One Householder, Two Covenants

Marcion and his followers get nowhere when they try to shut Abraham out of the inheritance. The Spirit has borne witness to Abraham through many men, and now through Paul: “he believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” The Lord bears witness to him too. First by raising up children for him out of the stones and making his offspring like the stars of heaven, when he said, [a]

“They will come from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and will take their places at table with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” And then again by saying to the Jews, “When you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of heaven, but you yourselves thrown outside.”

So this much is clear. Those who refuse Abraham a share in salvation, and invent another God besides the one who made Abraham the promise, are outside the kingdom of God and are cut off from the inheritance of freedom from decay. They count God as nothing and speak against him — the God who brings Abraham into the kingdom of heaven through Jesus Christ, and his offspring with him, that is, the church, on which the adoption and the inheritance promised to Abraham are conferred as well.

The Lord claimed Abraham’s descendants as his own by freeing them from slavery and calling them to salvation. He did exactly that in the case of the woman he healed, when he said openly to men who did not have Abraham’s faith, “You hypocrites! Does not each one of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey and lead it away to water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound these eighteen years, be set loose from that bond on the Sabbath?”

It is clear, then, that he loosed and gave life to those who believe in him as Abraham did, and that he did nothing against the law when he healed on the Sabbath. The law did not forbid a man to be healed on the Sabbath. On the contrary, it had men circumcised on that day, and it commanded the priests to carry out their duties for the people; it did not even forbid the healing of dumb animals. At Siloam, and afterward on many other occasions, he performed cures on the Sabbath, and for that reason many people used to come to him on Sabbath days. What the law commanded was that they keep away from every kind of servile work — that is, from all the grasping after money that goes on in trade and other worldly business — while it urged them to attend to the exercises of the soul, which are matters of reflection, and to talk that does their neighbors good. That is why the Lord rebuked the men who blamed him unjustly for healing on Sabbath days. He did not cancel the law; he fulfilled it, by carrying out the duties of the high priest: winning God’s favor for men, cleansing the lepers, healing the sick, and himself undergoing death, so that the human being who had been driven into exile might come out from under condemnation and go back without fear to his own inheritance.

Again, the law did not forbid people who were hungry on the Sabbath to eat food that lay ready to hand; what it forbade was reaping and gathering into the barn. And that is why the Lord said to the men who were blaming his disciples for plucking heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands and eating them, “Have you not read what David did when he himself was hungry — how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence and gave some to those who were with him, which no one is allowed to eat but the priests alone?”

He was defending his disciples out of the words of the law itself, and pointing out that priests are free to act. For David had been appointed a priest by God, even though Saul was hunting him. Every righteous man holds priestly rank. And all the Lord’s apostles are priests: they inherit no lands and no houses here, but serve God and the altar continually. Moses speaks of them in Deuteronomy, when he blesses Levi: “He said to his father and to his mother, I have not known you; he did not acknowledge his brothers, and he disowned his own sons; he kept your commandments and observed your covenant.” And who are these men who have left father and mother and said goodbye to all their neighbors for the sake of the word of God and his covenant, if not the disciples of the Lord? Of them Moses says again, “They shall have no inheritance, for the Lord himself is their inheritance.” And again, “The priests, the Levites, shall have no portion in the whole tribe of Levi, and no property among Israel; their property is the offerings of the Lord — these they shall eat.” That is why Paul says, “I am not looking for a gift; I am looking for fruit.” And to his disciples, who held the Lord’s own Levitical portion, and who when hungry were allowed to eat heads of grain, he said, “The workman deserves his food.”

The priests in the temple profaned the Sabbath and were blameless. Why were they blameless? Because when they were in the temple they were not busy with ordinary affairs but with the service of the Lord, fulfilling the law and not overstepping it — unlike the man who on his own initiative carried dry wood into the camp of God and was justly stoned to death. For “every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire,” and “whoever defiles the temple of God, God will defile him.”

All things, then, are of one and the same substance — that is, they come from one and the same God. So the Lord says to the disciples, “Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his storeroom things new and old.” He did not teach that the man who brought out the old was one person and the man who brought out the new another; they were one and the same. For the Lord is the good master of the house, who rules his Father’s whole household. He hands down a law suited to slaves and to those who are still untrained; he gives fitting instructions to those who are free and have been counted righteous by faith; and he throws his own inheritance open to those who are sons. [o]

He also called his disciples “scribes” and “teachers of the kingdom of heaven.” He speaks of them elsewhere, to the Jews: “Look, I am sending you wise men and scribes and teachers, and some of them you will kill and drive from city to city.” Now beyond any argument, by the things brought out of the storeroom, new and old, he means the two covenants. The old is the giving of the law that took place long ago; and he points to the new as the way of life the good news requires, the one David speaks of: “Sing to the Lord a new song.” Isaiah too: “Sing to the Lord a new hymn. His beginning — his name is glorified from the height of the earth; they proclaim his powers in the islands.” And Jeremiah says, “Look, I will make a new covenant, not like the one I made with your fathers,” at Mount Horeb. But one and the same householder produced both covenants: the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who spoke with Abraham and with Moses alike, and who has restored us to freedom again and multiplied the grace that comes from himself.

