Chapter 6: the First-Level Fulfillment—the Exodus and the Israelite Theocracy

Scripture Passages

Galatians 3:10–4:7
Hosea 6:7

The Genesis 15 Promise Fulfilled in Two Stages

The most important Christological promise in the Old Testament is Genesis 3:15, the mother promise. But arguably Genesis 15 is the second most important passage, because here we see the development and elaboration of the mother promise, and not only its elaboration but its absolute confirmation by God’s swearing an oath, thereby making an unconditional promise guaranteeing that he will fulfill it. God’s promise to Abraham has two main aspects: the seed and the land. These two aspects are elaborations of the Genesis 3:15 mother promise. The promised seed of the woman who will crush the serpent’s head has been traced through the line of Seth down to Abraham via the genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11. It is now clear that the coming hero who will crush the serpent is going to be Abraham’s seed.

Although it may not be immediately obvious, the second aspect of the Abrahamic promise—the promise of the land of Canaan, which God is going to give to Abraham’s seed for an everlasting possession—this too is an elaboration of the Genesis 3:15 mother promise. Where was the land promise mentioned in Genesis 3:15? It is not explicit but implicit in the promise given to man that he will one day (when the Seed has come) be able to return to the garden to eat of the tree of life (Gen 3:22-24). God’s promise to Abraham, “To your seed I will give this land,” is the Abrahamic elaboration of the promise of returning to the garden of Eden.

Now this statement that Abraham’s seed will inherit the land will be fulfilled in two stages. The first stage is the first level fulfillment, which begins in the book of Exodus, and continues throughout the Old Testament. God’s promises, as originally given in Genesis 3:15 and as expanded in Genesis 12, are fulfilled in the nation of Israel. But that is only the first stage of the kingdom of God, the first level. The second stage of the kingdom of God is the second level fulfillment in Christ, the singular Seed of the woman and the true Seed of Abraham.

If you want a thumbnail sketch of the whole Bible, here it is, in three basic parts. The book of Genesis is the foundation, and it may be labeled the promise of the coming of the kingdom. The whole book of Genesis is about the promise, with special emphasis on the promise as given in its expanded form to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Genesis is the prologue to the entire Bible.

Then, after Genesis, the rest of the Bible is about the fulfillment of the promises recorded in Genesis. The fulfillment comes in two stages. From the book of Exodus to the end of the OT you have the story of Israel, which is the first level fulfillment of the promises. The first level fulfillment ends in tragedy and failure, as Israel, under the leadership of Israel’s disobedient kings, proves itself not to be the kingdom that God had promised. At the end of the OT the serpent’s head is not yet crushed, and God’s people have not yet returned to eat of the tree of life.

It is only when you come to the NT, that you read, “The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Here is the second level fulfillment of the promise. It is not Israel, but Christ, who is God’s obedient vassal-king. At last, we hear the voice of one crying in the wilderness, crying out, “Make ready the way of the Lord, make his paths straight, for now all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” John baptizes Jesus, and the voice comes out of heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” The announcement is clear: God’s obedient vassal-king is here! To prove the point, Jesus is immediately sent into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and unlike the first Adam, he obeys. It is at this point that we hear for the very first time the wonderful announcement from the lips of Jesus: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.”

Lead-Up to the Sinai covenant

In this chapter, we’re going to look a little more closely at the provisional, first-level fulfillment that begins in the book of Exodus. We’re going to pay particular attention to the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, the Sinai covenant, because this is the next covenant in the unfolding progression of God’s covenantal kingdom. The Abrahamic covenant (which is all of grace) is the foundation. Then God adds the Sinai covenant (which is based on the principle of works) to the foundation. The reason for this added layer of the Sinai covenant will be clear in a moment.

Before we look at Exodus, let’s remind ourselves of the fact that the exodus was prophesied way back when God swore the oath with Abraham. He said that his offspring would be sojourners in Egypt where they would be enslaved for 400 years, but that God would bring them back to the promised land (Gen 15:13-16).

Exodus 2:24 - “So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (cp. Exodus 3:13-17, where God appears to Moses at the burning bush, reiterating that he is about to act in fulfillment of his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob).

