The Family-Integrated Church Movement – Part 2

BIBLICAL STUDIES

The constitution of the Church is the New Covenant. The New Covenant documents of the New Testament set forth the New Covenant and illustrate and explain what the Church is to think and believe about itself. The proponents of the Family-Integrated Church Movement (FICM) frequently explain that they believe all of the Scripture and that the Scripture is sufficient for all of life and godliness. What seems to slip in, however, is the subtle hermeneutic that the Old Covenant is canonical for the Church.[1] The Old Covenant relates to the New Covenant believers in the same way that it related to the Old Covenant people of God.

Advocates of the FICM constantly refer to Deuteronomy 6.1-8 as a proof for the doctrine that they are espousing with little consideration for the fact that this was written to the Old Covenant people and does not stand in the same relationship to the New Covenant people of God. To interpret Deuteronomy 6 along with many other Old Testament passages without consideration for the coming of the New Covenant is to have an inadequate hermeneutical context and therefore to misinterpret the Word of God.

Covenant is Canon

Meredith Kline in his book The Structure of Biblical Authority makes it crystal clear that the canonicity of the Word of God is covenantal in structure. It is the fact that God is the covenant suzerain who gives His word the authority to determine the relationship that people have with him. The Ancient Near East possessed a genre of literature called the international treaty document. Kline explains, “In these treaties an overlord addressed his vassals, sovereignly regulating their relationship with him, with his other vassals, and with other nations.”[2] The document was written down on two identical tablets and deposited in the presence of the gods who ratified the document. Attached to the document were covenant-curses if anyone should destroy the tablet. For example, in one it said, “You swear that you will not alter it, you will not consign it to the fire nor throw it into the water…and if you do, may Ashur…decree for you evil.”[3]

The similarity between the Old Covenant structure and this international treaty document are evident. God, the suzerain, drew up the documents with his own hand and they were carried on two tablets. Not one consisting of the first four commandments and the second containing the last six commands, but two identical tablets and deposited before the ratifying God, Yahweh in the Ark of the Covenant.[4] The Old Covenant contained also the traditional curses that all canonical documents contained. In Deuteronomy 4.2 Moses says, “You shall not add to the word that I commanded you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD.” The New Covenant also bears a curse for those who change any part of the written copy of the covenant. Revelation 22.18 says, “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book…”

This then is the basic covenantal idea of canonicity. The suzerain gives inviolable words that set up and control the relationship between the two parties. Kline comments:

To sum up this far, [the] canonical document was the customary instrument of international covenant administration in the world in which the Bible was produced. In this treaty form as it had developed in the history of diplomacy in the ancient Near East a formal canonical structure was, therefore, available, needing only to be taken up and inspired by the breath of God to become altogether what the church has confessed as canon.[5]

The Old Testament, while including other genres besides international treaty, still can be boiled down into the primary genre of covenant. The prophetic literature, wisdom literature, the historical literature all function as corollaries inside the covenant genre– thus the Old Testament is called a testamentum or covenant. That is why the Old Testament is sometimes called the Law and the Prophets and other times it is called simply the Law, and the Law was a covenant document.

As a foundation this is important to understand, because the covenant documents of the ancient Near East were more than divine revelation (so to speak), but they also served an architectural function for the community under the great suzerain. It was at Sinai that Israel became a nation under God’s rule. He redeemed the people out of Egypt and established his covenant with them. The covenant governed the people and was the constitution of the nation. Again Kline says:

The community is inextricably bound up in the reality of canonical Scripture. The concept of covenant-canon requires a covenant community. Though the community does not confer canonical authority on the Scriptures, Scripture in the form of constitutional treaty implies the community constituted by it and existing under its authority. [6]

This inextricable tie between covenant-canon and covenant community has significant ramifications for how the New Testament Church should view itself and what should be the canon, the community constitution, for the New Covenant Church. It is obvious then that only the New Covenant has the status of canon in this restricted meaning for the New Covenant Church. The Covenant constitutes the community and provides the architectural structure for the people, and the New Covenant is the only constituting covenant in effect. Hebrews 8.13 reads, “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.”

