The covenant of love.

Jonathan does a quick overview of covenant theology in the Bible and fleshes out the relationship of covenant to charter. God uses covenants to establish his rule over a people identified with Himself. The actual list of things specifically are: "to identify a people with himself, to distinguish them from the world, to call them to righteousness, to make them his witness, to display and share in his glory, to identify a people with one another, to act as a testimony for them, to assign responsibilities to every parter, to render accountability, to protect his people, and to provide clarity in all these matters" (p. 236). And local church membership is used by God to accomplish these things.

I found this chapter to be a little tricky, especially since I don't have a large background in covenant theology. Jonathan argues that we need to build our ecclesiology on two structures in the canon: covenantal and kingdom. This is as opposed to arbitrarily emphasizing one metaphor over another. "Covenant" people has implications of us being tied together, about who we are. "Kingdom" people addresses the question of what we are called to do. And covenant and charter collide in the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper. The charter given in Matthew 16, 18, and 28 commands the local church to practice baptism. The new covenant in Matthew 26 commands the local church to observe the Lord's Supper.

And an interesting quote on the missional church movement:

The current trend among many theologians and church leaders to emphasize the missionary nature of the church can become reductionistic. In other words, it reduces the church to its function, like reducing a person's identity to that of his or her job, and only one of those jobs, at that.

General Updates:

• For those of you who don't know, Kevin and Mandy are engaged! We should be in much prayer for them!
• July 4th fireworks were great. Group of us went on the national mall to watch it; the Stiles and Furmans came with us, which was a treat.
• I still haven't started my job at USCC yet. Hopefully will get the paperwork done soon!