CHAPTER 7
Israel, the Old Covenant, and the Failure of the Firstborn Son
Introduction
The Firstborn Nation and the Covenant of Testing
The calling of Israel occupies a central position in the unfolding of God’s purpose across the ages. When the Lord delivered His people from Egypt, He declared the nation to be His “firstborn son” (Exodus 4:22). This title was not poetic exaggeration or national flattery; it was a covenantal designation rooted in the Torah’s firstborn pattern, in which the firstborn belongs uniquely to God, bears representative responsibility for the household, and receives inheritance only through consecration and obedience. Israel was chosen to stand as the firstborn among the nations—set apart to display the holiness, justice, mercy, and wisdom of God to a world plunged into idolatry and corruption. Their calling was priestly and royal, yet it was also conditional, for the firstborn position is never a mere entitlement in Scripture but a vocation that must be secured through faithful obedience.
To grasp the weight of Israel’s designation as God’s firstborn, we must recall what “firstborn” meant in the Torah. The firstborn son received the double portion of the inheritance; he was “the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his” (Deuteronomy 21:17). This double portion was not merely a larger share of property, but the sign of headship, of bearing the weight of the family’s future. Before the institution of the Levitical priesthood, the firstborn also stood as priest of the household, offering sacrifice, leading worship, and representing the family before God. When the Lord later took the Levites instead of the firstborn of Israel, He made clear that all firstborn were His by right: “Therefore the Levites shall be Mine, because all the firstborn are Mine” (Numbers 3:12–13). With these privileges came grave responsibility, for the firstborn was to carry the honor of the father’s house, to model faithfulness to his brothers, and to serve as the primary bearer of the family’s calling. At the same time, his position was vulnerable. Through the Torah we meet firstborn sons who forfeit their inheritance and see the birthright pass to a younger brother who walks in faith and obedience. Thus, from the beginning, Scripture teaches that birth alone does not secure the firstborn portion; it must be confirmed through faithfulness.
Israel’s story unfolds within this pattern. As with every firstborn in Scripture, the inheritance offered to the nation could be gained only through faithful obedience. Through Israel’s history God revealed that the inheritance of the firstborn cannot be attained by the Adamic nature but only through transformation. Israel’s failure did not nullify God’s purpose; it unveiled the necessity of the true Firstborn who would arise in the fullness of time to fulfill the covenant perfectly and secure the inheritance for a new humanity in Himself. The Old Covenant was therefore not merely a legal code or religious system. It was a covenant of testing, designed to reveal the true condition of the human heart, expose the power of Adamic corruption, and demonstrate humanity’s inability to secure righteousness through commandments apart from the Spirit of grace. In Israel’s experience, the Father was showing what happens when a firstborn nation, still in Adam, is placed under holy law and entrusted with priestly vocation.
The Exodus: Redemption, Baptism, and Wilderness Testing
Israel’s identity as the firstborn nation took shape in the crucible of the Exodus. In Egypt the Lord distinguished Israel from the nations by blood. On the night of Passover He declared, “I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt… and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment” (Exodus 12:12). Death entered every Egyptian house, yet Israel’s firstborn were spared because of the blood of the lamb. The destroyer passed over the doors where the blood had been applied: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you” (Exodus 12:13). The firstborn did not live because they were less guilty than Egypt; they lived because another life had been offered in their place. In seed-form this foreshadowed the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, for “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7). The principle is set at the very birth of the nation: the firstborn lives by substitutionary blood.
After the Passover, Israel stood hemmed in between the sea and Pharaoh’s army until the Lord opened a way through the waters. The children of Israel passed through the sea on dry ground, with the waters as a wall on their right and on their left (Exodus 14:22), while those same waters returned to destroy the Egyptian hosts. Paul later interprets this event as a kind of baptism: “All passed through the sea, all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10:1–2). The Red Sea thus marked a boundary between slavery and freedom, between the old life in Egypt and the new journey toward covenant inheritance. In this arrangement, the Exodus introduces a pattern that will reappear throughout Scripture: a people redeemed by blood, passing through the waters of judgment and separation, then led into a wilderness where their faith and obedience are tested before they can enter the promised rest.
