Here is a portion of the teaching of Meredith Kline .
Do you share this view of the Servants Mission?
How does it affect how you live in this world in the midst of people who are yet outside of the Kingdom?
I believe if you are not looking at scripture along this line of thought...you are missing it:thumbs:
Do you share this view of the Servants Mission?
How does it affect how you live in this world in the midst of people who are yet outside of the Kingdom?
Jesus’ life is portrayed as a mission. His very identity as Messiah
involved commissioning and his messianic consciousness was revealed
in statements reflecting his awareness of having been sent by the
Father on a special mission with a commandment to obey (John 10:18),
a righteousness to fulfill (Matt 3:15),
a baptism to be suffered (Luke12:50),
and a work to finish (John 17:4).
This special mission of the Son is interpreted in the New Testament within the context of various covenants. When the fullness of time was come, he was sent by God as one under law (Gal 4:4),
as the Servant of the Lord prophesied by
Isaiah (cf. Isa 42; 49; 50; 52-53),
and thus as the true Israel, the true covenant servant that Israel failed to be.
Indeed, covenant sums up the
mission of the Isaianic Servant (Isa 42:6; 49:8). Or again, as we have
seen, Jesus was sent forth as another Adam, to be the obedient
covenant servant that the first Adam failed to be. Also, he was the
image of God (2 Cor 4:4) and, as observed above, covenantal
relationship was inherent in the first Adam’s possession of that image.
The messianic mission performed on earth began in heaven:
“For I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that
sent me” (John 6:38).
Jesus was sent forth from heaven to earth on a covenantal mission with covenantal oath-commitments from his Father.
Messianic psalms reveal to us the eternal communion between the
Father and Son, in which the Father covenants to the Son a kingship on
Zion over the uttermost parts of the earth (Ps 2:6-9) and grants him by
oath an eternal royal priesthood (Ps 110:4; cf. Heb 5:6; 7:17,21).
Jesus, identifying himself as the divine royal Son of those psalms
declared to his disciples: “As my Father appointed unto me a kingdom,
so I appoint unto you that you may eat and drink at my table in my
kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Luke
22:29, 30). It is interesting that the verb translated “appointed”
(diatithemi) is the verb to which diatheke, “covenant”, relates. Indeed,
this affirmation of Jesus stands in the context of his ordaining the
sacramental seal of the new covenant, in association with his
statement, “This is my blood of the new covenant” (Matt 26:28; Mark
14:24; Luke 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25). Hence, in this biblical passage we
have the next thing to an actual application of the term “covenant” to
the arrangement between the Father and the Son. A justifiable
rendering would be: “My Father covenanted unto me a kingdom.” On
that same occasion, the Son of God in prayer recalled the Father’s
commitment to him in love before the foundation of the world, a
commitment to grant him as obedient messianic Servant the glory he
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had with the Father before the world was (John 17:5,24). He presented
his claim of merit as the faithful Servant who had met the terms of the
eternal covenant of works by obediently fulfilling his mission: “I have
glorified thee on the earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest
me to do” (John 17:4).
And then he made his request that the grant of
glory proposed in that covenant now be conferred: “And now, O Father,
glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee
before the world was” (John 17:5). Jesus, the second Adam, standing
before his judgment tree could declare that he had overcome the
temptation to eat the forbidden fruit and that he had accomplished the
charge to judge Satan, and, therefore, he could claim his right of access
to the tree of life.
Heavenly commitments of the Father to the Son are reflected in words
of covenant promise spoken by God to man. In the Abrahamic Covenant
God promised to Abraham and his seed royalty and a mediatorship of
blessing to all nations.
And in the Davidic Covenant that royal seed of
Abraham was identified as a coming son of David, concerning whom
God swore that his throne should endure as the days of heaven, higher
than the kings of the earth (cf. 2 Sam 7 and Ps 89). In the New
Testament, Paul, expounding God’s ancient covenant, quotes its
promise and interprets: “And to thy seed, which is Christ” (Gal 3:16),
and he identifies this descendant of Abraham, the Christ, as “the seed
to whom the promise was made” (Gal 3:19). Jesus Christ was the one
to whom God’s covenantal commitment, given in promise and oath, was
directed. Thus, both in the inner divine communication of heaven’s
eternity and in the revelation provided in the course of earthly history
the Son of God received, along with his commissioning to redemptive
suffering, his Father’s covenantal commitment of a reward of kingdom
glory.
Enough of the evidence has been cited to show that the biblical
theologian will certainly want to identify these eternal commitments
between the Father and Son as a covenant. Incidentally, since this
arrangement between the Father and the Son, viewed as the second
man, is the second half of the two Adams structure (cf. Rom 5 and 1
Cor 15), to demonstrate its covenantal character is also to corroborate
yet further the case that has been made for identifying God’s relation to
the first Adam as a covenant - and, indeed, as a covenant of works.
Because God was pleased to constitute both the first and second Adams
as federal representatives of a corporate humanity, the obedient
performance of the obligations of the covenant of works administered to
each of them would have the result that all whom they represented
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would receive with them the proposed grant of God’s kingdom-glory. In
the case of the first Adam all the predestined mankind that should
descend from him was represented by him in his covenant of works and
all would, therefore, have been beneficiaries, if he had kept the
covenant. In the case of the second Adam, however, not all of mankind
is elect in him and represented by him in his covenant of works and,
therefore, not all men but only those who, by the sovereign election of
divine grace, are in Christ are the actual beneficiaries of the eternal
glory bestowed through the Covenant of Grace.
I believe if you are not looking at scripture along this line of thought...you are missing it:thumbs: