Now, picking up from where we were, we were tracing the developments in, well, in terms of the structure of the book of Genesis, we had discussed that then the general structures of the holy covenant of redemption and the common grace program we had in the development of the common grace program and examined especially the last time at some length the concept of the state and how it fits within all of this. And now, we took the position that the founding of the state was within this first total adult section of the book of Genesis, because it isn't Genesis 415 already, that God in dealing with Cain's complaints gives to him in effect the charter of the city, assuring him that the things will not be complete anarchy, but that there will be this institution for law and order of sevenfold divine vengeance, which the Lord himself was going to institute. So that's already then in place and we were told about it in this first section, the general theme of which you remember when we discussed the structure of the book of Genesis was that here we have to do with the entrance and the escalation of sin in the world, so that of course the story of the fall is unfolded here. And then the escalation of sin in the world and the post-lapse Syrian world, east of Eden, is pretty much the story of the development of the state, the city of man, which was originated here, so that's the theme, and we tried then to see what the proper functioning of the state would be, we emphasized that it was a legitimate thing, that it was a good gift of God's common grace along with the family and other institutions of common grace. And so now what remains here would just be to see how this actually worked out in history, tonight we want to make our way hopefully then up to the account of the flood, which will terminate this first period of the history of the world that then was, and to move on in sections 4 and 5 and 6, which will bring us then the third section, bringing us to the great covenantal episode that closes out the history of the world that then was, and then the sixth of the 10 sections in Genesis leading us to the next great covenantal episode with Abraham, and I would like to get then to that tonight and deal with some features of it such as that it is a covenant of promise over against the law that came later, and also to deal with the question of the constituency of this covenant, and the sign of incorporation into it, which is the sign of circumcision, and at the same time then that we are looking at that, we of course then want to raise the question of how that relates then to the new covenant sign of baptism, and then next week Lord willing we will continue with the analysis of the Abrahamic covenant, and try to say something in the last three hours of the Abrahamic covenant with its kingdom promises as understood in terms of a typological hermeneutic, which I trust we all share, as over against a non-typological dispensationalist hermeneutic, and then we also then want to deal somewhat with our kind of reformed typological hermeneutic as over against a theonomic or reconstructionist type hermeneutic, so next week we want to try to do those two things, and so hopefully tonight I can get that far that's probably too much to expect, but that's over aiming at, so meanwhile then here in this first section, which is extended then from two-four down through the end of chapter four, the second section beginning with five-one, we have the story of how this all worked out, so we saw what the state was as a legitimate gift of God, and what its proper functioning would be, how it should be careful, not to undercut the basic institution of the family, but rather be cooperative with it, and on the other hand how it should not be undercutting the institution of redemptive covenant and so on, and how it should refrain from taking over the functions of the redemptive covenant community, the cultic functions, how the state should stick to its own own particular cultural realm, and all right, so we got into some discussion of that. Now there there was then this good gift, it was a proper thing, but very quickly it becomes perverted, and the very fact that the founder of the first city, verse 15, tells us that God gave the charter of the city to them, by verse 17, we noted that it has already taken advantage of this, and has built the first city, and he names it after his son, so you remember when earlier we were talking about things, we saw how important the concept of the name was, and the contrast between the covenant community and the world outside there was that the world in general was seeking to make a great name for itself, and the covenant people were calling upon the name of the Lord, and so right away that theme of the name, making a name for yourself, emerges as canes, names, this whole city of man, enterprise, after himself, and effect by naming it after his son, and whom he has his future, so that's what's going on there, and in my judgment it's a very long history that is compressed into these few verses here, in chapter 4, the whole story from Adam, in the line of Cain here, up until the flood, because as a matter of fact by the time you have come to the end of this verse-tola-dote section, you've already covered that whole span, and as you know, then when you come to the second section, it recapitulates and goes back to creation and of Adam, and then takes you up to the flood again, and then third section deals with the flood, so in a very short compass here, we have a very vast history sketched for us in terms of the cultural, the city of man developments within the line of Cain, and we come very quickly to the climax of that with the figure of Lamek, and I guess some of this will be repeating what we said the very first hour when as a matter of fact we went through this whole structure, and so we can abbreviate it hopefully here, but you come to the figure of Lamek, and he is the one then, you remember who is despising all of the divine institutions of common grace, the family, because he's practicing bigamy, and the state because he's practicing tyranny, and here's this institution for justice, an eye for an eye and a truth for a truth would be justice, but he is imposing death for a slight offense against him, so he is trampling upon the institution that the Lord has provided for justice in the earth, but then worst of all is the arrogance, the blasphemy of the divine kingship ideology, which comes to expression here, because he assumes that he is more competent for avenging himself