Exodus 7-11 - the plagues

Exodus 12 - the Passover

Exodus 14 - the crossing of the Red Sea

Exodus 19 - Israel at Mount Sinai

Exodus 20-23 - The “tablets of the covenant” and various judicial laws

Exodus 24 - the covenant ratification ceremony, “the blood of the covenant”

Leviticus 18:5 & Deuteronomy 27-28 - blessings on Mt. Gerizim & the curses on Mt. Ebal (see especially Deut 27:26, which is quoted by Paul in Galatians 3:10).

What are we to make of all this? The first thing to observe is that the Abrahamic covenant, the oath that God swore to Abraham, is foundational to everything that is going on here during the time of the first-level fulfillment. God’s oath-bound promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the foundation. He has promised to make Abraham’s seed into a great nation, and to give this nation the land of Canaan. That promise is irrevocable, and is now being fulfilled in God’s grace.

In Deuteronomy 9, Moses makes this point very clear as he preaches to the Israelites just as they are about to enter into the land. He exhorts Israel, “Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. ⁵ Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob” (Deut 9:4-5).

As we saw in the previous chapter, the Lord bound himself by means of a self-maledictory oath. He swore on oath that he would give the land to Abraham and his seed as an everlasting possession. Therefore, the fulfillment is all of grace, apart from works. The land is a gift of grace.

The Works Principle

But this leads us to the second observation. Although the gracious promise is foundational, the first level fulfillment of that promise in the Sinai covenant introduces a conditional works principle that seems to be in tension with the unilateral oath-bound promise to Abraham.

Notice that in Galatians 3:10-18, Paul zeroes in on two texts in the Pentateuch. The first one is the promise of Leviticus 18:5, that the one who does the things required in the Law will live by them. The other one is the curse of Deuteronomy 27:26. Paul combines these two texts together and places them in opposition to the principle that it is the one who is righteous by faith who shall live:

“For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.’ ¹¹ Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’ ¹² But the law is not of faith, rather ‘The one who does them shall live by them’” (Gal 3:10-12).

Clearly, Paul places the Law and faith in contrast with one another. The Law is not based on faith. The Law pronounces both blessings and curses. Unless we perform everything that is contained in the book of the Law, it only pronounces a curse. It is a covenant of works. Yet at the same time, Paul also made it clear that the Law did not annul the promise previously given to Abraham.

“To give a human example, brothers: even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified. ¹⁶ Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many, but referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ who is Christ. ¹⁷ This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. ¹⁸ For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise” (Gal 3:15-18).

How can it be that the coming of the Law, with its works principle, did not nullify the Abrahamic covenant? The explanation is this: the kingdom of God that came under the vassal-kingship of Moses, was only a provisional kingdom. It was only the first level fulfillment, not the reality that would come only in Christ. The first level kingdom was a fulfillment of the Abrahamic promise, but not the fulfillment. Therefore, because the Abrahamic promise was never really fulfilled, the promise was still in effect, even during the entire time that the provisional kingdom of God was in existence from Moses up to the coming of Christ. It was on the basis of this underlying Abrahamic promise that God showed mercy to Israel time and time again, even when Israel ought to have been removed from the land, and the kingdom taken away.

Remember in Exodus 32, when Aaron made the golden calf and Israel engaged in pagan revelry? Remember that God was prepared to end the covenant with Israel then and there. But Moses interceded on behalf of Israel. He prayed to the Lord,

“O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever’” (Exod 32:11-13).

When Moses says, “you swore by your own self,” he is reminding God of the self-maledictory oath that God took. By walking between the carcasses of the slaughtered animals, God was swearing an oath: “If I fail to keep my promise to Abraham, may I become accursed like these animals that have been cut in half.” We know this is the correct interpretation, because later the author of Hebrews interprets God’s “swearing by himself” as another way of saying that he “guaranteed it with an oath” (Heb 6:13, 17).

As a result of the intercession of Moses, the Lord relented and in his mercy he spared Israel. But notice that he did so only because Moses appealed to the prior covenant with Abraham.

