John G. Reisinger > Quotes

“When Israel is treated as exactly analogous with the body of Christ, then Moses must be not only equated with Christ as an equal lawgiver, Moses actually must be made the greater lawgiver and Christ merely the greatest interpreter of Moses, because Moses came first.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“The Ten Commandments are a covenant document given to Israel alone; they are not an unchanging moral code for all people in all ages.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“The tablets of the covenant (Ten Commandments) in the ark represent the just demands of the law covenant. There you see the ‘just, holy, and good law’ of God. The lid of the ark covers the broken covenant of law inside the ark with the blood of atonement. There you see the free gospel of sovereign grace. There is not an ounce of grace or gospel in the law covenant document in the box. It is pure law, demanding perfect obedience as the condition of blessing and death as the consequence of disobedience. The blood on the mercy seat covers and hides the broken covenant and the sins against that covenant”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“In the book of Hebrews the Holy Spirit is not contrasting two kinds of Christianity. He is not contrasting immature Christians and mature ones. He is contrasting Judaism and Christianity …. He is contrasting the substance and the shadow, the pattern and the reality, the visible and the invisible, the facsimile and the real thing, the type and the anti-type, the picture and the actual. The Old Testament essentially is God’s revelation of pictures and types, which are fulfilled in Christ in the New Testament. The book of Hebrews, therefore, compares and contrasts the two parts of God’s revelation that our division of the Bible reflects.6”
― John G. Reisinger, Christ, Our New Covenant Prophet, Priest and King

“The relationship of law to grace, the Old Covenant to the New, and Moses to Christ is not one of opposition, but one of preparation and progression.”
― John G. Reisinger, In Defense of Jesus, The New Lawgiver

“Breaking the sabbath renounced the whole covenant relationship with God. To profane the Sabbath by performing even the slightest physical work was to deny all of the vows taken at Mount Sinai. It was an action equivalent to a man deliberately spitting in God’s face and then, in defiant self-sufficiency and rebellion, breaking the most important law of the covenant by walking away and picking up some sticks or doing some other physical work.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“First, even though the law, as codified covenant terms, has a historical beginning at Sinai, the underlying principles all of those laws, except the sabbath, were already revealed to man through the original creation. Neither knowledge of God and his character, nor the reality of known sin began at Sinai. Secondly, even though the law, viewed as a covenant document, ended when Christ established the New Covenant, the unchanging ethical elements that underlie the commandments written on the tables of stone are just as binding on us to day as they were on an Israelite.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“We insist that Christ is the new lawgiver and Barcellos insists that Christ is merely the greatest exegete and interpreter of the unchanging law of God given through Moses. To view Christ as only an exegete, even as the greatest exegete, is to reduce the Sermon on the Mount to nothing more than a true and spiritual understanding of the law given to Moses.”
― John G. Reisinger, In Defense of Jesus, The New Lawgiver

“The Ten Commandments, considered as a covenant document, have been replaced by the New Covenant. The individual commandments stand, fall, or are changed according to Christ’s treatment of them. Nine of them are clearly repeated, with some changes, under the laws given to the New Covenant people of God in the New Testament Scriptures and therefore are just as binding today as when given at Sinai.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“The foundation of the old covenant was based on law and said “do or die.” The new covenant is based on grace and says, “It is finished, only believe.” That is not a better version of the same covenant; that is a radical and new covenant based on different and better promises.”
― John G. Reisinger, Christ, Our New Covenant Prophet, Priest and King

“The sabbath forced Israel to think about two things every week. First, the sabbath-rest reminded them of an Eden they had lost because of sin and rebellion. Their life of sweat and tears was a constant reminder of the life of ease and joy they had lost because of their fall in Adam. Secondly, the sabbath was a constant reminder of the promise that one was coming who would establish a greater sabbath-rest that could not be destroyed by anything. The sabbath was a constant reminder of both the burden of sin and the hope of salvation.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“We must see that Moses is finished as a lawgiver just as Aaron is finished as a priest. Aaron was replaced with a new high priest who is greater and better (Heb. 6:20-8:6). Moses has been replaced with a new lawgiver who is greater and better. The covenant of law that God gave through Moses has been replaced with a new covenant that is greater and better, simply because the old one was obsolete (Heb. 8:6-13).”
― John G. Reisinger, But I Say Unto You

