COVENANT ESSAYS
—ONE—
T. Hoogsteen
COVENANT ESSAYS
One
Copyright © 2016 T. J. Hoogsteen and M. A. Hogeveen. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
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Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.
W. Hoogsteen (1916–2000)
J. Hoogsteen-de Boer (1915–2009)
For remembering
PREFACE
Essays present a fascinating prose communication; well-presented, each works out a legitimate theme. The essays in this collection, created over a fifteen-year span, stand on their own, although several themes carry through—Jesus’s lordship, the Kingdom, the Church, the Faith—constants framed by the three Forms of Unity, that is, the stuff of the Reformation.
Some pieces in this collection reopen themes out of THE TRADITION OF THE ELDERS, COVENANT WORKS, and SERMON EVALUATION.
Some pieces, now more or less modified, appeared earlier in “The Journal of Reformation,” ISSN 1496–2233.
I wrote these essays with no apparent connection between the one and the other, other than the Reformation themes asserted above.
TH
THE FEAR OF THE LORD
The fear in question many exegetes recognize as awe, reverence, respect—a range of meanings that qualify apprehensiveness, even intimidation and dread. Actually, the fear of the Lord in its various historical presentations evokes accountability. The burden of proof?
In one setting, positive, this accountability completes thematically a piece of original wisdom literature. Eccle 12:13–14,
The end of the matter; all has been heard.
Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.
For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing,
whether good or evil.
This mandate to fear God revokes all legitimacy to and excuse for the dark compulsions of covetousness sought out, tested, and found wanting throughout Ecclesiastes. The Author and the author forcefully reveal that even for the source of sinning the LORD God requires accounting. This forms the fear of the Lord’s burden.
In another setting, negative, for this accountability 2 Kgs 17:34 serves appropriately to engage the covenant community at the approaching condemnation in yir’ath Yahweh,
To this day they do according to the former manner.
They do not fear the LORD, and they do not follow
the statutes or the rules or the law or the command-
ment that the LORD commanded the children of Ja-
cob, whom he named Israel.
Remembering the religiosity of the Ten Tribes, the people held in Assyrian captivity, the LORD God warned Judah of impending grief, the Babylonian captivity. Through this fear, or the refusal thereto, the Savior God shaped history, not only of the covenant community, also of the Eastern Mediterranean world, the turbulent theatre of 1–2 Kings.
In a third setting, also negative, and laden with prophetic tensions, the LORD formed the transition of the Church from the past through the present into the future for the formulation of the New Testament history. Mal 3:5,
Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will
be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the
adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against
those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the
widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust
aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the LORD
of hosts.
Out of the hostilities of covetousness, which stokes up the sinning condemned, the Savior withdrew the faithful, Mal 3:16–18, to generate the greater hope in the Incarnation.
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Earlier, Jacob fleeing revengeful Laban named the LORD the Fear of Isaac, Gen 31:42, 53, thereby to alarm his father-in-law against any trespass of the boundary into Canaan; he too, though an outsider to the covenant history and community the LORD God held responsible for anti-covenantal works.
Scripturally, the fear of the Lord stands forth as a technical term, a linguistic unit, consistent in meaning. Deut 6:2, 13, 10:20, 28:58; Job 28:28; Ps 111:10; Prov 1:7; Isa 11:2; etc. Beginning in the Church and weighing even vast accumulations of hidden sins, in the fear of Lord the Savior God holds all accountable.
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In the New Testament the phobos theos translated into godly fear, Acts 10:2; Rom 3:18; 2 Cor 5:11; Heb 5:7; etc. In the Hebrews passage reverence weakens the original.
All children are responsible to parents.
All employees are responsible to employers.
All church members are responsible to office bearers.
All slaves are accountable to respective masters, Tit 2:9.
In the more profound sense, of grace, all in Christ he holds accountable to accomplish the works of faith, or the unaccomplished works of faith, the broken commandments. Thereto Christians are slaves, Rom 6:15–9, slaves of righteousness, to do all and only what is right in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thereto, he bought his, 1 Cor 6:20, with blood. All in Christ are his so much that they find the purpose of life only in him, through accountability. The Lord’s earnestness in this accountability holds at the center of heart, soul, mind, and strength.
2015
THE OLD CHURCH AND THE NEW CHURCH
IN SUMMARY LINES
Continuous reflection on and study of Christ’s one Church remains necessary for more than a single reason:
First: Always—generation upon generation—it is requisite to know our place in Jesus Christ’s almighty rule of grace. Out of all possible people in the world some only he draws into the membership of the Church to hear the proclamation of the Word, thus to mature in faith and life, and to assure that the preaching as well as worship are sound. Also that the communion of saints functions optimally. His purpose, as the Holy Spirit wrote in Eph 4:13, is that all whom he calls arrive at maturity, “the measure of the stature of fullness in Christ.”