The new covenant is simply that Christ has fulfilled all of the law (all of the requirements of the law, including its penalty) so that the externals are not necessary, but rather God will place these things in His people through Christ by the indwelling of His Holy Spirit. "Written on the minds" instead of on tablets is the idea in Jeremiah. What is written is the same law. There is no talk of a new moral law. There is only talk of a change in terms of how the law is taught to us and how it becomes a part of us. The old law failed because it was in externals, like the tablets, which to us was a dead letter due to our sin nature, but the new covenant, i.e., the means by which God makes His people holy in their obedience to the good of the law, will be effectual because it is by the regeneration of the Spirit as He applies the work of Christ to us that becomes transforming (i.e., letter versus spirit).

What trips people up is that they think that the law was a vehicle for old covenant believers to be justified before God. This is never true. No one in the old or new covenant was ever justified by the law because the law condemns every man. Everyone is justified by his or her allegiance to God that placed the sacrifice of Christ as the means of their restoration and unification with the Lord. Good works were always the outworking of this faith allegiance, never the basis for unification.

Hence, all that to say that the two "ages" are not radical departures from one another. One merely brings the other to its goal, it's ultimate expression, i.e., what everything was leading up to. His people are, therefore, expected to not only not physically murder someone, but to not even degrade their fellow brother or sister in Christ. They are not only to refrain from physical adultery, but to desire someone else besides their spouse. The point being that God requires His people to do the law all the more, not less. There is no doing away of the law. There is only the bringing about of the law to its fullest expression. Christ fulfills the law perfectly for us as our federal head, as He does for the believers in the time of the old covenant. The difference, therefore, between the two, as Jeremiah lays out, is that one is only external, i.e., outside the covenant member, and the other is from the inside-out.

WHEN DID THE OLD COVENANT PASS AWAY?

Many people think that the old covenant and new covenant have some sort of transition period between them, where both are still standing together.  In a way, this is true, but not as many people think. The old covenant was actually passing away long before Christ came. It passed away at the cross. Once the cross takes place, as Jesus declared, "it is finished." The fulfillment of the law, the fulfillment of the old covenant, was all accomplished. It is done. There is nothing else to do but apply it to His people and the creation. The work of fulfilling it is accomplished right then and there at the cross. Hence, there is no more old covenant at that point. The new covenant has come in His blood. 

What many people have done is to misread Hebrews 8:13 as saying that the old covenant is about to disappear in Auctor's time. What he is actually saying is that Jeremiah indicated the old covenant was passing away and ready to disappear in Jeremiah's time. This is because Jeremiah was speaking to the exiles who would not have a tabernacle/temple, and be able to perform the sacrifices, and many of the needed rituals concerning the priests, etc., so God tells His people that He will keep His law among His people by placing it within them. This happens during and after the exile, and it foreshadows what Christ will ultimately do in His work. So the old covenant begins to pass away at the time of the exile. From that point on, it is close to disappearing, as the exile will be extended to the time of Christ, and the Messiah alone will be able to bring the covenant of externals to its fulfillment, so that His people, those who are in the One who has fulfilled it, are no longer obliged to keep it.

Auctor makes this clear by stating that Jeremiah's use of the word "new" implied that there was an old, and by implying that the old covenant was, in fact, old, Jeremiah was indicating that it was wearing out and getting ready to disappear, in his own day, as the means by which God placed the law among His people. 

This means that if we do divide these two up into "ages," which is not quite accurate, we must consider it an age where the old covenant externals were used versus the age when they have been fulfilled upon the cross. There is no transition period unless one considers the time from Jeremiah to Christ as the transitional period. This would make sense since Christ declares all food to be clean before He dies. This would only be true if the new covenant was already taking over; but the point is that there is no transitional period after the cross. Cultural customs remain and can be observed, including those having to do with the temple, but these are not a means to make God's people holy, whereas the old covenant and the new covenant are, the former being a failed means because it was meant to culminate in the new and the latter being an effectual one because it is the culmination of the old.

THE PURPOSE OF THE COVENANTS

This brings us to the final point of this entry, which is that the purpose of the covenants was to make God's people holy like God. It was to change their lives from ones that were selfish and unjust to righteous worshipers of YHWH. God frees the Israelites so that they would come worship Him at the mountain, and at the mountain, God gave them the law. The law is connected to worship. To become holy is to become like God in His righteousness/justice/doing what is right/good/creational. 

The old covenant failed at doing this because it existed as a bunch of external pictures that were meant to communicate from the outside what God's people were to look like and how they were to get there. It was meant, therefore, to look forward to Christ and His work; but as a means to make Israel holy without Christ's work, the covenant was rendered ineffectual (this was by God's design). Hence, as long as the old covenant merely represented the internal transformation brought about by the Spirit who applied the work of Christ back to His people during the old covenant, the covenant functioned as it should; but without Christ, the covenant became a dead letter that was incapable of making His people holy worshipers who were just/good/creational. Since only the new covenant could accomplish this, the old covenant was only the visible expression of the applied new covenant to come. Once the externals were wiped away in the exile and finally by the actually coming of the new in Christ's blood, they were superfulous, and shown to be what they were always meant to be, i.e., a shadow until the substance that cast the shadow had come.

This is why it is fine for Paul to circumcise Timothy and worship at the temple after the new covenant has come. These things are not means of sanctification. They are only cultural customs at that point that have no spiritual worth to them in and of themselves. But they are not forbidden because they are the old pictures of the God's covenant. It is not because there is some transition period, as though the old covenant was ever a means to becoming holy and some before A.D. 70 can somehow still use it  as a means to do so; but because they are cultural acts that allow Paul and Timothy to work among the Jews without shadows getting in the way of the substance, which is the gospel of Christ. Certainly, Paul and Timothy are not still practicing the old covenant, especially since he discourages the Galatians from doing so (even telling them they are damned if they do it for spiritual reasons) and does not allow Titus to be circumcised. It can only be seen as a pragmatic move on their part, and not as something that supports the idea that the old covenant is still in effect. 

CONCLUSION

With the understanding above, there is simply no indication in the New Testament that there is some transitional time between two covenant ages after the cross.

In PART II, we'll look at the verses that use "ages" terminology, as well as some lexicographical issues that are often ignored when interpreting the word.