“The church of Christ is not simply the adding of the Gentiles to the ‘Jewish church’; it is the true ‘new man’ (Eph. 2:11–22) and the totally ‘new creation’ (2 Cor. 5:17). The church of Christ is also not a parenthesis between a supposed “temporary casting aside and future dealing of God with the nation of Israel.” The church as the Body of Christ is the fulfillment of God’s redemptive goal as prophesied in Genesis 3:15.”
― John G. Reisinger, Abraham's Four Seeds

“Before the better things of the new covenant could be established, the old covenant things had to be perfectly fulfilled and done away with. Our kinsman redeemer was born under the covenant written on the stone Tables of the Covenant in the ark. He perfectly kept all of that covenant’s terms and earned the life and righteousness that it promised. He earned every blessing it promised because he kept every precept it demanded. He literally brought to the Tables of the Covenant the holy, sinless and obedient life it demanded. Every precept must be fulfilled. Every term had to be obeyed just as every prophecy had to be fulfilled. Not a jot or tittle could be left unfinished. On the cross our Lord’s mind went down through the Old Testament, and he saw one thing in Psalm 69:21 not yet finished (“They put gall in my food and gave me vinegar for my thirst.” Psalm 69:21). Later, knowing that all was now completed, and so that the Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit (John 19:28-30).
The moment the last old covenant prophecy was fulfilled, our Lord cried out, “It is finished” and gave up his spirit. The rending of the veil was the evidence that the old was finished and the new had come.”
― John G. Reisinger, Christ, Our New Covenant Prophet, Priest and King

“Our Lord, the Son in whom God has spoken full and final truth (Heb. 1:1-3), has replaced Moses, the servant through whom God had spoken partial and preparatory truth.”
― John G. Reisinger, But I Say Unto You

“The sabbath was the sign of the covenant that God made with Israel and therefore it had to be part of the covenant document of which it was the sign.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“We are saying that a new lawgiver has superceded and gone far beyond what Moses and his law could ever do. We refuse to belittle Moses in order to establish Christ. However, we also refuse to demean Christ by making him an equal moral authority with Moses. We do not believe that Christ came merely to interpret and approve Moses. Christ has given us new laws based entirely on grace. Christ is the new lawgiver over the true house of God.”
― John G. Reisinger, But I Say Unto You

“The covenant written on “tablets of stone” (the Ten Commandments) was deliberately designed by God to minister death (2 Cor. 3:6–9 and Rom. 7:9, 10) to the people described in Deut. 29:4 and Heb. 3:18–4:2. Those rebels did not need a rule of sanctification; they needed a law covenant to kill their conceit and pride—and God graciously gave them a legal covenant to do that very killing work. Do not confuse a gracious purpose (the giving of the legal covenant to convict lost sinners) with the nature of the law covenant that does the essential convicting work. Likewise, do not try to use the instrument that God specifically designed to administer death as the chief instrument in a believer’s conscience today to produce holy living.”
― John G. Reisinger, Abraham's Four Seeds

“The Mount of Transfiguration (Matt.17:1-6) is the object lesson that shows the new Prophet has replaced Moses as Prophet and Lawgiver. The new Prophet also replaced all of the old covenant prophets as God’s spokesmen. The message from heaven saying, “Listen to my Son” is the Father showing the change from the old authority to the new and final authority. This is the same message proclaimed in the Book of Hebrews (1:1-3). Christ is the last and final prophet. He has given us the full and final message of God. God has said all he has to say in his Son.”
― John G. Reisinger, Christ, Our New Covenant Prophet, Priest and King