Therefore, it is evident that the New Testament Church needs to look primarily to the New Covenant to see what people constitute the new covenant community. To read an Old Covenant principle of who is in God’s kingdom is to read an anachronistic covenant into the new covenant. The covenant-canon principle that is the basis for the covenant scriptures that God has given denies this as a possibility. Each covenant constitutes its own people and governs who is and who is not in the covenant.[7] There can be no assumption of any detail based on prior covenants, because that would do harm to the covenant-canon principle that God uses. Kline says again:

The distinctiveness of the two community organizations brings out the individual integrity of the two Testaments which serves as community rules for the two orders…This is to say that the Old Testament is not the canon of the Christian church…The form of government appointed in the old covenant is not the community polity for the church of the new covenant.[8]

This position should not be assumed to say that the Old Testament is not relevant or able to teach the New Covenant people of God. There is of course great unity of purpose between the two canons in the overall covenant of Grace. 2 Timothy 3.16, Hebrews 11, 1 Corinthians 10.6 all confirm that the Old Testament is Scripture and is necessary for the New Covenant Church to know and understand.

This clarifies the hermeneutical principles that are required when defining the make-up of the New Covenant church. It is not enough to say that Scripture is sufficient to answer that question, but more precisely one should ask what does the New Covenant says. What are the characteristics of the people who are constituted a people under the New Covenant? Is the family a defining characteristic of the New Covenant? Is the organic principle found in the Abrahamic covenant and the Old Covenant still present in the New Covenant? Or does the New Covenant define and create a people along different lines?

It seems that from the outset that the New Covenant constitutes a people that are characteristically different than the Old Testament people. This is not to say that there is not a unity of the people of God in all ages. There certainly is, but a change of covenant means at least some change in the structure of the people.  Jeremiah 31 portrays the differences between the two covenants and the respective peoples that these covenants constitute.

The New Covenant People

1. The New Covenant People are Eschatological

Hebrews 8.8 says, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” The formula “the days are coming” generally refers in the Old Testament to the coming eschaton of the Messiah and of the new age. Hebrews 1.1 says, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets but in these last days he has spoken to us by His Son.” The clear idea behind this verse is that the Old Testament prophecies regarding the Messianic coming have been fulfilled. The present time is eschatological. The New Covenant then is eschatological as well. Gerhardus Vos writes:

The Epistle distinguishes not only two covenants, but also two worlds or ages, namely this age, and the age to come. The peculiarity of the old Diatheke is that it pertains to this present world, whereas the new Diatheke is that of the future eschatological world.[9]

If this is the case then one would expect that the constituents would be eschatological in nature as well. The author of the Hebrews says this cogently in several places. In Hebrews 12.22 the author states that Christians have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. This is not mere metaphor, but expresses reality. The Christians have come to the heavenly. They are in real connection to the world to come, and participate in the age to come. In 6.5 he states that they have tasted the powers of the age to come.  In 9.11 and 10.1 the author makes the claim that when Christ came he brought with him “the good things that have come” and that the law was “a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities.” If this is the case, then all those who are in Christ have tasted heavenly realities and are new creatures, eschatological creatures.

To understand more clearly the relationship of the old and the new covenant one needs to look at how the author describes each covenant respectively. As Hebrews 10.1 says, the law was a shadow and lacked the true form or image of the realities. This is normal typological language, but the author uses the idea of shadow and reality in a more complex manner than does the rest of the New Testament. Instead of a straight horizontal-historical relationship, the Old and New Covenant both have relationship to the heavenly reality.  In other words when the author calls the Old Testament a shadow he is saying it is not a shadow so much of the New Testament in that it is incomplete, like an artist’s sketch, but rather that it is shadowed down from heaven.

This is how the author discusses the earthly tabernacle. It is an antitype of a heavenly reality. The heavenly reality is what Christ entered, but the priests entered only the shadow. Hebrews 8.5 states, “They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying,’ See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’” And in Hebrews 9.24 it says, “For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.”

This picture is exemplary of how the author of Hebrews sees the Old and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant is a shadowy reality of the heavenly, but the New Covenant is the very image of the heavenly reality. The New Covenant is the fulfillment and perfect picture of the heavenly covenant and is called the eternal covenant for this very reason (Hebrews 13.20). The covenant of Grace then reaches its eschatological fulfillment in the New Covenant. The clarity and understanding of the God’s purpose and covenant to save mankind is clarified as redemptive history progresses, but leaves provisional status in the coming of Christ and the establishment of the New Covenant. Therefore there is an essential equality between the covenant of Grace and the New Covenant, with its members being identical. I do not mean that the Old Covenant believers were in the New Covenant; that would be to harm the progress of redemption. Now under the New Covenant administration there is a numerical equality between those who are in the New Covenant and those in the Covenant of Grace.

