Jesus gave us a new directive that we be loving one another “just as I love you” (John 13:34, 15:12). And how was that, exactly? “Greater love than this has no one, that anyone may be laying [down] his soul over (υπερ, on behalf of, for the sake/benefit of) his friends (-φιλ-). You are my friends if you should be doing whatever I am directing you” (John 15:13-14).
However, Jesus only could do “what he should be observing the Father doing, for whatever He may be doing, this the Son also is doing likewise. For the Father is fond (-φιλ-) of the Son and is showing him all that He is doing” (John 5:19-20). Evidently, They were very good friends, even bosom buddies (John 1:18)! Clearly this means that Jesus was directing his learners to do no more than the Father had done for him: “Just as the Father loves me, I also love you. Remain in my love. If ever you should be keeping my directives, you will be remaining in my love, just as I have kept the directives of my Father and am remaining in His love” (John 15:9-10).
And all this is “that the world may know that You commission me and love them just as You love me….for You love me before the disruption of the world….And these know that You commission me. And I make known to them Your name and I shall make it known, that the love with which You love me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:23-26).
Thus the Father Himself must have laid [down] His own soul for His Son, His friend (-φιλ-) of whom He was so fond (-φιλ-). And the Son saw this.
Now comes the inevitable question, of course: What did the Father do for the Son before the disruption of the world that was observed by the Son and became, hence, the model of self-sacrifice that the Son, in turn, modeled for us by surrendering himself to be crucified? What did the Son see? What precisely was the nature of the Father’s “laying [down] His soul“ on the Son’s behalf? [1/29/02]
OLD TESTAMENT ALLEGORY
When I speak of understanding Old Testament names, places, or events as allegorical, I mean that in relation to the New Testament era inaugurated by Jesus the Messiah, not in relation to some imagined ‘supernatural’ (and in this sense ambiguously ‘spiritual’ realm. These two meanings are literally worlds apart! The first, or Messianic, sense signifies a fulfillment via universalizing what in the Old Testament is merely localized nationally. God’s original (and historically ultimate) intention is the reception of His salvation by all nations, not just Israel. Jehovah’s historic covenant with Israel was intended to exhibit, in fine, His comprehensive intentions in a comprehensible narrative, i.e., one with literary and chronological limits. To universalize the acceptance and application of that Hebrew narrative required a number of methods. One of them was to convey the original message into the Greek language as well as Aramaic and, according to ancient tradition, Latin (in the case of the Gospel of Mark). Another method was to allegorize the audience addressed from Jews to Christians, from Israel to the church. Other New Testament authors do this, and Paul actually gives it the classical label, “allegorizing,” in Gal. 4:24. By citing dozens of passages originally addressed to the nation of Israel and applying them to the church of God, New Testament authors, in effect, transfer Israel’s Covenant blessings (conditional on faithful obedience) to the new humanity in the Messiah (all who trust, whether Jew or not).
This sense of allegory, however, does not derogate in the least from the historicity of the Old Testament narrative. In fact, such an allegorical application in order to be valid for human life Anno Domini, requires that the Old Testament be historically true, for the Old Testament history is revelatory of God’s covenantal faithfulness, i.e., troth or truth, such that what He actually declared, whether blessing or curse, was actually fulfilled before the eyes of its original hearers and/or their accompliced descendants. That is, it truly revealed His age-abiding permanence.
This initial horizon of God’s communications with mankind spanned the entire Old Covenant from Sinai till 70 A.D. There was, however, an overlap of 40 years—one generation—during which the fleshly descendants of Abraham were “harvested” throughout the Roman Empire for the sake of the New Covenant inaugurated by their Messiah, preceding the complete dissolution of the Old Covenant, along with its architectural, ceremonial, and political symbols. Its verbal symbols, however, inscripturated enduringly in the Old Testament, instead of being abolished altogether, were transfigured by Messiah’s Explanations and actions in a demonstrably authoritative way so as to transfer their application from the Israelite nation to the Messianic humanity and thus transcend their original geographic, ethnic, lingual, and political constrictions.
