It is both from eternity with Christ as our head, and made in time with the elect as His body. As David said, He hath made with me an everlasting covenant. If it were only made with Christ the elect would have no way of drawing any assurance from it. It must be made in time with them so that they might know themselves to be covenanted.
Of course the elect have a way to draw assurance from it: through union with Christ whose blood alone pays the price. But for the OT saint, they have the promise of the only Blood to come that will wipe it all away forever, and they do have the type that is immediately before them: the bull, the ram, et al which does not wipe it away forever and in one swipe of the blade.
Now, we have Rev. 13:8 and the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world. You interpret this to be the blood of Christ is the type and the type is the blood of Christ. (Peace, brother, if I am reading you wrongly. Your self-imposed character limit in responses leads to this kind of method of interpreting you. I do not contend that you believe this, rather that is as I am drawing out from your posts.)
Yet, how can the type be the blood of Christ when the forgiveness of sins under the OC is only temporary and more sacrifices are needed for the existence of indwelling sin? (Heb. 8:7)
More precisely to the theology of this:
"There are clear passages indicating that ‘the forgiveness of sins’ is unique to the New Covenant (“remember their sins no more”;
Jer 31:34)… Kuyper seems to confirm this conclusion. He argued that the energies of the Spirit at Pentecost worked retroactively in the lives of OT saints.
Horton, Rediscovering the Holy Spirit, p152ff (See extended quote here:
Horton’s Retroactive New Covenant)"
And the Spirit at Pentecost is tied to the shed blood of Christ in space and time at Calvary. Well, even more precisely to the Resurrection and Ascencion events whereby the Comforter now comes to dwell inside our hearts that are now circumcised in a way more directly and unlike the OT saints had access.
On OT saints and their union with Christ:
"Old Testament believers enjoyed the benefits of union with Christ and His imputed righteousness prior to His earthy ministry. The covenantal-legal agreement of the pactum [i.e., the Covenant of Redemption] was sufficient
in and of itself due to the Trinity’s utter trustworthiness to carry out its covenant-oaths. In other words, the stipulations of the pactum, an inherently legal arrangement, are the foundation for the application of redemption in covenant of grace.
J.V. Fesko, The Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption, 347"
NOTE: It is the CoR that is the basis for union with Christ for the OT believer, not the blood of bulls et al, although that would work with assurance given from the union they have with the yet-to-come Redeemer. ... Now, I do think you all agree to this, but now my point is
that is the interpretation of Rev. 13:8. That the Lamb is slain from eternity is not disputed in terms of the CoR, and that the Lamb slain from eternity is the basis for the promise of the NC (CoG) thereby giving the OT saint the promise and the relation needed for faith to have an object (the Word of God which was always in existence for man in every second anyone drew breath on Earth) and the blood shed to seal assurance in the obedience of faith. (well, blood only in the days before Abraham where circumcision was added to shed blood as a new promise of land and nationhood was also added. And then more acts of obedience opened at Sinai with even more promises added - and all of these working as links and working as types of elements of the coming NC where all these elements of promises and works come together seamlessly in one New Covenant).
On the establishment of the NC and Work of Christ in space and time:
"[T]he work of Christ is the source of all human salvation from sin: the salvation of Adam and Eve, of Noah, of Abraham, of Moses, of David, and of all of Godâ’s people in every age, past, present, or future. Everyone who has ever been saved has been saved through the new covenant in Christ. Everyone who is saved receives a new heart, a heart of obedience, through the new covenant work of Christ. So though it is a new covenant, it is also the oldest, the temporal expression of the pactum salutis…
The New Covenant does have a temporal inauguration… the shedding of Jesus’ blood, a
datable historical event, is the substance of the New Covenant, the Covenant that purifies, not only the flesh, but the conscience, the heart. Nevertheless, as we saw earlier, the efficacy of the New Covenant, unlike that of previous covenants, extends to God’s elect prior to Jesus’ atonement. When believers in the Old Testament experienced “circumcision of the heart,” or when they were Jews “inwardly,” they were partaking of the power of the New Covenant.
John Frame, Systematic Theology, p. 79-81 (See extended quote here
John Frame’s Retroactive New Covenant)
(I know. Frame is not 1689 federalist, and he does not agree to the timing of the inauguration as we see it. ... But now I am addressing this new idea - to me it is new - that the NC or CoG is fully instituted from eternity, yet if WCF advocates for the CoG to be instituted from all eternity (am I getting that right?) then if one also agrees that the NC - presuming they see these as separate - is established at a point in history and not from eternity, how is there only one covenant?).
"[W]hatever spiritual gifts the fathers obtained, they were accidental as it were to their age; for it was necessary for them to direct their eyes to Christ in order to become possessed of them… There is yet no reason why God should not have extended the grace of the new covenant to the fathers. This is the true solution of the question."
Calvin (
Commentary Hebrews 8:10)
(Again, I know Calvin was not 1689 federalist, but the quote suggests he also did not see the actual blood of Christ and the NC grace within the blood of bulls et al but is in some way necessarily extended to the fathers.
On the promise of the NC:
"[T]he happy persons, who even in that early age [the Old Testament] were by the grace of God taught to understand the distinction now set forth, were thereby made the children of promise, and were accounted in the secret purpose of God as heirs of the New Testament; although they continued with perfect fitness to administer the Old Testament to the ancient people of God."
Augustine, A Work on the Proceedings of Pelagius, 189 (See more quotes
here)
From Keach:
"All believers, who lived under the Old Testament, were saved by the covenant of grace,
which Christ was to establish.
Keach, “The Display of Glorious Grace” in
The Covenant Theology of Benjamin Keach (Conway: Free Grace Press, 2017), 110."
And last (certainly not least) from John Owen:
"These things being observed, we may consider that the Scripture doth plainly and expressly make mention of two testaments, or covenants, and distinguish between them in such a way, as what is spoken can hardly be accommodated unto a twofold administration of the same covenant… "
("these things being observed" would be the core of the argument from Scripture of the differences between the Old and the New such that they are not one and the same; it is important to remember that these differences have not really been discussed here and that may be unwise as we can see from the ongoing disagreement which can feel like spinning tires in the mud - Brad]
"Wherefore we must grant two distinct covenants, rather than a twofold administration of the same covenant merely, to be intended… If reconciliation and salvation by Christ were to be obtained not only under the old covenant, but by virtue thereof, then it must be the same for substance with the new. But this is not so;
for no reconciliation with God nor salvation could be obtained by virtue of the old covenant, or the administration of it, as our apostle disputes at large, though all believers were reconciled, justified, and saved, by virtue of the promise, whilst they were under the covenant… This covenant thus made, with these ends and promises,
did never save nor condemn any man eternally. All that lived under the administration of it did attain eternal life, or perished forever, but not by virtue of this covenant as formally such… [T]herefore I have showed in what sense the covenant of grace is called “the new covenant,” in this distinction and opposition… The greatest and utmost mercies that God ever intended to communicate unto the church, and to bless it withal, were enclosed in the new covenant. Nor doth the efficacy of the mediation of Christ extend itself beyond the verge and compass thereof; for he is only the mediator and surety of this covenant."
Owen (Exposition, Hebrews 8:6, 9)
EDIT: All quotes pulled from:
https://contrast2.wordpress.com/2021/10/25/ot-saints-were-saved-by-the-new-covenant-quotes/