This is clear by the very descriptions that God gives of the New Covenant, but it is also true by its eschatological nature. Those that are in a heavenly covenant, an eternal covenant, are invariably redeemed. In the past before Christ came there was a necessity for genealogical reasons to include an organic aspect to the covenant administration. The Old Covenant was made with both the original hearers and their seed. Covenant membership was then passed on genealogically. Faithful remnant and unbelievers alike received the land and were in covenant with God, thus the many promises and curses of the prophets. The people for good and for ill were in covenant with God with their children, and so the people as a whole were judged and condemned as covenant breakers. But with the coming of Christ and his subsequent death and resurrection, the people now are eschatological, heavenly in nature, because they have been constituted in an eschatological covenant. The Church, the New Covenant people of God, is eschatological in nature by definition and so by definition is going to a better country.

But some argue that the Church is not pure, and so the administration of the New Covenant must include the organic idea of Old Covenant. There is a “not yetness” to the New Covenant administration of God’s people. The people are regenerate (cf. below), but there is remaining indwelling sin. They know the LORD, but through a glass darkly, They are forgiven, yet sin daily. The New Covenant has not yet created a perfect people, but all those who are in it will be perfect one day, for the simple reason that God has promised them that they would be so in the New Covenant itself.

2. The New Covenant People are Regenerate

The nature of new covenant is not only a generic eschatological nature that speaks to the kind of Church it has established, but also it has specific characteristics that mark all those who are in the New Covenant. Hebrews 8.10 says, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts.” Simon Kistemaker says, “God’s people experience the permeating power of God’s Word, so that his law becomes a part of their conscience.”[10] This speaks of God’s Word coming to His Covenant people and working so thoroughly in their minds and hearts that God’s law becomes the law of their very nature. They are born again after the image of God’s own heart. F.F. Bruce writes:

Jeremiah’s words imply the receiving of a new heart by the people—as is expressly promised in the parallel prophecy of his younger contemporary Ezekiel: ‘I will give the one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will take the stony heart out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances and obey them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.[11]

God’s people continually failed and their failure led God to abandon them. Hebrews 8.9 says, “For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.” The law was good, but “it was weakened by the flesh” (Romans 8.3). God had to overcome this defect in his people if they were to remain his covenant people. “What was needed was a new nature, a heart liberated from its to sin, a heart which not only spontaneously knew and loved the will of God but had the power to do it.”[12] The new covenant set out to do what the old covenant could not do and that is to create hearts that loved and served God. Christ’s death purchased the covenant promise of the Holy Spirit and His work in the regeneration of all those who were in the New Covenant.[13]

3. The New Covenant People have Christ as their Mediator.

The first covenant had priests and sacrifices. Year after year the High Priest went into the Holy of Holies and took blood as an atonement for the sin of the people. The High Priest represented all those who were in the covenant and offered a sacrifice on their behalf. The sacrifice was made for those who were in the covenant and none others. In the same way Christ entered into the heavenly tabernacle and “by means of his own blood” he secured eternal redemption for all those who are in the New Covenant. Hebrews 9.15 says, “Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from transgressions committed under the first covenant.”

In this passage the connection is made between Christ as the mediatorial head of the new covenant and his work of redemption. They are coextensive realities. As covenant mediator he establishes the covenant with his blood (Luke 22.20, Hebrews 9.23ff). He also redeems those who are called. There is a golden chain between the new covenant members- the called-the redeemed-and the receivers of the promised eternal inheritance. Christ’s death did not take place in a vacuum for the elect, but his death was a covenant-sealing death for those who were in the Covenant of Grace that is realized fully in the New Covenant. The cross of Christ is connected intimately with the new covenant in all of Hebrews, but particularly in 10:14, “For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, This is the covenant that I will make with them…”

It is difficult to interpose the organic idea into this formulation, because of the tight logical connections that the author makes between those who are in the New Covenant and those who have been redeemed. By definition it leaves all unregenerate children out of the equation. It does not have reference to families, but to those who are redeemed, thus making it impossible that families as a whole are in the New Covenant. Individuals are redeemed and regenerated, not families. There is no use to argue that somehow in some provisional way unregenerate children are in the New Covenant, for the very point of the new covenant is that Christ’s perfect sacrifice is efficient to save all those that are under his mediatorial headship. Ridderbos writes: “God’s people are those for whom Christ sheds his blood of the covenant. They share in the remission of sins brought about by him and in the unbreakable communion with God in the new covenant that he has made possible.”[14]

To deny this connection between Christ’s mediatorial role and new covenant membership is to disjoint all of covenant theology. It also places unregenerate children as having Christ as a mediator, but not enjoying the benefits of his mediation. He is their mediator, but not their redeemer. He is their covenant head, but they remain in the covenant of works. It is an untenable position. Christ is redeemer for all those under his headship. He is the head of the Church; therefore those who are not saved are not in the church.

