Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Covenant Households

First section by Randy Booth

In our modern era, overly individualistic concepts of God's redemptive work have blinded many Christians to the centrality of the corporate nature of God's dealings with men. Federalism, or covenant headship, has been the biblical standard from Adam to the new covenant. That is, some men have represented other men before God. There is no place where this is more apparent and central than in the covenant household—the family. It was not only Adam, but Adam's children and his children's children, who suffered the consequences of his sin. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it in question 16: "The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but for his posterity; all mankind, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression." Families fell in Adam, and it is families that God will redeem from the Fall.

Redemptively, the household is not marginal or incidental in Scripture. It plays a central role in both the old and new covenants. Old Testament society was ordered by God and was dominated by the household and tribal structure (the tribe was the extended family).1 In fact, we do not find God making covenants with people without including their households. For example, "I will pour water on him who is thirsty, and floods on the dry ground; I will pour My Spirit on your descendants, and My blessing on your offspring" (Isa. 44:3).2 We find, after Adam, an ocean of evidence in Scripture of this essential aspect of redemption. For example, Noah, who "found grace in the eyes of the LORD," went into the ark with "all [his] household" (Gen. 6:8; 7:1).3 The Lord "plagued Pharaoh and his house" (Gen. 12:17). "All" who were "born in [Abraham's] house" or who were "bought with his money" were to be circumcised (Gen. 17:12-13, 23, 27). The Lord "closed fast all the wombs of the household of Abimelech" because of his sin (Gen. 20:17-18 NASB). As a result of the sin of Simeon and Levi, Jacob said, "I shall be destroyed, I and my household" (Gen. 34:30 NASB). Entire households were spared death where the blood of the Passover lamb was applied to their doorposts (Ex. 12:27). The Levites were numbered according to their household membership (Num. 3:15). Joshua spoke for his entire household when he declared, "As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD" (Josh. 24:15). God judged the house of Eli because of the sins of his sons (1 Sam. 3:12-14). David brought God's judgment upon his household because of his sinful conduct with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12:10).

The household of our father Abraham ("the father of all those who believe," Rom. 4:11) was the pattern for this covenant household. God had promised Abraham "to be God to you and your descendants after you" (Gen. 17:7). God would make him "a great and mighty nation," and "all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him" (18:18). But the condition of familial faithfulness was central. Abraham had to personally keep covenant with God, and his descendants would also have to keep covenant with God. Abraham would have to command his children and household to keep the way of the Lord:4 "For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him" (18:19).

The Old Testament emphasis on the covenant household continues in the New Testament. An elder "must be one who manages [governs] his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity" (1 Tim. 3:4 NASB). Likewise, deacons must be "good managers [governors] of their children and their own households" (1 Tim. 2:12 NASB). In Philippians 4:22, we are told of the saints who were "of Caesar's household." These saints were probably Caesar's slaves, yet they were considered a part of his household. When Matthew describes Jesus feeding the multitude with the loaves and fishes, he numbers the crowd by households: "now those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children" (Matt. 15:38). This was not a put-down of women and children. It was normal to think in terms of covenantal family units. Of the nine people who are mentioned by name in the New Testament as being baptized, two were unmarried, two are of unknown marital statutes, and five were heads of households. In every single case where a known head of a household believed and was baptized, we are told that the entire household was also baptized. Finally, on the day when the new covenant was inaugurated, as Peter spoke to the "men of Israel" (Acts 2:22) and they asked what they should do, he spoke to them using the familiar formula of the Abrahamic covenant: "For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call" (v. 39).5


1 It is important that we read and understand Scripture in its historical context. Familial and tribal concepts were dominant until recently. They are also the biblical point of view. A focus on the individual has been emphasized in American culture and is a key assumption in Baptist theology.
2 See also Isa. 59:21; 66:22.
3 Notice that Gen. 7:1 says, "For you alone I have seen to be righteous before Me in this time" (NASB). This righteousness characterizes Noah, not necessarily his family. Nevertheless, Noah's family receives the benefit of God's covenant grace because they are his family.
4 Although these were the conditions of the covenant, God's covenant blessings were still given as an act of his free grace. Meeting the covenant conditions was not meritorious; it did not earn God's blessings. Nevertheless, the conditions of covenant faithfulness (in both the Old and the New Testaments) had to be met in order to receive the gracious gift (i.e., undeserved favor) of God.
5 God made his covenant promise in Gen. 17 and 18 to Abraham, to his children, and to the nations. Thus, when Peter spoke to the men of Israel, saying that "the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off" (Acts 2:39), this was not a brand-new concept, but rather a familiar formula.
END.


Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield, the great Presbyterian theologian in the tradition of the old Princeton Theological Seminary, was not known for his terse or pithy writing style. However, in his polemics with the Reformed Baptist theologian Augustus Hopkins Strong on the subject of infant baptism, he was uncharacteristically brief, even blunt:
The argument in a nutshell is simply this: God established His church in the days of Abraham and put children into it. They must remain there until He puts them out. He has nowhere put them out. They are still then members of His Church and as such entitled to its ordinances.
This debate can be reduced to one principle question: Does the covenant of grace in its New Testament administration embrace the children of believing parents just as it did in its Old Testament administration? Is the new covenant administration more restricted and less encompassing in its reach than had been the case previously? If children of believing parents were no longer embraced by the covenant as they had been, then the Jews would have been even more hostile toward the gospel than they already were because the condition of their children would have been far worse under the new administration than it had been under the old administration. But Scripture repudiates this pungent doctrine everywhere, differentiating children of believers from unbelieving parents and their children. How does one explain 1 Corinthians 7:14 if children are excluded from the new covenant whereby they were included in the old covenant? "For the unbelieving husband is sanctified [made holy] through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified [made holy] through her believing husband; for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy" Why the commands to children in Ephesians 6:1-3 and Colossians 3:20 if they are not considered a part of the new covenant? Why does he say that we were circumcised by baptism ("in Him you were also circumcised . . . having been buried with Him in baptism", Col. 2:11-12)?