Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Are Old Testament and Tribulation saints in Christ, the same way as New Testament saints are? And in what sense is Jesus the Son of God? A couple of questions we’re going to look at today. Thank you for joining us on Grace in Focus. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. Our purpose is to promote a focused free grace gospel. You can find out more about us at our website, FaithAlone.org and view our YouTube videos at YouTube Grace Evangelical Society. We release new ones a couple of times a week, so join us there as well. YouTube Grace Evangelical Society and our website once again, FaithAlone.org.
And now with our discussion of today, here are Bob Wilkin and Leon Adkins.

LEON: Bob, we have a good question from Flint. Am I wrong to state the Old Testament saints and the Tribulation saints are not, quote, in Christ? Are they in Christ? The same as church age saints? If they are, does that mean Old Testament saints are raised at the Rapture when the dead in Christ rise first?

BOB: Okay, that’s a couple of really, really good questions. So this is a big deal for people who study New Testament Greek. The words “in Christ” in Greek sound a lot like what they are in English. It’s en Christo, in Christ. The apostle Paul is the famous apostle that uses this expression en Christo. He uses it a lot and he uses en Christo to refer to those who are in the body of Christ. Every time he uses it, it always refers to people who are in the Church.

Now people who were in the Old Testament had everlasting life and they had it by faith in the coming Messiah, that is the Christ. The word Christ is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew word mashiach or Messiah, right

LEON: The anointed one.

BOB: The anointed one. So the Old Testament person believed in the coming Messiah for his eternal life, the coming Anointed One for his eternal destiny. We believe in the one who’s already come for our eternal destiny, but the message is the same.

Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” And the context of Genesis 15:1-5 is God told him about the coming Messiah. And remember, Jesus said in John 8:56, “Abraham rejoiced to see My day.” So Abraham believed in Jesus, he believed in Him and in that sense he was in Christ, but he was not in Paul’s sense, in Christ, because every time Paul uses it, he means in the body of Christ.

And the church is a separate entity from redeemed Israel. And it’s a separate entity from redeemed Gentiles. So there are Gentiles who came to faith in the Old Testament. There will be Gentiles who come to faith during the Tribulation. There were Jews who came to faith in the Old Testament. And there were Jews who will come to faith during the Tribulation. None of those people are en Christo. None of them are in Christ.

So when the Rapture occurs and Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, “the dead in Christ will rise first”, He’s talking about the dead en Christol. That’s only church age believers.

So what we find in answer to Flint’s question is that people who are in Christ are specifically people who are part of the Church, the body of Christ.

LEON: In this age.

BOB: And this is called dispensationalism. You and I were trained in dispensationalism. So according to dispensationalism, the church age follows the time period when you had Israel and the age of law. And so during that time period when they were under the law of Moses, in order to please God, they were to keep the law of Moses. But even then they didn’t do it legalistically.

David had what Paul would call the mind of Christ in 1 Corinthians 2:16. He was spiritually minded. And that’s what pleased God. And so even though in the law of Moses, there were different set of commandments, it was the same way to be born again. And it was the same way to be sanctified. It was by pleasing God with the right heart attitude. And the attitude of someone like the Judaizers in Galatia was not only wrong in terms of justification, but it was also wrong in terms of sanctification.

So really good question, Flint. And the answer would be Old Testament believers have everlasting life. And it’s only by faith in Christ. And we might say in the loose sense, they were in Christ, but they weren’t in Christ the way Paul uses that expression because when Paul uses it, he means in the body of Christ.

And by the way, we don’t know when the Old Testament saints are going to be raised. We know it has to be before the Millennium because they too will rule and reign with Christ if they were faithful. But we don’t know. Are they raptured at the same time that the church age people are? Probably not. It’s probably after the Tribulation ends before the Old Testament saints are raptured. They are going to be brought to earth and they’ll be judged sometime around the time of the judgment of the sheep and the goats, which is Matthew 25:31-46.