Therefore, what we have is this: during the time that the kingdom of God was bestowed upon Israel in its provisional, typological form, there were antithetical principles at work, but they operated on two different layers. At the lower layer stood the foundational promises of guaranteed grace to Abraham and his seed. On top of that was a second layer—the provisional kingdom which was enjoyed by Israel on the condition of faithful obedience to the Law.

The foundational layer was the basis for the salvation of the elect within Israel. Throughout the OT period, God has his elect saints, all of whom were saved, not by works, but by faith alone in the Messiah to come. The object of their faith was Christ. Their faith was directed to Christ by means of the Abrahamic promise, since that promise ultimately pertained to Abraham’s seed, which is Christ. During the time of the Mosaic economy, God provided an elaborate sacrificial system that enabled the Israelites to deal with their consciousness of sin and maintain access to God’s holy presence. It is not as though the sacrifices of animals could atone for sin, but as types pointing ahead to the final sacrifice of Christ, elect Israelites had their faith directed, as by a sacrament, through the type to the reality to come, and so they were saved by faith in the Messiah to come. The sacrificial system was the form of the Abrahamic covenant of grace at the lower level during the Mosaic economy. (The connection between the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic sacrificial system is hinted at in Gen 22:14, “On the Mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” It is as if Mount Moriah, where Isaac was nearly offered, is the same as Mount Zion where the sacrificial system will later be set up on a more permanent basis in the time of Solomon.)

But on top of this foundational layer, God superimposed the works principle of the Sinai covenant, a works principle that operated not on the level of personal salvation, but on the corporate and typological level of Israel’s retention of the land. By keeping the Sinai covenant, the Law given on Mount Sinai, Israel’s days would be prolonged in the land (cp. the fifth commandment). But if Israel violated the Sinai covenant and worshipped other gods, then the land would spew them out, and they would be accursed of God (Lev 20:22).

In the Abrahamic covenant God promised to give the land to Abraham’s seed as an everlasting possession. God swore by his own eternal self-existence to do it. And yet, this absolute guarantee, the possession of the land, was later made conditional when the Law was added 430 years later. It seems like a paradox. The Abrahamic covenant is certain, it is a promise of divine grace. Then the Law comes along and makes it all uncertain with its conditionality and its blessings and curses. The only way the paradox can be resolved is to recognize that the promise is only fulfilled in Christ. We can go even further and say, as Paul teaches in Galatians 3, that the promise was actually made with Christ (“the Seed to whom [the inheritance] was promised,” Gal 3:19). Christ is the one who was born of a woman, born under the Law, in order to fulfill it in our place as the only covenant-keeping Israelite. In this way, Christ secures the land for us as a guaranteed possession by his obedience under the Sinai covenant. Because the Abrahamic covenant of promise was the foundation for the whole thing, and because it lay at the underlying level all along, that oath, that covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (which was really a divine promise to Christ), was not nullified by the addition of the Law. And that Abrahamic covenant all along had reference not to Israel, but to Christ, the singular Seed of Abraham, to whom the promises were made.

Galatians 3

God’s kingdom has come in power whenever God sovereignly bestows his holy realm upon his holy people. In Galatians 3 we see the holy realm (“the inheritance”) and we see the seed who inherits. That seed is both individual and collective. The individual aspect of the seed is highlighted by Paul when he appeals to the fact that the word is singular and says the seed was Christ (Gal 3:16). Paul also alludes to the Genesis 3:15 promise when he says that Christ was “born of a woman” (Gal 4:4). But there is also a collective aspect of the seed. The seed in the collective sense is the elect—all who belong to Christ—as Paul states in Gal 3:28-29. In other words, the collective seed inherits the land through God’s obedient king. The last point is crucial. Galatians 4:4-7 makes the point that we inherit the promises in Christ. God sent forth His Son in order that, in Him, we might receive the inheritance and enjoy our full rights as sons. The kingdom is not bestowed upon us by our futile attempts to keep the Law. It is only bestowed upon us by the obedience of Christ. The King bestows the kingdom upon his people by grace because he earned it for them by his merit.

In the context, Paul is writing to the Gentile converts of Asia Minor, who are being pressured by the Judaizers. The Judaizers were Jewish Christians who were trying to get the Gentile Christians to add Law-keeping to their faith in Christ. In addition to believing in the Messiah, these men taught that the Gentiles needed to be circumcised and become full-fledged, Torah-observant Israelites. Only those who keep the Law are the sons of the Abraham, they argued. In response, Paul says, it is not those of the Law but “those of faith who are the sons of Abraham” (Gal 3:7).