This second horizon of God’s Old Testament communications is the object and recipient of its allegorical application or fulfillment. This is its Messianic universalization to “all who believe.” We are now “true Israel,” “true Jews,” true sons of Jacob, true Covenant partners, true inheritors of allotments, true citizens of Jerusalem, true worshipers at Mt. Zion, having eaten of the one true Sacrifice, having been unnaturally grafted into the one Olive Tree, being the New Nation bearing good fruit for God, being the true priests of God (1 Peter 2:4-10), etc., etc.
Yet there is also a third horizon—the New Heavens and New Earth (the truest terra firma). It is there that all those who truly believed the Messianic promises of the Old Testament and, since the advent of Jesus, truly believe that despite their own temporary mortal experience and suffering to the contrary he was the solely worthy and authentic recipient of those promises, would all together inherit allotments on this soon-to-be-liberated planet that will eclipse anything utterable in any language of earth-yet-unliberated, whether in its literal constrictedness or its allegorical expansiveness! This third horizon, new skies and earth alike, can best be left to the understatement of John’s Revelation 21-22, and thus to hallowed imagination. But, for sure, it’s beyond calculation by any human calculus.
It should be clear from the above that the New Testament meaning of allegory is no mere ‘spiritualizing,’ ‘[e]vaporizing’ of Old Testament depictions of covenanted blessings. Said differently, its prophetic revelations are never intended to be ‘verticalized’ into some ‘upper storey’ fulfillment in a ‘supernatural’ realm, but rather, only further ‘horizontalized’ in anticipation of the New Creation of Revelation 21-22. This means that we must wait with yet a little more historical groaning and agonizing until the complement of the nations has been implanted into the one universal New Humanity of Messiah, by faith, and then the fullest possible realization of those darkly stated prophetic premonitions will be upon us in a blinding flash and materialize before our quivering, fresh, immortal bodies in the person of Reality himself—Jesus, the promised Son of king David, the last Adam, the Lamb of God sacrificed and raised again to make our new life possible, the only true Master of all, the Sovereign of the created universe, the only-born Son of God, Firstborn of Deity, brought forth after His own Kind.
To get ‘down to earth’ about such a Reality in this present vicious age (Gal. 1:4) necessitates not some dematerialization of their actual earthly embodiment, but a more solid grasp of their future, more glorious actuality in the New Earth. So this does mean a present enjoyment primarily, though not exclusively, in Spirit. After all, this is the only locus within Israel’s historic past as well as in our own present, and even in the most distant future—of God’s Kingdom anyway! For from there it ramifies to impact creation-at-large.
Moreover, and most curiously, even this present interim reality of God’s Holy Spirit (the most characteristic promise and gift of the New Covenant, let us never forget) is a more powerful manifestation and revelation of God’s creation-restoring Kingdom than any testimony to be found in the Old Testament. So even though the ultimate revelation of that power will entail and encompass the rejuvenation of the whole disrupted visible-and-invisible created universe, yet even now we may taste those same powers of the impending age within this age as signs of its sure and certain advent in the Father’s good time.
Thus the “spirituals“/”gifts“ (1 Cor. 12) given to the-new-mankind-in-Messiah are solid, confirmed, corroborating signs of the Kingdom’s yet more glorious future. It is mandatory, therefore, that this “assembly of the firstborn” (Heb. 12:23) actually make a point of practicing and preparing succeeding generations of saints to practice the just and wholesome use of these wonderful and miraculous and astonishing powers as our proper and rightful testimonies to Messiah and his present-and-future Kingdom.
What we must better understand in this context is that the teaching of Jesus when he was here on earth is more in accord with what is now possible, given the coming of the Messianically promised Present of the Wholesome Spirit, than anything found in the teaching of Moses. Jews today may dispute this, no surprise; yet more tragically (because we expect more of those who claim to follow Jesus as their Messiah and Master) Christians of a dispensationalist persuasion also deny it by disclaiming their Master’s teaching as even applying to themselves in this ‘age of grace,’ as they like to say. Such disowning of Jesus’ teaching amounts to a partial disowning of “the Master who bought them” (2 Peter 2:1)! They thus have overreacted from the hypernomianism of various especially Protestant or Reformation traditions into a nearly (though happily, because virtually always inconsistently) antinomian stance in terms of so-called ethics. For without Moses or Jesus, they are left predominantly with the apostle Paul. But Paul better understands the New Covenant than do his wannabe devotees. Thus we find everywhere throughout his letters—roughly the second half of most of them—ethical or so-called paraenetic injunctions clearly derived from the teaching of his Master, Jesus, when he walked this earth. Better secondhand than not at all!
