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in him. In Christ, the old covenant is not merely confirmed, extended, or intensified (even though it is all of those things); rather in him, we now see more clearly where it pointed and how it has now come to fulfillment in him. 5. The implication of this, then, is that the entire Bible, including the OT, including the old covenant, must be viewed, read, and applied in light of Christ and the new covenant. This includes the 10 commandments and the entire old covenant law. So, whether we are reading about food laws, circumcision, the year of Jubilee, sexual ethics, and so on, we must ask how those instructions and demands function under the old covenant and how they are brought to fulfillment in Christ. Furthermore, we must ask in what ways each of those demands is grounded in creation, takes into consideration the fall, functions in their redemptive-historical location, and ultimately find their telos and terminus in Christ. It is only when we do this that we learn how to apply “the whole counsel of God” to our lives, as new covenant believers, living between the first and second advent of our Lord Jesus. The end result of this procedure will not be as some charge, a form of antinomianism, rather it will be a consistent application of God’s entire revelation to our lives, which, in the end, leads to a
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greater demand upon us as God’s new covenant people, born of the Spirit and united to Christ. In your book with Peter Gentry, Kingdom through Covenant, you title your view “Progressive Covenantalism.” For those interested in picking up your book, would you briefly explain how your position views the new covenant in a way that is different from covenant theology and dispensational theology? Let me first answer this question by describing the term, “progressive covenantalism” and then setting it over against covenant and dispensational theology. Obviously all three positions agree on more than we disagree as those who are committed to historic, biblical Christianity. Sometimes our differences are so highlighted that we forget where we agree in matters related to the gospel. But with that said, throughout the ages, Christians have disagreed over some of the specifics of how to “put together” their Bibles, specifically in how the biblical covenants unfold and relate to each other, and this has led to covenant and dispensational theology as two major biblical-theological systems. Let me now describe why we use the term “progressive covenantalism” and