# NT Epistles are written to...



## Calvibaptist (Aug 24, 2007)

Much has been made of the Covenant Community consisting of believers and unbelievers. I have notice that paedos consistently turn to the epistles and try to prove from them that the recipients of the letters (God's people) are assumed to be a mixed group. So, based on the biblical data, who are the epistles written to?


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## Andrew P.C. (Aug 24, 2007)

Calvibaptist said:


> Much has been made of the Covenant Community consisting of believers and unbelievers. I have notice that paedos consistently turn to the epistles and try to prove from them that the recipients of the letters (God's people) are assumed to be a mixed group. So, based on the biblical data, who are the epistles written to?



Just to make clarification, when you say "mixed group" you mean believers/unbelievers right?

Even though I still hold to my baptist view (for now), I would still say God's Covenant people.


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## AV1611 (Aug 24, 2007)

*Question:* You walk with a farmer across his wheat field. He and you can both see tares growing in it. You ask him what field this is. He replies "this is my ... field"?

Read what follows and I trust you will get my point 


*Chapter 5​*This enables us to understand the course of history. Essentially, the covenant in its entirety was already present immediately after the fall. All that follows is development of this seed. However, the progress of the revelation of the covenant conception is bound up with the development of creation and humanity and of conscious life. Therefore, even the mention of the covenant is lacking here. And the spiritual difference between church and world fades completely into the background. God's grace seems to concern, not only the organic kernel but our entire race. Genesis 3:15 makes mention of the ruin of Satan and his kingdom. The Seed of the woman shall triumph. Only, the expression, "your seed," points to the coming struggle between the sons of God and the children of men. The characteristic difference between the elect and forgiven kernel of our race and the reprobate husk that surrounds the kernel during the present time is manifest in the different relation of hate and love in which they stand to Satan, to God, and to each other. Only with the ripening of the fruit does the everlasting kernel more and more break through the husk. 

The different periods of this development, therefore, do not present to us any gradation in grace, as Cocceius 1 wanted. This is a notion that would lead to the absolute destruction of the covenant idea. Rather, they present to us the formal phases of development of the life of the covenant in our race. With this, they present to us the working out of the principles of sin and grace: the concentration of spiritually similar elements and the progressive dissolving of the natural fellowship of spiritually dissimilar elements.2 Each preceding phase is type and shadow of the following, more developed form of the covenant. The covenant of grace is never the kernel of a more common covenant, but, although essentially ever the same, it comes to manifestation always in higher forms. The forms develop. The form of revelation in Paradise is type of the form of the covenant with Noah, as this is shadow of the Abrahamic and as the form of the covenant with Israel is shadow of the New Testament form of the covenant. In like manner, this entire earthly dispensation is image of the everlasting form of the covenant. 

The covenant with Noah, therefore, is the covenant of grace in its second phase of historical development. The new creation, the kernel of the first world, stripped of the old wrapping that perished in the flood, arises out of the water of baptism and beholds in the clouds of heaven the sign of God's covenant faithfulness.3 

In a very short time, however, it itself has turned the somewhat altered and richer expression of God's good gifts and powers into an all-consuming curse, according to the manner of the operation of the principle of sin. The intertwining of church and state and the society of church and world in one and the same organization made possible the moral degeneration of our race and the establishing of the principle of the kingdom of Babel: the world-power inspired by Satan that is opposed to God. That apparently absolutely universal world-federation, which was hostile to God, seemed to leave God's covenant of friendship in our race neither root nor branch. The second world had come to the beginning of the end. The final end, however, was put off for ages by the confusion of speech and the separating of Abraham. 

In Abraham, the holy line continues itself. God made Abraham to be a pattern of His grace and realization of the covenant before the face of the peoples. The separation is only temporal and bears a typical character. The people that sprouts from Abraham is spiritually one with Adam, Seth, Enos, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Arphaxad, Heber, Terah, and the congregation of the new covenant. According to its spiritual kernel, it represents the elect humanity. In its separate existence as a people, it forms an antithesis with the heathen. Over against the whole world, it is of God's party. 

Here, however, we do not yet have the everlasting and absolute antithesis between the kingdom of light and that of darkness. Israel in its historical existence is shadow, picture, prophecy, and preformation of that which comes in higher form in Christ and His congregation and in the kingdom of glory. Presently, God first returns to the peoples in His only-begotten Son, who according to the flesh is from Israel, in order to take to Himself a congregation from every race, language, people, and nation. God, therefore, returns to the peoples through Israel. Thus Abraham becomes a father of all those who believe, both from the uncircumcised and the circumcised, and an heir of the world. And with this, the middle wall of partition is broken, and, in principle, the separate existence as a people of Israel and the heathen is abolished. 4 From now on, neither Jew nor heathen will be able to maintain itself in its separate existence. 

The congregation is the spiritual kernel of our race. On the day of Pentecost, humanity according to its spiritual kernel repeals the tower of Babel and Adam's breaking of the covenant; abolishes the confusion of language by its speaking in tongues and with this the dividing of peoples; and grants us a glimpse into the kingdom of glory. This entire earthly dispensation has come to the beginning of the end. It is the last time and day and hour. The entire creation is in travail,5 and in the birthpangs the ripe fruit breaks through the husk. Out of the temporal wrapping, the everlasting kernel makes its appearance. 