Yet even so, a full-on Messianic ethic will start with the Gospels as anticipating the soon-to-descend Power of the age to come, in order to realize and actualize Christ’s directives in every sphere of human endeavor. For this is the impulse and aim of graciousness! God’s fully unveiled favor for all of mankind, available for the taking by faith, is ’embodied’ or ‘incarnated’ in His own Spirit that, upon entering our hearts, enlightens us to grasp Messiah’s often strange teaching, and hence to ’embody’ or ‘incarnate’ it yet further within all our human relations and activities, especially though not exclusively in company with fellow saints.
We can now see that the necessity of allegorizing the applications of Old Testament prophetic imagery in this New Age is accompanied by the introduction of a higher law than Moses ever taught or could have uttered. It would not have been possible to obey Jesus’ teaching while still under the Old Covenant, “old and decrepit” (Hebrews 8:13) as it was even way back then. For its subjects would have needed a “new heart” and “new spirit” for the new and higher ethic to have made headway in this darkened planet.
However, headway is exactly what God desires for the new Royal Law of Love that Messiah Jesus communicated during his first sojourn on earth. It is hardly conceivable that such headway should await a Jewish millennium where, as dispensationalists have generally maintained, the localized shadows of the Old Covenant should be resurrected into literal fleshly culture, as if Messiah had never once-and-for-all banished those shadows by the full, literally spiritual fulness of his own glorious radiance! “Go into all the world; herald the Proclamation to the entire creation” (Mark 16:15). “Going, then, make learners of all the nations…teaching them to be keeping all, whatever I direct you” (Matthew 28:19-30). This is our mandate in the present vicious age: to make headway with the advancing edge of Messiah’s troops, by the sword of the Spirit—Messiah’s Explanation from God for us in the Gospels. If we love him, we must labor to keep his directives ourselves, and teach transgressors his ways, too.
Christians must—we are duty-bound to—extend Messiah’s universal authority into every sector of earthly life. We thus ‘take dominion’ over the earth in the only normative and legitimate way to ‘beat back’ the interlopers. His Spirit’s power energizes our subordination to his Explanations so that our further subordination of the works of God’s hands is done in justice, peace, wholesomeness, and wisdom, bearing good fruit to God.
Therefore, to “be disposed to that which is above, not to that on the earth” is simply to orient ourselves to “the Zion above,” “the New Jerusalem“—the capital of “the New Earth“—whose descent down to earth awaits the return of Jesus in final judgment, who will then completely and finally avenge all acts of rebellion against the “Law coming out of Zion”—allegorically, and therefore evangelically and veritably, the Explanation and motivation (Spirit) of Messiah Jesus.
The Christian/Messianic subculture within the human race stands as an entrenched colony of God’s universal reign, often besieged by diversely armed enemies out in the far hinterlands of Jerusalem-above, ‘mother’ of all loyal citizens. We do not hanker for any return whatever to the legislation or customs of Moses and the Jews of old. That old ethic is, thankfully, passé, superseded heart-and-soul by the New Legislation of Jesus. But this New Ethic is no less earthly or robust than that of Moses, though less juvenile in its restrictions and requirements. “The Royal Law of Love” is custom-designed for humankind in its majority. God has come near in Immanuel. His Spirit is superabundantly available to all who trust him—daughters and sons, even youngsters and slaves! It’s a new day! We can enjoy in this present darkness the Light of Life even as we “are hoping for New Heavens and a New Earth in which justice is dwelling” without unseemly impatience, much less rebellious resistance (2 Peter 3:13).
We can fling ourselves away for the salvation of others from the same self-sacrificial love the Father demonstrated to the Son, and the Son, in turn, to us, and be none the worse for it! For the Resurrectionary Event proved once and for all that death is not fatal for those who trust Jesus! [1/30/02]
The Premial Atonement 