Infinite Room – 1
Beyond Binary
“In my Father’s house are many mansions…”
There are various covenants in the Bible, just as there are in human life. Covenants are the way God does things.
He calls a representative,
…..delegates His authority,
……….gives the mission,
……………allows time for it
……….to be accomplished,
…..assesses the outcome
and throws a party.
If the outcome is good, the delegate and his mission subjects are invited to the feast. If the outcome is bad, the delegated head and his corrupt body are the meat on the table. And the Holy Ones rejoice over their doom. There is always an outcome, a reckoning, a succession, an “offspring.”
A Working Relationship
Covenants are thus “working” relationships. There is no permanent rest in this life because life is covenantal. It is a job. Covenant is an opportunity to relate to God either positively or negatively. Neutrality is impossible. Doug Wilson writes:
“…The claims of Christ are therefore total. There is no way to read through the New Testament and miss this. The claims of Christ are total. He is the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. He has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, and over any creature that can be named. Christ is King. Jesus is Lord. This is the basic Christian confession (Romans 10:9-10). And here, if you are not with Him, you are therefore against Him. There is no spiritual equivalent of Switzerland. In the cosmic war between light and darkness, there are no neutral parties, and there is no third way. There are only two activities in every realm of human existence, and those two activities are obedient gathering and disobedient scattering. Only two.” [1]
This New Covenant is the Adamic Covenant transfigured. The Great Commission is the Adamic Commission transfigured. Flesh has become Spirit. The very act of being human is a Covenant within which we live and move and have our being. We are never outside of a Covenant. James Jordan writes:
“…human beings can never be covenantally neutral before God. Some would say that human beings are, by nature, outside of any covenant with God. Then God enters into covenants or contracts with people, such as the covenant of works or the covenant of grace, or the various specific covenants in Bible history. I maintained that this conception does not go far enough. Human beings, the images of God, are by nature covenantally related to God. Some would say that human beings are always in covenant with God, but which covenant they are in varies from time to time. We can never be outside of a covenant, but there are various covenants. This notion I also rejected. There is but One Covenant, which is the intra-trinitarian life of God. Human beings were created already woven into that life as “junior partners.” Human beings would mature in the covenant from being apprentices to being journeymen, but God would always be the Master. Thus, I taught, human beings are always related to this One Covenant. They may become negatively related to it through sin, in which case they feel the anger of God and the curse of the One Covenant, but they never escape the Covenant. To be a human being is to be in covenant with God, one way or another. Also, our covenantal relationship with God may mature and go through various stages and phases, but it is always the same One Covenant. The New Covenant, I argued, is the Adamic Covenant completed through transfiguration.” [2]
All biblical Covenants image the Trinity. The Father is the Covenant Lord…
F A T H E R > S O N
…and the Son His willing vassal, the One in Whom He is pleased.
F A T H E R < S O N
This presupposes a binary foundation for reality, and yet God is Triune. What is the Covenantal work of the Third Person?
The Holy Place
The Trinity is the ultimate Covenant within which we live and move and have our being. The Son is the perfect image of the Father, and the Spirit is the to and fro between them. The Spirit is both the initiating Word from the Father, and the evidence of the “Covenant faithfulness” response of the Son. This “place between,” created by initiation and reflection, is an infinite room.
F A T H E R > S P I R I T < S O N
This relationship is echoed throughout the Creation at many levels. In fact, it was the means of Creation.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
Despite modern cosmology’s view that the position of the earth is entirely random, the heavens and the earth are in a binary Covenantal relationship. Like Israel, there is nothing in the earth (the Covenantal “Land”) of itself that makes it worthy of “esteem.” What makes it special is the irrevocable Covenant call of God. Heaven speaks, earth submits and brings forth fruit. The search for extraterrestrial life is futile. No other world is in Covenant with God. (Not yet anyway. Jordan thinks postmillennialism includes such an expanded dominion of the New Adam.) The Spirit was between — hovering, vibrating, fluttering — over the waters. Word creates an open place and obedience fills it. The Spirit is in operation in both these directions, mediating to and fro. The Holy Place in the Tabernacle was the place between. It was a place of blood presented (the Table) and fruitful fire (the “almond tree” burning bush of the Lampstand).
The Third Person
Like the white stone and black stone in the pouch on the breastplate of the High Priest, all history is binary in Word. But our obedience or disobedience within this “working relationship” has an outcome. The outcome, the fruit, makes the relationship triune. Whether positively (blessing) or negatively (cursing), we are always within a Covenant as mediators between heaven and earth. [4] So, of necessity, there are two kinds of spirit with which we may be filled. James tells us to test the spirits of those who claim to be in relationship with God to see whether they are truly of God. The identity of this “third person” is the evidence of the nature of the relationship. We are known — either vindicated or exposed — by our fruits, our outcomes.
“But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” (James 3:17)
We see this to and fro in the Bible Matrix as the Covenant “Ethics” become Ascension – Testing – Maturity. From Father to Son it is Law-Word. From Son to Father it is Obedience. For the Father is it Pleasure. It is Priestly Sword, Holy Fire, Fragrant Smoke. The Holy Place was also a place filled with fragrant smoke from the Incense Altar. The Word divides to create a bloody Holy Place and the Obedience of the Son fills it with delight. The obedience of the Son is a “soothing aroma,” but as this takes on flesh in history, the “smoke” represents the Bride, the mother of all the living. This fruitfulness, the fullness of the Spirit, the evidence of the “Covenant faithfulness” of the Son — is a Third Person. The Third Person is the Spirit’s identity and the Spirit’s work. _____________________________________________________
[1] Doug Wilson, The Politics of Sodomy
[2] James B. Jordan, An Introduction to the Seven-fold Covenant Model, with Notes on the Five-fold Covenant Model, Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper No. 29. Available from www.biblicalhorizons.com
[3] See God’s Gamble.
[4] This has implications for theistic evolution. See Hugh Ross and a Shotgun.
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