In this connection, two observations still need to be made. Historical Israel according to its typical aspect was not only an image of the congregation of the new day, but also pointed more directly to the kingdom of glory, past the entire New Testament dispensation. The outward appearance of Israel's existence as a people was shadow of the eternal dispensation. The church lacks that outward, typical feature. Although richer in spiritual goods than old Israel, since the shadows relating to them were fulfilled, she is, nevertheless, poorer in typical possession of physical and temporal treasures. According to his bodily existence, the New Testament believer is temporally subjected to the emperor, not to David. In that sense, he lives and dies in the world, not in the holy land. To be sure he has a king, a citizenship, a treasure of salvation, but as yet only in a spiritual sense. The shadow of the natural possession of everything in which old Israel could rejoice, sometimes to the point of dancing, has perished in the Babylonian captivity, not only for the Jew but also for him. Although Christ is in him and consequently the spirit is life on account of righteousness, even so, however, the body is as yet dead on account of sin .6 During this dispensation, the kingdom of God does not come with observation.7 God's children are in dispersion. They are strangers here below.8 They have no earthly fatherland, indeed, no "home rule," like the Jews at the time of Christ. And this captivity of theirs lasts until Christ's return. 

We do indeed, therefore, live in the last times. It is the last day, indeed the last hour. But still it is the last hour of this earthly dispensation; the everlasting day has not yet risen upon us. And now we certainly may not revert back to the old dispensation in order with the chiliast to expect fulfillment of the shadows that are as yet unfulfilled, during this dispensation. Even less may we conceive that fulfillment after the manner of the postmillennialists. During this spiritual dispensation there is no gradual progression in the fulfilling of the shadows. We never reach the eternal reality by our own effort. The transition from the one stage of development into a higher comes about by a special intervention of God. Although there is progression in revelation, consciousness, application, and expectation according to the nature of each dispensation, nevertheless, the dispensations do not thus gradually merge with each other. The church does not produce heaven, nor the world, hell. Presently, the everlasting dispensation is fruit of the final catastrophe.9 

From this it follows that the relationship of the elect kernel of our race to the reprobate husk that temporarily surrounds it during the New Testament dispensation is spiritual-organic in nature. Along those lines proceeds the realizing of the covenant conception. That which at first lies hidden and intertwined in one and the same root comes to revelation, development, and separation by the Word of God that is "quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."10 Because no creature is hidden from the God of the covenant, but all things are naked and open before Him, therefore, with the full realizing of His covenant conception He will also complete the separation of spiritually dissimilar elements, both in the individual and in the community, as one separates chaff from the grain, no matter how these may share in the society of natural life and may formally agree.​
http://www.prca.org/prtj/nov98.html

If not the point is this - the epistles are for the elect and even though the visible church contains reprobates God still addresses the church as though they are all wheat


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## Calvibaptist (Aug 24, 2007)

Is it then deceptive of Paul to call reprobates "saints," "beloved of God," "elect," "brothers," and tell them that they are "in Christ?"

This is an honest question. I am not trying to bait anyone. I am just wondering how we are to interpret the epistles if they are written to a group of believers/unbelievers but addressing them all as believers.


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## AV1611 (Aug 24, 2007)

Calvibaptist said:


> Is it then deceptive of Paul to call reprobates "saints," "beloved of God," "elect," "brothers," and tell them that they are "in Christ?"



Not at all. I will see if anyone explains it better than I whilst I formulate a thought through response, which I hope will be better than if I write one now off the top of my head.


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## Calvibaptist (Aug 24, 2007)

AV1611 said:


> Calvibaptist said:
> 
> 
> > Is it then deceptive of Paul to call reprobates "saints," "beloved of God," "elect," "brothers," and tell them that they are "in Christ?"
> ...



Thank you. I appreciate your interaction.


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## Andrew P.C. (Aug 24, 2007)

Calvibaptist said:


> Is it then deceptive of Paul to call reprobates "saints," "beloved of God," "elect," "brothers," and tell them that they are "in Christ?"
> 
> This is an honest question. I am not trying to bait anyone. I am just wondering how we are to interpret the epistles if they are written to a group of believers/unbelievers but addressing them all as believers.



1 Cor 7 tells us that the child is made holy. So to call the non-elect holy, is this deceptive of Paul?


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## KMK (Aug 25, 2007)

I think Paul et al assume that if you sitting in an assembly on the Lord's Day, having just sang and prayed in worship, and are now listening to an epistle read and explained out loud, that you are a believer and if you are not you're a hypocrite and you are well aware of your hypocrisy. There is no need for the writers to add a caveat to every sentance like, "As I have said many times before, these promises do not pertain to you unless you have faith in Christ."

We do the same thing when we preach. I can proclaim to my church that they not under condemnation without adding a caveat every single time. I am not endangering anyone.


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