"The New Testament is clear: what the Old
Testament anticipated and promised has now arrived in
Christ. In some sense it began with
his conception, yet
most definitively it began in
his sacrificial death (Luke
22:20; cf. I Cor. 11:25; 2 Corinthians 3; Hebrews
8-10). The benefits
of his work are now applied to the church-a new international community-joined
to him by faith by the
work of the Spirit. The promised age
is now here-the last days have
arrived-even though it awaits its consummation when Christ comes again. In Jesus the
Messiah, God the Son incarnate, God has laid
bare his mighty arm to
save his people in power and
grace. In his obedient life and death, the
desperate plight begun in Eden now
finds solution and
the new creation is won. In Jesus Christ and him
alone, the prophetic anticipation
of God's coming
to save in and through David's greater Son
is fulfilled. Indeed, as D. A. Carson reminds us, 'the promise that through Abraham's seed
all the nations of the earth will be blessed, gradually expanded into a major theme in the Old Testament, now
bursts into the Great
Commission, the mushrooming growth of
the Jewish
church into the Gentile world, the spreading
flame reaching across the Roman Empire and beyond, in anticipation of the climactic consummation of God's promises in the new heaven
and new earth.'" [1]
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1. Kingdom Through Covenant, Peter J. Gentry & Stephen J. Wellum, Crossway, Ill., USA, 2012, Page 652.
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