Series - People of God

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No one knows exactly how many thousands of years elapsed between the fall in Genesis 3 and the calling of Abraham in Genesis 12. Because at least some of the genealogies contain gaps, few responsible scholars today are willing to stake themselves to James Ussher’s chronology. Ussher saw about 2,000 years between Eden and Abraham. Even contemporary young-earth creationists would multiply that number, some by several times.

God began saving individuals soon after the fall. The first recorded hero of faith was Abel. Individuals like Enoch, Noah, Melchizedek, and Job appear as bright spots in the history of redemption. In spite of calamities like the flood and the tower of Babel, God was clearly at work in the world. He was saving human beings.

During all those long millennia, however, no nation devoted itself to the worship of the living and true God. Indeed, before the tower of Babel, no individual nations existed. After Babel, the nations as nations devoted themselves to idols. No nation’—no people‘—called upon God or was called by His name.

That changed during the complex of events that began with the calling of Abraham and culminated in the exodus. From Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God raised up the nation Israel. God constituted Israel as a people, and in doing so He constituted them as a people of God. In God’s purpose, Israel was to be God’s own possession among all the nations, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. With the calling of Israel, God committed Himself to a plan that encompassed peoples as well as persons.

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[Continued from the last issue of In the Nick of Time]

More important is the question of the internal counsels of the Trinity. If the covenant of grace (made with humans) relies upon an eternal covenant of redemption (made within the Trinity), then upon what does the covenant of works rely? Does it not imply some eternal counsel—perhaps a “covenant of fallibility”—on the part of the Triune God to subject humanity to probation and to permit the human failure?

Not only that. From eternity past God also knew that some human beings would not be saved. He always knew that, if He created the world, He would end up sending some people to hell. Yet He created the world anyway. Necessarily, hell was always an aspect of God’s purpose in bringing glory to Himself. Somehow, God is glorified (His perfections are exhibited, recognized, and admired) not only by the salvation of those sinners who believe, but by the condemnation of others who do not. Is any biblical Christian really prepared to suggest that the Great White Throne detracts from the glory of God? And if not, then must we also posit some eternal “covenant of damnation” within the counsels of the Trinity?

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Biblical Christians ought to agree that God’s purpose in all His works is to bring glory to Himself. Whatever God has done in history, whether He has accomplished it directly or whether He has chosen to permit it through the agency of others, He has done in order that His perfections might be put on display, recognized, and acknowledged by His moral creatures. This point is not the dividing line between dispensationalism and its alternatives.

Biblical Christians should also agree that God is greatly glorified through the plan of redemption. That this plan was part of God’s purpose from eternity past is clear in Scripture. For example, the apostle Peter speaks of Christ as a lamb who was “foreknown before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet. 1:19-20). God always intended to glorify Himself by redeeming humans through the cross-work of Christ.

All saved individuals of all times and places hold a great deal in common. Their commonality is one consideration that undergirds passages like Hebrews 11. The life of faith is essentially the same life, at whatever period in the history of redemption. Indeed, if the life of faith is not essentially the same in both Testaments, and in every part of each Testament, then the argument of the entire book of Hebrews simply collapses.

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In the Bible, a people or nation is an ethnic unit that derives its solidarity largely from common descent. Of course, at one time the entire human race constituted a single people (Gen. 11:6). All humans descended in the first place from Adam, and secondarily from Noah. Before the tower of Babel, no ethnic or national differences existed. According to the Bible, these differences arose after God scattered the human race by confounding their languages. In other words, the division of nations is a result of God’s judgment upon human sin, though at the end of human history God is going to bring great glory out of this division—but more on that later.

As the table of nations in Genesis 10 makes clear, the human race was divided into an array of different peoples. As distinct nations, they were characterized by the different families from which they emerged, the different languages that they spoke, and the different territories that they occupied (Gen. 10:5). Additionally, either before or during the division of nations, humanity was becoming more and more corrupt. The apostle Paul describes this process in Romans 1:19-32. It is not clear exactly when the process reached its nadir. Yet Paul speaks of all three stages in God’s “handing over” (the term is paradidomi, which implies a handing over to judgment) in the aorist indicative, suggesting that, from his point of view, these judgments were already in force. Most likely the judicial “handing over” occurred during the early years of human history, and if the three stages were not complete before the scattering of the human race, they were certainly complete by the time it finished.

Read Part 1.

In the Bible, a people or nation is fundamentally an ethnic unit. Its solidarity stems from the fact that all individuals in the nation (with rare exceptions) are descended from a common ancestor. Ammonites come from Benammi. Moabites come from Moab. Assyrians come from Asshur. Even when a people no longer remembers its specific ancestor, the sense of ethnic solidarity remains.

This is not to say, however, that all individuals who can trace their lineage to a common ancestor are necessarily a people. Abraham and Isaac both had two sons, but in neither case did their descendents comprise a single people. Jacob had twelve sons, but these sons and their immediate families did not by themselves constitute a people. When Jacob and his household went down into Egypt, they were a family but not a nation.

When did the family of Jacob become the nation of Israel? This question cannot be answered in terms of numbers alone, as if 100 Israelites remained a family but 100,000 could constitute a nation. Common descent may be a necessary condition of biblical nationality, but it is not a sufficient condition. Something else has to be added in order to transform a group of related individuals into a people. Something else must take place in order for a large number of related individuals to galvanize them into national awareness. Other factors are essential to becoming a people: usually some combination of a common language, the occupation of territory, submission to a common religion, and, perhaps most importantly, a significant level of national self determination through a national leadership.

One of the differences between dispensationalists and covenant theologians is their understanding of the category people of God. To be fair, this difference also exists among varieties of dispensationalism, and it is one of the reasons that some traditional dispensationalists suspect that progressive dispensationalists are not really dispensationalists at all. Traditional dispensationalists affirm that Israel and the church are distinct peoples of God. Covenant theologians believe that this distinction necessarily disrupts the unity of the covenant of grace, and they insist that the church has taken the place of Israel within the one people of God. For covenant theologians, Israel is the church of the Old Testament while the church is God’s new Israel. Progressive dispensationalists argue that the church has joined Israel within the one people of God, leaving temporal distinctions between the two groups but collapsing the distinction in eternity.

Before one can decide whether Israel and the church constitute one people of God or two, however, it might be useful to understand just what a people of God is. And before one can define the expression people of God, one must define the word people. In fact, much of the debate revolves around unclear understandings of the biblical concept of people.

No wonder. In modern thought—especially in American thought—the word people functions simply as an alternative plural for person. We count one person, but two, three, or four people. Consequently the people of God must simply comprise the aggregate of persons or individuals who belong to God. What could be simpler?