4. The New Covenant People are Forgiven

Hebrews 8.12 says, “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” In Hebrews 10 this forgiveness of sins is connected with Christ’s offering for sin. The offerings of the priests year after year could not cleanse the consciences from sin, but rather they were a constant reminder of the sins committed (Hebrews 10.3) Christ’s sacrifice was once for all and resulted in the forgiveness of sins promised in the New Covenant for those in the covenant.

There is a clear superiority of the New Covenant over the Old Covenant. There was no forgiveness of sins sworn on oath to the people in the Old Covenant, rather what was offered were the types and shadows that pointed to Christ. Given the nature of the New Covenant Church, that it has been established in the blood of Christ, there can be little doubt that the New Covenant people from first to last is a forgiven people. Jesus Christ’s sacrifice insures that all those He represents in the New Covenant are forgiven. There is no room to say that those who are not forgiven should be considered as members of the church. Therefore, families are not the building blocks of the New Covenant Church. The forgiven and regenerate are the building blocks of the Church, not families.

5. The New Covenant members all know him

Hebrews 8.11 says, “And they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother saying, ‘Know the Lord.’ for they shall all know me.”  This argument needs to be examined closely to draw out all of its implications relating to the New Covenant Church. This certainly cannot be construed to mean that there is no teaching necessary in the New Covenant Church. To say that would be to deny the necessity of the apostles, the roles of pastors and teachers, etc. Obviously this verse is not a promise to the contrary of Christ’s clear intentions for the Church. Rather, no one in the New Covenant needs introduced to the Lord, for they all know Him. This knowledge is more than an acquaintance; it is a vital, intimate knowledge. It is covenant knowledge.

It cannot be said that all children in Christian homes know the Lord, because that is obviously not true. It is irreconcilable to suggest that these who do not know the Lord are in the covenant when the covenant outlines its members precisely at this point that they “all should know me, from the least to the greatest.” If this is not an all-inclusive statement then language has no meaning. It cannot be even suggested that all does not mean all here in this passage, for the “from the least to the greatest” is an epexegetical statement defining the all. The explanation of the all is as all embracing as the word it defines.

Furthermore this descriptive statement of the New Covenant means that men cannot disciple those outside the covenant in any way as to bring them into the covenant. Since regeneration is also a description of members, as his forgiveness, it holds that men cannot disciple those outside the covenant in a way to bring them into the covenant. This is true for the same reason that men cannot be born and added to the covenant, because as John 1.12 says, “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” God is the only one who can introduce a person into the New Covenant, because it is he alone, who regenerates, forgives, and gives His Son for the Son’s Covenant people.

6. The Members of the New Covenant cannot break it.

The very point of failure in the Old Covenant was that the members of the Covenant and the ecclesia of God could not keep the covenant that God had made with them. The New Covenant is “not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke.” (Jeremiah 31.32) In what way is the New Covenant not like the Old Covenant? The people cannot break the New Covenant. The Old Covenant people had no heart for the law of God. The covenant was not one of pure promise, but depended on their keeping the law. In the New Covenant the Mediator obeys for the people, and guarantees the covenant blessings to the people through His oath sealing sacrifice. Furthermore, the people could not keep the covenant because the majority of the people did not believe.

7. The Members are in the Covenant as Individuals.

In Jeremiah 31.29, the very prologue to the New Covenant prophecy, God makes the individualism of the New Covenant clear. There is no longer any physical organic principle at work as there was in the Old Covenant. “In those days they shall no longer say: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ But everyone shall die for his own sin.” The principle at work in the Old Covenant was an organic principle. God punished and blessed according to generational obedience or disobedience. It led to miserable failure and the great host of Israel were judged and condemned. The nations carried Israel off for the sins of Manasseh. The children were punished for the sins of their fathers.  Jeremiah 31.29-30 teaches that this principle will no longer be effective in the covenant people of God. Rather, the covenant people will be redefined to include only those individuals who have the law of God written in their hearts and know the Lord.

On these grounds it is misguided to say that fathers need to disciple their children in covenant keeping. The only covenant that children outside of Christ are in is the Covenant of Works. Fathers furthermore cannot disciple their children in a sufficient manner to introduce them into the New Covenant in Christ’s blood. This must be the work of the Spirit of God alone. Therefore when Douglas Philips says that patriarchy is “a father with a multigenerational vision who is discipling their children in covenant keeping,’ he is completely bypassing the heart of the New Covenant. The heart of the New Covenant is the cross of Christ and the gospel of God in all of its naked glory. To have a stated goal that you want to have your children keeping covenant with God in the New Covenant is nothing but suggesting that the basis of New Covenant membership is some form of keeping God’s law, and not the work of the Holy Spirit in uniting a person to Christ as his meditorial head.