than the Lord God would have been that to avenge Cain according to the traditions of the line, Lamek points back, oh, we hear the stories of how God was going through a avenge Cain sevenfold back there, that ancestor of mine, I don't need him, I can avenge myself 70 and sevenfold, so in other words I am super God. Now there is the real sin that the city of man leads to, the city of man leads to something which becomes the cult of man, where God is defied, and man is defied, that's what happens here, and so man sets himself up as a God king in the city of man, and that's the sin of Lamek, it can't get worse than that, and God's not going to tolerate it anymore, now the flood judgment is going to come and deal with it, because now you are at the Antichrist stage of history, and in fact that's what we have here, is that not the history of the world that then was, I guess we discussed this along these lines that first I already remember, we tried to say that here we have an eschatological paradigm, Jesus treats it that way, as it was in the days of Noah that completes this history, so it will be in the days of the Son of man, so that if you're looking at trying to discover the fundamental structure of the shape of things to come for us in the New Testament era, looking to the days of the Son of man, according to Jesus pointing back here, here we can see the fundamental shape of history developing here in the ancient city of man with the covenant people who will be described in the next section here, five, one, and following, a community there, giving its witness, but nevertheless with the city of man and a community of those who have this Antichrist approach of defying God, trampling upon his institutions, rejecting the good gifts of his common grace and going their own perverse way, and so you have this tension developing between the two communities in whom this world belong, and wicked claiming it for themselves, the righteous claiming it for themselves because they are the children of the one to whom it really belongs and so on, and who will settle this, and last God will settle it with a great trial by or a deal in the flood, and so meanwhile things develop, and they develop to this crisis point, as I said, it's a sort of, with Lehmic you, you come then to the crisis, the Antichrist stage, and to then God intervenes. Well that's the shape of history, that's the shape of our new covenant history, it's the tension between the witnesses of Jesus and the midst of a world that still has God's good common grace, institutions of the state, but which are being perverted here and there, and which according to the testimony of a biblical prophecy will come to a crisis, Antichrist, man of sin, stage, which will again require in that day of the Son of Man, which is like the days of the Son of Noah according to Jesus, which will then meet again to the equivalent of the flood judgment, only now it will be the judgment of Peter, tell us as well by fire as the Lord Jesus comes, and so here is the shape of history here, and in the shape of the world that then was that's what's going on here, so there is that history, and with Lehmic we're almost at the end of the first section, there's a couple more verses, verses 25 and 26, which are transitional you remember, they lead us from the theme of the city of man, over to the theme of the covenant community, or the city of God starting with the second section, by telling us what was going on while the city of man people, Lehmic and company were making a big name for themselves, chapter 4, 25 and 26, tell us that the Sethite community was a community characterized by a calling on the name of the Lord, people who are concerned that God's name should be hollering glorified and they they identify themselves as his children, and he is their protector and so on, he is the creator owner of the world, and so we are advised at once, that there is along with this unhappy development, still God's sovereign preservation of a people for his own, his purposes are not going to fail, in spite of the entrance and the escalation of sin, even up to the anti-Christ age, in spite of that, God's redemptive purposes will prevail, the original goal that he set under the covenant of creation at the beginning, that there should be that great global city of God, Metapolus we call that the history, the city of heaven, the Sabbath, and so on, that goal is still going to be reached, and the remnant is there already, during all of this time, the remnant is still in the earth, and of course the book of Genesis is going to trace that remnant in sections 2 and 3 and 5, 6 and 8, and 10 all the way through that remnant is going to be there, there will be defections here, but there is still the elect remnant that is there that will lead up to Israel, and Israel will lead up to Messiah, and Messiah's body, the church, and so on, and so already then that's what the second section is telling us here, and just bypassing that for the moment, at least, we come to the end of section 2, which is dealing then with the line of Seth and the covenant community, and once again that feature of transition, you come to the end of section 1 and you have a transition leading to section 2, you come to the end of section 2, and you have a transition leading to section 3, section 3 is the judgment, now what is it then that leads to the, what is the transition, the transition is in chapter 6, 1 and following, and here then it backs up, and it picks up the story where it left it with lame, in section 1, so we got up to the climax of history, and then we went back to the creation of Adam and the image of God, and he has a son named Seth, and we have this whole thing, and it takes us up virtually to the flood again, and then this transition, as I say, picks up the story, the anti-Christ theme, the lamek theme, the divine kingship ideology theme, and it tells us that story again and sort of gives us the general picture of things that precipitates the judge flood, the flood judgment, which is described in the third section, as in terms of it's being a covenant of salvation that God made with Noah, so that takes us through this little section of verses, the beginning of chapter 6, and again in the interest of time, not going to have time to spend, it's in Kingdom Prologue, developed a sufficient link there, the traditional understanding of it among sort of critics of the Bible is that these sons of the gods who are spoken of here, who take the daughters of men and marry them, and then they have children who are called niff and leemy gibberine, the critical view of the thing has been that this is a bit of raw mythology that's taken over from the rather well-known Near Eastern mythological motif of divine beings who take human women, and by them have some monstrous breed of offspring, and it's thought well that's just a bit of raw mythology that sort of snuck into the Bible here, and there it is, and so that's a view which gets sort of baptized into Orthodox Christianity in the form of these pagan deities now being understood as angels, and so there is the view,
