The Nature of the People of God

I'm reading a new book on biblical theology by Benjamin Gladd: From Adam and Israel to the Church: A Biblical Theology of the People of God. The author used to be a dispensationalist, but has migrated to a Reformed covenant theology. Dispensationalism is a popular interpretation of the scriptures that argues that the Bible is organized by distinct dispensations, or strict epochs, unique periods of history. At the heart of dispensationalism is the separation between the Christian church and ethnic Israel, that these are distinct people groups and that each functions within its own dispensation. In other words, God is dealing with ethnic Jews as descendants from the Old Testament narrative in a completely different way than he is dealing with the Christian church. One God, two peoples. Covenant theology sees this differently. One cardinal aspect of covenant theology is that the ONE people of God spans the history of redemption. From Genesis 1-2 to Revelation 21-22, there remains one covenant community. The church is the culmination of God's gathering of his people; first the Jews of the Old Testament who remained committed to his promises of a coming Messiah and then to all people who have faith in Jesus Christ. God does not have a separate plan for salvation for ethnic Jews; there is one salvation through Jesus Christ, and the true Israel is comprised of all of the restored people of God. All of God's people are called to one faith through Jesus Christ. Ethnic Jews are not called to a unique salvation, but to the same salvation as the Gentiles in Christ - the true Israel.

While his change in theology was the impetus for the book, the covenant theology - dispensationalist debate is not its focus. The author's main focus is to "examine the nature of the people of God from Genesis to Revelation through the lens of being in God's 'image.'" His objective is to walk us through the Bible's teaching on what it means to be part of God's family.

This book has 12 chapters. My plan is to pick out something particularly interesting in each chapter and share it with you. Let's see how it goes!