If by God’s own definition, those in the New Covenant are those who are in Christ, forgiven, born again, and know the Lord, on what grounds can other people be introduced?  To suggest, that an inference from other covenants demands it, is to suggest that man’s inference has priority over the clear statements of God’s word. The clear word must trump any possible inference to the contrary. If the New Covenant people are those born again and those alone, and the New Covenant establishes the New Testament Church, then how can anyone knowingly and willingly introduce others to the contrary? If the New Covenant Church is an eschatological people, then should we not expect that its members to have tasted the powers of the age to come? On these grounds it seems impossible to think that the church is made up of any other building blocks than the saved and regenerate, and those alone. Families do not make up the new covenant. Families therefore do not make up the new covenant church in either its particular or universal manifestations. To imagine God has a double standard in this area is to introduce nothing but a contradiction to the intentions of God. Why would he want the unregenerate in the local church, but bar them from the universal church? Obviously in this age there is confusion and men cannot see who the unregenerate and the regenerate are but it does not follow that men therefore should say people are in the new covenant church when they know they are not in the new covenant.[15]

Jason Webb

Jason is a graduate of the Reformed Theological Seminary and a member of Grace Fellowship Church

• My Introduction to the Family-Integrated Church Movement
• What is the Family-Integrated Church Movement? – Part 1

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[1] The thesis will explain below where the author believes they are at fault. The author very much agrees that all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. He does not believe that the Old Covenant is canonical in the same sense as the New Covenant is canonical for the New Covenant church, and the author will explain his precise meaning of canonical below.

[2] Meridith Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1997), 27.

[3] Ibid., 30.

[4] Cf. Exodus 25.16, 21, 40.20, Deuteronomy 31.9-13

[5] Ibid., 37. Kline is quick to point out that the Scriptures do not depend on the genre to insure their canonicity or authority because they are of divine origin regardless of the genre they took. Nevertheless, God chose to put his canonical words in a covenant form that was familiar to the people of God and in a form that stressed his covenant relationship with them. God reveals himself as more than our Creator. God is our covenant LORD and he expresses this even in the structure of His revelation.

[6] Ibid., 91.

[7] Samuel Waldron in A Reformed Baptist Manifesto: The New Covenant Constitution of the Church (Palmdale, CA: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2004), 6 echoes Kline’s sentiments. He says, “A covenant in the Bible, among other things, is the formal or legal basis of some relationship. The Old or Mosaic Covenant was the formal, legal, basis for the national existence of Israel…Though written church constitutions are permissible for the sake of administration, the premise for this study is that the New Covenant is itself the ultimate, formal basis and legal rule of the Church.

[8] Kline, 99.

[9] Gerhardus Vos, The Teaching of the Epistle to the Hebrews. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing), 1956; reprint, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001, 50.

[10] Simon Kistemaker, Hebrews. New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1984), 226.

[11] F.F. Bruce , The Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990),190

[12] Ibid.

[13] Matthew Henry writes, “He once wrote his laws to them, now he will write his laws in them; that is, he will give them understanding to know and to believe his law; he will give them memories to retain them; he will give them hearts to love them and consciences to recognize them; he will give them courage to profess them and power to put them in practice; the whole habit and frame of their souls shall be a table and transcript of the law of God. Hebrews. Commentary on the Whole Bible. (Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), 743.

[14] Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing,1962), 202.

[15] I understand the paedobaptist conception of the covenant of Grace has by definition an organic component. It really is not my point to argue against my paedobaptist brothers, but I understand that my knife is cutting in two directions. The paedobaptistic argument that the covenant of Grace possesses an organic component is based on their connection of the Abrahamic covenant to the Covenant of Grace. They believe that the entirety of the Covenant of Grace holds an organic component because of the Abrahamic Covenant. This flattens out all of revelation, to see more continuity than is there. It is really to make an a priori assumption about the nature of redemption based simply on one covenant. Later revelation should hold more sway with us than an inference from the Abrahamic covenant. Furthermore, the Abrahamic covenant was not the kingdom-establishing covenant of the Old Testament people. The Old Covenant was. Therefore, if we are examining ecclesiastical polity, the covenant properly establishing the Covenant should be examined, not a promissory covenant promising the existence of the nation. That is why I think the first argument is the most important key to my whole paper and to the whole debate. If the New Covenant establishes the Church then the New Covenant alone should have a role in determining the structure and nature of the people. To do otherwise is to arbitrarily introduce whatever features from the past into the present administration that we like. The theonomists do this with the law of God. The paedobaptists do this with the organic principle of covenant perpetuation, and the FICM does it with their family of families ecclesiology.

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