where is my glass of water?
In the view that these are angels, and there are a couple of verses or so that you've probably come to your mind in New Testament that are alleged to reflect such an interpretation of this of angelic beings who left their proper state, and had relationships with human women that produce some sort of gigantic beings. Well, there are problems with that such as that when God pronounces a judgment on this thing, the judgment is strictly on man, and on this particular interpretation of the sort of more conservative version of it, where it would be angels. On that view it would be the angels who would be the primary culprits in the thing, and yet the God's verdict doesn't say anything about that, and other criticism. In the church, in the church, the most that the dominant view has been not that the sons of God are of the gods were angels, but rather that they are the godly line so that they think that there is a picking up on the thought that we have the line of Cain and the line of Seth, and they feel that in this particular episode in Genesis 6, 1, and following that the line of Cain is picked up in terms of the daughters of men, whereas the sons of God are supposed to, that's supposed to then to be a term for the Sethites in terms of their spiritual nature as sons of God, and so that is perhaps the most common view within generally conservative circles, and then the problems with that is that the offspring of these religiously mixed marriages, according to the text, would be consistently some sort of, it depends on how you understand the Nephilim gibbering, but here the evidence is to the effect that they have to be understood in terms of those who, in terms of military prowess, which would involve then physical stature and strength, that here is a particular line of those who are qualified by virtue of the physical stature, strength, and whatnot, to be most competent in terms of warfare and so on, and so the A problem with this is, is why religiously mixed marriages would produce a particular physical type of strain, and that's not at all clear, that problem is actually felt so keenly that someone like John Murray who advocates this traditional view in his book Principles of Conduct in Appendix to the Thing, has to try to make out, well, the offspring who I mentioned, the Nephilim in the gibbering, are not really the offspring of these marriages, but they are just happened to exist in the world at that time, this won't do for us. The text says that when the sons of God went in unto the daughters of men, and they have these children, and then here they are, and so all I think Murray's view does is to admit the gravity of the problem and then solve it, and what really, I think fits into the whole context of the Bible best, and fits into the whole Near Eastern background best, and fits into this context best, is to see that what's being described here is simply a development, a resumption, as we said, of the lamec theme, and the proof of the pudding is that those three sins that we found associated with lamec, the trampling on the family, the trampling on the state, and the blasphemous assumption of divine status, those same three themes are encountered here, precisely in what is said about the sons of the God in Genesis 6. Here again, they are trampling on the family, lamec practice bigamy, these people are developing heroms, what we have here is the picture of the ancient king, that's the city of man, what happened in the city of man? The kings and the city of man ran away with things, and they abused the institution, and one of the major abuses of the ancient institution of royalty, including in the Bible and on happily, you think of Solomon, so on, what's the development of the great Oriental Haram, the taking of many wives, and that's exactly what the text says, it says when mankind became numerous upon the face of the earth, that these characters, the sons of the gods, who might understand as human kings, took to themselves wives as many as they please, that's the picture, so they are trampling as lamec did, and a big scale now with the institution of the family, and the whole text brings out more over of the corruption and the violence that was in the earth by virtue of their presence, so that God looks on the situation, he can't put up with it anymore, and so here is the violence that they were practicing against the state in the name of justice, and so on, the perversion of it, but the key point in the whole thing is the very designation of them as the baneh al-ahim, as the sons of the gods, and what has happened here then is that the author has taken out of their own mouths their own claimed deity, we are the sons of the gods, the sons of God, and so he calls them, he labels them that which they claim for themselves, that is their great antichrist since it was of lamec and more can be said, and I try to say it in kingdom prologue, and in the original article that lies behind the discussion in kingdom prologue, so that there then in the end of section two, in this transitional thing, we have this eschatological paradigm brought up now to its antichrist crisis, with these who are claiming to be gods in the world, and as I say this fits in with the extra biblical picture that we get of things in the ancient world, weren't fact the ideology of divine kingship was prevalent in Egypt and elsewhere all around, and so okay, now then this calls for judgment, and the third section then will describe that flood judgment that ended that history, and the way it was cast in the form of a covenant we want to look at. Now meanwhile, meanwhile there is then the picture of the covenant community, a covenant community characterized in that transitional section up there as those who were calling on the name of the Lord, and now my problem is how much to do with that here tonight, and I think maybe that is a section then that we can just sort of thumb through quickly here in kingdom prologue.