“We are never told or encouraged to think of ‘unchanging moral law’ when we read the words ‘Ten Commandments’ or any of its synonymous terms. We are to think ‘covenant document.’ We are to think of a specific code of law (the Ten Commandments) that was made the covenant terms of a specific covenant document. We are always to remember that the Ten Commandments were the specific terms, written on stone tablets, of the covenant that established Israel’s special relationship with God. The Ten Commandments, Israel, Sinai, and covenant all go together.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? (Acts 2:5-8). Verses 11–13 again say that they were all “amazed,” but this second amazement was because of what they heard. It was not merely hearing in their own language, but it was the content of the message that they heard that amazed them. Verse 11 says they heard the “wonders of God in [their] own tongues!” They heard the Gospel. However, they were amazed because they were hearing the “wonders of God” not in the sacred Hebrew language but in Gentiles’ languages. This is the heart of the message of the miraculous sign of tongues. As we shall see, God speaking the gospel in Gentile languages instead of the sacred Hebrew language was a deliberate rebuke by God and signaled that God was turning from the Jews to the Gentiles. The Jews heard the gospel in Gentile languages. They were not drunk, but they were confused. They were witnessing the unthinkable. God was showing grace to the Gentiles and was giving the Gentiles the same privileges as the Jews.”
― John G. Reisinger, Christ, Our New Covenant Prophet, Priest and King

“The law covenant was laid on the conscience of a generation of blind rebellious sinners to convict them of their unbelief and to kill their hope in their own righteousness! That covenant only ministered grace as it effected the knowledge of sin and spiritual death in an Israelite’s heart and led him to faith in the gospel covenant given to Abraham.”
― John G. Reisinger, Abraham's Four Seeds

“Any discussion of the Ten Commandments that in any way separates that phrase from the ‘words of the covenant’ written on the tables of stone and given to Israel at Sinai does not follow the scriptural pattern for use of those terms. We must read these verses carefully and listen to what they say in order to understand correctly the nature, place and function of the Ten Commandments in the history of redemption.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“The tablets of stone, upon which God wrote the Ten Commandments, were not only a distinct and summary covenant document; they were the specific legal covenant document that established Israel as a special nation before God at Mount Sinai.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“When Barcellos discusses the abolition of the Old Covenant, he wants to insist that the Ten Commandments are not an integral part of the Old Covenant, but are merely the law of Old Covenant. The Old Covenant is abolished, but its law is still in force, although it no longer functions as law. How can law no longer function as law? If a law is in force, it is functioning as law. If it is functioning as something else, then it has become something else and no longer remains law.”
― John G. Reisinger, In Defense of Jesus, The New Lawgiver

“God did not give the Ten Commandments to a ‘redeemed [regenerate] people for their sanctification.’ Such a view is not tenable simply because most of those people were not regenerate believers. God gave the Ten Commandments as a legal covenant of life and death to a nation composed of a mix of mostly proud sinners and a few regenerate believers as a means of driving the former to faith in the gospel preached to Abraham. As we shall see later, the primary function and goal of the Ten Commandments was a ministry of death by means of convicting the conscience of guilt.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“We see that when Paul speaks in negative terms about the law, its weaknesses, or its final demise, he is referring to the law covenant (Ten Commandments) written on the Tablets of Covenant. When Paul speaks of the law in a good sense and applies it to us today, he is either speaking of “the law” as (1) special revelation, or the Bible, as in Psalm 19:7 and Psalm 1:1, 2 (see also quotation by John Owen, or (2) he is speaking of the ethical duties contained in the individual verses which continue after the Ten Commandments, as the covenant document, are finished.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption

“The liberal’s problem is his misunderstanding of the true nature of God. He begins with love instead of beginning with holiness. The death of the “Lord’s goat” shows the necessity of a death to pay for sin. I used to say, “God owes no man anything,” but I was wrong. God owes every sinner the wages of sin, namely death as the penalty for sin. God is honest and will pay the earned wages.”
― John G. Reisinger, Christ, Our New Covenant Prophet, Priest and King

“The nation of Israel was under great privileges, but it was not under grace unless the people believed the gospel. They had great advantages, but they were neither under a covenant of grace nor in a separate spiritual category before God. Any theology that does not see those facts is simply not following Scripture.”
― John G. Reisinger, Abraham's Four Seeds

“When we think of the Old Covenant, there are two ideas, both of which must be held at the same time. (1) We must see that the Ten Commandments are the basic covenant document that established Israel as a theocratic nation. At the same time, (2) we must see that all of the laws, holy days, priesthood and sacrifices became part of the ‘Old Covenant.’ Scripture, in Exodus 24:1-8 and other places, clearly makes this distinction.”
― John G. Reisinger, Tablets of Stone & the History of Redemption