Because the Law, as Paul teaches, is a covenant of works, it must be properly identified as a ministry of death, condemnation, and bondage. It is not an administration of the covenant of grace. Therefore, we must not place ourselves under the Law as a covenant of works. Since we are sinners and cannot keep the Law perfectly, to place ourselves under the Law is to place ourselves under a curse.

In Galatians 3:23-25, Paul says that the Law was a guardian under which the people of God were shut up and held in bondage until the coming of the Messiah. In this description Paul is using an analogy that his Gentile audience would have understood. In the Greco-Roman culture of Paul’s day, the guardian was a household slave whose job was to supervise a boy until he was mature enough to take his place as the heir of his father’s estate. He accompanied the boy to and from school to make sure he didn’t get in trouble. He exercised discipline, beating the boy with a rod if necessary. By describing the Law using the analogy of a Greco-Roman guardian, Paul is teaching that the Law was intended to play a temporary role in redemptive history. Paul says that the Law was Israel’s guardian or disciplinarian when God’s people were under age, prior to the coming of Christ. When Christ came as the Seed to whom the promises were made, he fulfilled the Law by being born under it, by taking upon himself the curse of the Law in our place, and by perfectly obeying it. As a result, we were redeemed from our subservient state of minority under the constant supervision and discipline of the Law—until the time appointed by the Father, that is, the time to inherit.

This implies two-level fulfillment, since Paul is implicitly saying that even when Israel inherited the land of Canaan under Joshua, Israel had not yet inherited the real inheritance. Because Christ fulfilled the Law, thus ending the period of Israel’s “under age” status, and because he earned the inheritance, the Spirit that cries “Abba, Father!” has been poured out in our hearts as proof that we have made the transition to maturity and obtained our full rights as sons who are inheriting the new heavens and the new earth itself, to which the land pointed as a mere type.

Israel’s Recapitulation of Adam

There is a very important statement made by the prophet Hosea that links Israel and Adam. The Lord says through Hosea: “Like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me” (Hos 6:7). Israel here is likened to Adam. Just as Adam transgressed the covenant, so have the people of Israel (in particular the northern kingdom called “Israel” in distinction from the southern kingdom of Judah). Based on this overarching parallel between Adam and Israel, Kline speaks of Israel as “mankind stationed once again in a paradise-sanctuary, under probation in a covenant of works” (Kingdom Prologue, 352). Hence, it is not surprising that the outcomes were the same: breaking the covenant, expulsion from God’s holy presence. The exile of Israel from the land is a recapitulation of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden.

The following table sets out the many parallels between Adam and Israel:

God’s vassal king	Adam	Israel (esp. her kings)
God’s holy realm	The earth (erets)	The land (erets)
Cultic focal point	The garden of God	The temple of God
Covenant	Creation covenant	Sinai covenant
Sanctions	Life and death	Blessing and curses
Failure	Ate of the tree	Broke the covenant
Expulsion from holy realm	Driven from the garden	Exiled from the land
Promises of restoration	Gen 3:15 + Abraham	The prophets

Kline References

By Oath Consigned, 22-25 (on Paul’s law-promise contrast)

Kingdom Prologue, 320-23 (on the works principle in the Mosaic economy)

God, Heaven and Har Magedon, 96-98 (ditto)

“Gospel Until the Law: Rom 5:13-14 and the Old Covenant,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 34.4 (Dec 1991): 433-46.

“Kline on the Works Principle in the Mosaic Economy.” Kline quotes compiled by Charles Lee Irons. http://www.upper-register.com/papers/works-principle-mosaic-economy.pdf

Discussion Questions

According to Paul, why did God give the Law?
Were the OT saints saved by works?
How did the sacrificial system function as a means of grace for the OT saints?
How can the Sinai covenant be a conditional covenant of works without making the salvation of the OT saints by works?
What are some of the parallels between Adam and Israel supporting the idea that the people of Israel transgressed the covenant “like Adam”?