Yeah, on page 117 and following,
what was it like? Here's the church okay, here's the church to use that term which I usually say for the New Testament form of the covenant community, but here's the people of God, and what was the nature of their togetherness and of their functioning in the world at that time? The people of God were of course not absent from the city of man, the city of man, common-grace institution, common means common to believers and unbelievers. So what's going on in the city of man, the general cultural activity out there is not something that only unbelievers are involved in, believers are there too, and so the people of God were there two hats, so they are involved in the common-grace culture, they are involved in the city of man, but then they also have something distinctive that's going on which is the same as our situation today. You and I are involved in the world outside of the church, in the very fact in our families and our marriages and so on that our families are not the church, and so we are involved in the common-grace functions that were described from the beginning in terms of pro-creation, dominion over the world, labor and so on, but what is distinctive of us as over against this common area? What's distinctive of us is our calling to be the people of God, to be those who are calling upon His name, and so that's what's described here in the second section, and it isn't that detailed description for the fact it's basically just a genealogy isn't it? It's a genealogy of the line of Seth with a few extra details here in there that clue us in as to what they were doing as the people of God, the fact that it's in the form of a genealogy, the covenant line is in the form of genealogy, we have noticed that significant because it shows us a principle of polity in God's organization of the covenant community, and in fact then that becomes a key point, if we get to it hopefully here tonight in our story of circumcision and baptism and to whom should these signs of the covenant be administered, a key point will be the one are making now, namely that the covenant line is one which is identifiable with the family continuity generation after generation, so that the story of the covenant can be told as a genealogical story is the ongoing line of the covenant, and so it is here from Seth down to Noah, now then what characterizes them, and so we try to indicate 117 here and following identification as the people of the Lord, just calling on the Lord's name, is they're identifying themselves with God, confessing him, and naming themselves after him, depending upon him, witnessing to him in the world, page 119 in terms of covenant polity, what's the nature of this community, it's a cultic community, it's the altar, they are an altar community, right from the beginning, that we have the beginning of the story, they're Seth, and it's at the altar you know that this hatred breaks out between Seth,
well earlier than that already with the McCain label, of course we had the altar scene at the beginning of this story, and then at the end of it we have, we come up to Noah, and this covenant line is still engaged with the altar now, that is their identity, that they are a people of God, and that their distinctive life has its focus at the altar, the place of calling on God's name, the place of worshiping, so that as a distinctive people they are a worshiping congregation, they are an altar people, and this visible altar remains as a distinctive marker of the people of God throughout their whole history then, until we come to our Lord, and a he fulfills the reality of the altar in heaven, so that today the only altar, the real altar is in heaven, and now there's some interesting things that develop there, and that in that one generation overlap you know when you come to the end of the old covenant, and then the new covenant gets introduced, and the cross has made obsolete the old altar and everything, and as I say the true altar is now in heaven, well for one generation until 70 AD, the old community continues on with its altar, but nevertheless in principle it is obsolete, and even though the apostles continue to honor that altar and temple until God destroys it in 70 AD they do continue to honor it, but nevertheless it is about to fade away, it is just about obsolete, and from that point on the altar is the heavenly one, now that affects the dynamics of missions and everything else throughout this whole history where you have the visible earthly altar, it is the centripetal focus of the life and witness of God's people so that they are not involved in a centrifugal missionary outreach, such as characterizes the new covenant period, and by reason of the great commission, and by reason of persecution the apostles are forced out of Jerusalem and to Jerusalem area in the end of the year, and now positioned to that centrifugal missionary dynamic, up until that point, the dynamics of a mission are determined by the visible central altar, so that what God's people are doing is setting up a visible witness in the midst of the earth, attracting magnetically the attention of those around to this witness, and so it's a coming into the focus type of thing rather than going out and bringing people to a focus in the heaven the altar above, and so