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BOB: Now we have a tough question here, the second one and it’s from Anne. Anne has heard me speak on this before and she says, I want to know please, what makes Jesus the Son of God. The Mormons believe that Jesus is the brother of Satan, which is, she says is totally wrong. But she said, I once heard from Bob that Jesus is not a son in its literal sense. I know that Jesus is the exact representation of God and that Yahweh in the Old Testament is sometimes the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ. But please clarify this to me. What does it mean that Jesus is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity?

So you and I were talking and you said that the Muslims have some kind of expression related to Son. What is that?

LEON: Yes, I once told a Muslim that Jesus was the Son of God. He answered, no, God doesn’t have any children. God doesn’t have a wife. He doesn’t have an offspring. And I said, well, I have heard you Muslims talk about people who live in the desert and you call them sons of the desert because they love the desert. And God the Father loves Jesus and therefore He is his Son.

BOB: That’s a good illustration, Leon. James and John were called the sons of thunder because their father was a very bold and strong person. It didn’t mean that thunder gave birth to them.

But I think you made a good point. When we call Jesus the Son of God, it hints at the fact of the intimacy and love he has with the one we call God the Father. Well, God the Father is not the literal father of Jesus. He certainly is not the father of the Holy Spirit. All three members of the Trinity are holy. All three members of the Trinity are spirit. And yet we only call one of them the Holy Spirit. And we call one of them the Son of God. But Jesus has no beginning. He’s eternal.

LEON: Eternally preexisting.

BOB: Yeah. In fact, Jesus never had a beginning. He, you know, some people get a little confused when we talk about He’s the only begotten of the Father. That doesn’t mean there was a point at time in which Jesus was created. Some people misunderstand the term firstfruits—that he was the firstfruits of creation or the firstfruits in terms of the resurrection.

The point is Jesus is the Eternal One. Remember, John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. So Theos is used of God the Father there, but it’s also used of God the Son. I remember years ago, I think it was John Niemela gave a talk. Was Jesus beside himself? Is that what John 1:1 means? No, God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are three members of what we call the Godhead. We don’t really understand this, do we?

LEON: It’s a mystery.

BOB: It’s a mystery. And it’s a mystery that’s not yet been revealed. I’m speaking this Sunday in Sunday School about the term mysteries in the Bible. But when the New Testament talks about Old Testament mysteries, those are things which have been revealed now because we have more revelation. But there are other mysteries that have not yet been revealed, right?

So the full sense of what it means that Jesus is the Son of God, if we claim we understand the Trinity, we’re lying because we don’t know any being that is three separate persons and yet one being. You know, people talk about water at the triple point is both gas, liquid and solid. Well, that’s fine, but that doesn’t really help. At least it doesn’t help me much. We can say, well, Leon, you’re a Father and you’re a Son and you’re a husband. Well, yeah, I get that, but that’s three different roles of the same person. We’re talking here about three separate people.

And I think the best way to understand it is Jesus is the Son of God in a figurative sense. And it tells us about the love relationship of the Godhead that Jesus and God the Father and God the Holy Spirit all have loved each other for eternity. That’s why they didn’t need to create anybody or anything. They were perfectly joyful and contented among the Godhead and they chose to create the angels and humans and planets. This brings joy to God, but he does it too because it brings joy to us.

And so I think, Anne, you’ve asked a great question and I would encourage you to study the Scriptures on this. You can read, there’s lots of books about Jesus being the Son of God. But the basic point is that Jesus has a loving relationship with the one we call God the Father.

LEON: And he has such a perfect love relationship with God the Father that only God could experience this type of essence. Therefore, Jesus is equal to God.

BOB: You’re right, and John 1:1, He is God. He is the being we call God, but He is not God the Father. If that’s confusing to you, welcome to the club because we don’t know all mysteries, right? We don’t know everything. We know what God has revealed to us.

Well, I hope that helps, Anne, and all of you and remember, let’s keep grace in focus. Amen.

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On our next episode: Does the Church exist in the Old Testament in some different form? Please join us and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.