The Kingdom of God Quotes

“Personal obedience to commands is a radically different basis for an inheritance than faith in a promise. While the Scriptures uphold the moral law as the abiding way of life for God’s redeemed people, it can never be a way to life. Every covenant has two parties, and we assume the responsibilities of faithful partners, but the basis of acceptance with God is the covenant-keeping of another, the Servant of the Lord: and because of his faithfulness, we now inherit all of the promises through faith alone, as children of Sarah and citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem.”[”
― Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Kingdom of God: A Baptist Expression of Covenant Theology

“The details of Isaac’s birth were the opposite of Ishmael’s. Isaac’s mother represents the unconditional covenant of grace revealed to Abraham. Isaac was born (1) supernaturally, (2) by the free woman, and (3) according to the promise. In a sense, these characteristics are true for all those who have been born again by the Spirit into the covenant of grace.”
― Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Kingdom of God: A Baptist Expression of Covenant Theology

“Calvin was correct when he wrote, “It is quite certain that the primary promises, which contained that covenant ratified with the Israelites by God under the Old Testament, were spiritual and referred to eternal life.”
― Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Kingdom of God: A Baptist Expression of Covenant Theology

“Therefore, the Law of Moses was instituted to call them to repent, and the promise to Abraham was given to call them to believe the gospel.”
― Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Kingdom of God: A Baptist Expression of Covenant Theology

“Not only does the wording of the Abrahamic covenant reveal its dichotomous nature; the actual working out and fulfillment of the covenant in redemptive history serve to verify its two-sided (conditional and unconditional) character. The promises to Abraham concerning a coming kingdom were slowly and progressively fulfilled in the Old Testament in a conditional, typological, and temporal fashion. In the New Testament, the promised kingdom is being progressively established in an unconditional, antitypical, and eternal fashion.”
― Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Kingdom of God: A Baptist Expression of Covenant Theology

“Not only did the seventeenth-century Baptists understand the dual nature of Abraham’s covenant; they also understood this dual nature to be the ground of the continuity and discontinuity of the rest of the divine covenants.”
― Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Kingdom of God: A Baptist Expression of Covenant Theology

“With so much disparity, is there a unified message between the two testaments? One could safely assume the central plot of the Scriptures is the gospel, but how do all of the differences between the Old and New Testaments come together to form the unified gospel message?”
― Jeffrey D. Johnson, The Kingdom of God: A Baptist Expression of Covenant Theology