the presence of the altar then is a significant characterizing feature of God's people, and another aspect of that we won't stop and deal with, but for example, when we were talking about common grace and we talked about the covenant of common grace in Genesis 9, and one of the questions had to do with the ingestion of blood being forbidden, you know, and how long that continues and why, and that whole thing has to do with the presence of the visible altar among them, and as long as there is the visible altar in their midst, blood has sacrificial significance and the concept isn't that all life is sacred, you know, that's some pagan, animistic notion that all life is sacred, and that that's why you don't ingest blood, that's blood or not, that's what it is, is that at the altar blood has the significance of that which has been forfeited the life of man has been forfeited and belongs to God, and that that's brought out by the presence of the altar in their midst, and so because the blood belongs to God and is forfeited to him, it is not to be ingested then by human beings, which would seem to trample on the thought that it belongs to God is forfeited to him, so as long as you have the altar, the influence of the altar, that prohibition applies, now within Israel it applied, it didn't apply to others outside the sphere of the altar, the altar was within Israel, this was not something for the Gentiles that they had to refrain from ingesting blood, this was something for the altar community to be aware of, and as I say in this overlap generation in which the apostles find themselves, and this the problem comes up then in Acts 15, as to how to handle this business of the, among other things there, of the ingestion of blood, and the way they settled on it is that, well, as I see it, within the Jerusalem Antioch axis where the influence of the altar was still present, after the cross and until 70 AD, there is still the altar, and as I say the apostles still honored it and the temple, and so as long as that was true, and there were those then of the Jews who still had all of those scruples within that more approximate area, which as I say you might describe in terms of the Jerusalem Antioch axis, for them the Acts 15 decision is well, let's avoid then the ingestion of blood, but then you can see as soon as Paul gets himself beyond that immediate context where the altar still has sort of its influence and control, and as soon as you begin to get into Paul's dealings in those Greek cities and so on beyond that, where the altar is no longer significant, he then no longer is enforcing the injunctions of the Acts 15 decision and so on, well I'm just trying to suggest a whole lot of ways in which the presence of the altar must be taken, account of various problems that appear on the line, so the altar is there and they are a priestly community you see, therefore they are a worshiping community, there is no particular cast or specialized priesthood, there is the universal priesthood at this altar, just as now when there is no longer an altar on earth, but the altar is in heaven, there are no altars on earth, there are no special priests on earth either, now the universal priesthood, the universal priesthood is there all the time, all of God's people that then have access to Him individually at all times, but you don't until you come to Israel have a specialized order of priests who are typological of Christ the mediator priest, so there is the universal office of priests that we all have at all times, Old Testament, New Testament, this doesn't change, and in fact since it's universal, I think maybe it's a contradiction to call it an office, maybe we ought to save the word office for special things that not everyone has, but there is a universal privilege of a priesthood, let's say, but then Christ is a different sort of one, he is one who is a mediator which shows us that we don't have access to God in ourselves, but only through Him, and so as types of that special mediatorial priesthood in the Old Testament God sets up the Levitical or Aaronic priesthood, and that continues until the real priest comes, and so with the coming of Christ the real priest at the real altar with the real sacrifice, the real temple, the reality all moves up to heaven, and on earth there are none of these things anymore, you see this one overlap generation creating some ambiguities along the way, but the basic reality is that from this point on, really so after 78, the only holy places, the only holy places are the heavenly ones, there are no holy places on earth, and therefore no altars on earth, we shouldn't be talking about altars, and so any who in their ecclesiastical polity speak about a special priesthood, which is something distinctive from the universal priestly privilege of everybody, speak about a special order of clergy priest, then this is an acronistically carrying on the notion of a special kind of typological priesthood after the anti-type priesthood has come, and in effect it is a denial of the fact that the real anti-typical priest has come, there's no need anymore for these prototype type special mediatorial priests around, so that kind of church polity, just as a total contradiction of the advance that we have come to in Christ and the new covenant and that we are