He declares, “Something greater than the temple is here.” Now greater and less are not said of things that have nothing in common, that are opposite in kind and cancel each other out. They are said of things of the same substance, which share the same properties and differ only in number and size — water compared with water, light with light, grace with grace. So the legislation given for freedom is greater than the one given for slavery, and for that reason it has also been spread not through one nation only but over the whole world. For one and the same Lord, who is greater than the temple, greater than Solomon and greater than Jonah, confers gifts on human beings — his own presence, and the resurrection from the dead. He does not change God or announce a different Father, but that very same one, who always has more to measure out to the people of his house. And as their love toward God increases, he gives them more and greater gifts. So the Lord said to his disciples, “You will see greater things than these.” And Paul declares, “Not that I have already obtained it, or am already counted righteous, or have already been made perfect. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when what is perfect has come, the things that are in part will be done away with.”

So then: when what is perfect comes, we will not see a different Father, but the one we long to see now — for “blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” We will not be looking for a different Christ and Son of God either, but for the one born of the virgin Mary, who also suffered, in whom we have put our trust and whom we love; as Isaiah says, “And they will say on that day, Look, this is our Lord God, in whom we have trusted, and we have rejoiced in our salvation.” And Peter says in his letter, “Whom you love without having seen him; in whom, though you do not see him now, you have believed, and you will rejoice with a joy beyond words.” Nor do we receive a different Holy Spirit besides the one who is with us and who cries, “Abba, Father.” We will grow in the very same things we have now, and go further, so that no longer through a mirror, or by way of riddles, but face to face we will enjoy the gifts of God. In the same way now, receiving more than the temple and more than Solomon — that is, the coming of the Son of God — we have not been taught another God besides the Framer and Maker of all, who has been pointed out to us from the beginning, nor another Christ, the Son of God, besides the one the prophets foretold.

The new covenant was known and preached by the prophets, and so was the one who was going to carry it out according to the Father’s good pleasure, revealed to men as it pleased God — so that they might always be making progress by believing in him, and by means of the covenants, one after another, might come by stages to full salvation. For there is one salvation and one God, but the instructions that shape a person are many, and the steps that lead a person up to God are not few. An earthly king, who lasts only a while and is nothing but a man, is allowed to grant his subjects greater privileges from time to time. Will that not be allowed to God, who is always the same, and is always willing to confer a greater measure of grace on the human race and to honor with many gifts, again and again, those who please him?

But suppose making progress meant finding another Father besides the one preached from the beginning; and then, besides the one imagined to have been discovered in second place, finding out a third. Then this man’s progress will consist in going on from a third to a fourth, and from that to another and another. A man who thinks that progress is that sort of thing will never come to rest in one God. Driven away from the one who truly is, and turned around backward, he will be forever seeking and will never find God; he will go on swimming in a depth that has no bottom — unless repentance turns him about and he comes back to the place he was thrown out of, confessing one God, the Father, the Creator, and believing the one who was declared by the law and the prophets, to whom Christ himself bore witness. Christ declared it to the men who were accusing his disciples of not keeping the tradition of the elders: “Why do you make the law of God void because of your tradition? For God said, Honor your father and mother, and, Whoever curses father or mother must certainly die.” And a second time he says to them, “And you have made the word of God void because of your tradition.” In the plainest possible way Christ was confessing that the one who said in the law, “Honor your father and mother, so that it may go well with you,” is Father and God. For the true God acknowledged the law’s command as the word of God, and called no one else God besides his own Father.

That is why John rightly reports that the Lord said to the Jews: “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and they are the ones that testify about me. And you are not willing to come to me so that you may have life.” [y]

Now how did the Scriptures testify about him, unless they came from one and the same Father, who was instructing people beforehand about his Son’s coming and foretelling the salvation he would bring? “For if you had believed Moses, you would have believed me, since he wrote about me.” He said this, no doubt, because the Son of God is planted everywhere throughout Moses’ writings. At one point he is speaking with Abraham, when he is about to eat with him; at another with Noah, giving him the measurements of the ark; at another asking after Adam; at another bringing judgment down on the men of Sodom; and again, when he becomes visible, directing Jacob on his journey and speaking with Moses out of the bush. It would be endless to list all the places where Moses shows forth the Son of God.

He was not ignorant of the day of the Lord’s suffering either. He foretold him in a figure, by the name he gave the Passover; and it was at that very festival, proclaimed so long beforehand by Moses, that our Lord suffered, fulfilling the Passover. And he described not only the day but the place as well, and the hour at which the sufferings ended, and the sign of the sun going down, when he said: “You may not sacrifice the Passover in any other of your towns that the Lord your God is giving you, but at the place the Lord your God chooses to have his name called on there; there you shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening, toward the setting of the sun.”

He had already announced his coming, too, when he said: “A ruler will not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his loins, until he comes for whom it is stored up; and he is the hope of the nations. He ties his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the tendril. He will wash his robe in wine and his outer garment in the blood of the grape. His eyes will be more joyful than wine, and his teeth whiter than milk.”

So let the men with a reputation for investigating everything investigate this. At what time did a prince and a leader fail out of Judah? Who is the hope of the nations? Who is the vine? What was the donkey’s colt that is called his? What is the clothing, and what are the eyes, and what are the teeth, and what is the wine? Let them look into every one of these points, and they will find that no one else was announced but our Lord, Christ Jesus.

That is why Moses said, rebuking the people for their ingratitude, “You foolish people, and without sense, is this how you repay the Lord?” And again he indicates that the one who founded and created them at the beginning — the Word, who in the last times also redeems us and gives us life — is shown hanging on the tree, and they will not believe in him. For he says, “And your life will be hanging before your eyes, and you will not believe your life.” And again, “Was it not this same one, your Father, who got you as his own, and made you, and created you?”