beyond that typological stage we are in the fullest of time, so let's not talk about altars or our special priests, and therefore let's not talk about sanctuaries like the other side of the wall there, okay, because this is just a total anachronism which in principle denies Christ, that he has done it, and that now we worship in spirit and truth, not on that mountain over there, you woman from Samaria, not on that mountain, nor in Jerusalem, that's no earthly place, neither garrism or our Jerusalem anymore is holy, there are no holy places on earth anymore, only in heaven is there that the true sanctuary, therefore from now on we worship God in spirit and in truth, in spirit and in truth, and how that gets diluted in its meaning as we use it in spirit and in truth doesn't mean that from now on we worship God sincerely, what did we worship God sincerely before, no that's what it's talking about, it's talking about in heaven, in the Johanine vocabulary, spirit and truth describe the heavenly realm, the bread from heaven, the true bread, that's what truth means, it's the heavenly reality, and spirit as we've had occasion to see over and again, spirit is heaven, so in spirit and in truth Jesus is setting up the contrast between worshiping at some local symbolic typological or earthly altar, and worshiping in terms of the heavenly work Christ has seated at the right hand of the Father up there, so I mean we've got to be true to the eschatology of the Bible, and not to deny it, even with this kind of innocent loose usage which we apply to our church meeting places, so a favorite theme of mine, okay, and now we've got our consents written on that, yeah, I know what can we do there, you'll write the form, all right, that's another one like the two tables of the covenant, you can't get it out of the vocabulary of people like always going to use it that way, sanctuary, I'm afraid, I'm going to use for every, but when it becomes official in the polity and the surgical practice of any group that they
talk about a priestly order, and they talk about altruism and so on, then it is highly objectionable and then we have to be out against it, who is, who is just, yeah, in terms of worshiping in Sweden in truth, would another application be, for example on the deal of covenants, the law was written on the table of stones, not in the hearts, and at that time still the people, they were covenant people, but they were considered spiritually dead because Christ had not risen, yet, so he could be in the well then by his spirit. I don't think you want to put it that way, I don't know, they are regenerate, I mean if they are God's people and they are true believers that's only because they have been regenerate and the spirit has already worked on them. In terms of what they are looking forward to the promise. True, but it was like they were looked correct, and in Romans Paul talked about how he worships God with his spirits, rather than an outward form on the deal of covenant, but not from his heart, and you know what he's been born again by the spirit of God. Would that not be an application? Yeah, I'm not sure that's the way Paul would be putting the difference between the two things. He would be identifying as a spirit as the opposite of the letter, for example when he talks about the law being written no longer with letters on stone, but by the spirit on the heart. What he is contrasting I think is the principle of works and the principle of grace, because in the whole context then he identifies with the spirit that this is a covenant of life and of justification, and whereas the letter is associated with condemnation and bondage and death and so on. As I see what Paul is doing there, he is describing the difference between the old covenant as a works arrangement, and the new covenant as an arrangement of grace, but what Paul would do, and I think what we have to do is to, you know, when we were talking about the way in which Christ enters into the world and fulfills the eternal covenant with the father that he should do such and such, and as a result of that then the father would glorify him, and so there is the ascension that takes place, and we need the point that although what Christ does is a very laden history over against the fall back here, and it is very laden history when the legal basis, the cross, is the legal basis for the gift of the spirit, and these other blessings, in spite of the fact that that comes so laden history, it is so certain that Christ was going to do it, as over against the first Adam, remember that we put it this way all the time, that already the Holy Spirit is being given from early on, so that in Israel as well as before that, the Holy Spirit is at work so that the fundamental process, subjectively of salvation, is the same in the Old Testament as in the New, so that even though that they are looking in terms of their faith apprehension of Christ is something to come inwardly, they already have the benefits of that in the same way that we do, namely the presence of the Spirit, who regenerates them, who gives them through spiritual life, and so on.
Well, in terms of true and truth, the boss deals with that briefly in the biblical theology. Does he deal with it that Johanna and that's terminology? Yeah, that'd be the last part of it.