Between the Red Sea and the promised land lay the wilderness, the place where Israel’s heart would be tried. Moses later reminded the nation, “The LORD your God led you… to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not” (Deuteronomy 8:2). God gave manna from heaven, water from the rock, and protection from enemies, yet the people grumbled at Marah, complained about food, tested the Lord at Massah and Meribah, and, at Sinai itself, made a golden calf. The climax of this unbelief came at Kadesh Barnea. After spying out the land, ten of the twelve spies returned with a fearful report of giants and fortified cities. The people refused to enter, wept all night, and spoke of returning to Egypt, despite the testimony of Caleb and Joshua that “the LORD is with us. Do not fear them” (Numbers 14:9). The Lord then swore that this entire generation would die in the wilderness, and that only their children would enter the land. The writer to the Hebrews summarizes the lesson: “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:19). The wilderness generation thus becomes the first great picture of a redeemed people who begin well, pass through water, receive promises, and yet die short of inheritance because of hardened hearts. In this way, Israel’s wilderness history foreshadows the later distinction between those who are truly God’s people and yet fail to attain the firstborn portion, and those who, like Caleb and Joshua, persevere in faith and enter the promised rest.
The Sinai Covenant: Conditional Firstborn Vocation
Three months after leaving Egypt, Israel came to Mount Sinai. There the Lord established the covenant that would shape their national life and test their fitness for the firstborn call. The mountain burned with fire; there were thunderings, lightnings, and the sound of a very loud trumpet, so that all the people trembled (Exodus 19:16–18). From the midst of this majesty, God spoke the terms of the covenant: “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people… And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5–6). Here the structure of the Sinai covenant is clear. Unlike the Abrahamic covenant, which was grounded in unilateral promise, the Sinai covenant is explicitly conditional. If Israel obeys, then they will be a treasured possession, a priestly kingdom, a holy nation. The firstborn calling is offered; its enjoyment is conditioned on obedience.
The people responded with confidence. When Moses placed the words of the Lord before them, they answered, “All that the LORD has spoken we will do” (Exodus 19:8). After hearing the Book of the Covenant, they again said, “All the words which the LORD has said we will do” (Exodus 24:3), and when the book was read aloud a second time, they added, “and be obedient” (Exodus 24:7). Moses then took the blood of sacrificed oxen, sprinkled it on the altar and on the people, and said, “This is the blood of the covenant which the LORD has made with you according to all these words” (Exodus 24:8). In this act the covenant was sealed with blood; God and Israel were bound together under the sanctions of the law. To break this covenant was to call down the fate of the slaughtered animals upon oneself. Yet even as the covenant was sealed, the seeds of failure were present. Israel swore obedience in the same Adamic flesh that soon bowed before an idol.
While Moses remained forty days on the mountain, receiving the tablets of stone and the pattern of the tabernacle, the people grew restless. They gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods that shall go before us” (Exodus 32:1). Aaron fashioned a golden calf, and they proclaimed, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:4). They offered sacrifices and sat down to eat and drink, then rose up to play. In this moment, Israel violated the very first words of the covenant—”You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image” (Exodus 20:3–4). Moses descended, saw the calf and the dancing, and threw the tablets out of his hands, breaking them at the foot of the mountain (Exodus 32:19). The shattering of the tablets was not a mere outburst of anger; it was a sign. The covenant had already been broken in the people’s hearts, and the broken stone testified to that inner disobedience. Thus, in its first great test, the firstborn nation broke the covenant it had vowed to keep, and the Sinai arrangement revealed what would be repeated across the generations: the law is holy, but the people are not.
To understand this failure, we must distinguish the Sinai covenant from the earlier covenant with Abraham. The Abrahamic covenant was unilateral in its ultimate fulfillment. In Genesis 15 the Lord alone passed between the divided pieces, pledging Himself by oath to grant Abraham a seed, a land, and a worldwide blessing. The fulfillment of that promise did not rest on Abraham’s constancy but on God’s faithfulness. The Sinai covenant, by contrast, was bilateral and conditional. It presented blessings and curses, life and death, and bound Israel to obedience under penalty of exile and judgment (Deuteronomy 28–30). Paul therefore insists that “the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God… that it should make the promise of no effect” (Galatians 3:17). Israel’s failure under the law did not cancel the Abrahamic promise; rather, it demonstrated the need for the promised Seed who would fulfill the law and inherit the blessing. In this way, the Sinai covenant serves as a divinely appointed parenthesis—a covenant of law and testing, “added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made” (Galatians 3:19).
The Firstborn Pattern and Israel’s Historical Failure
Within the Sinai covenant, Israel’s role as firstborn takes on its full weight. The nation was redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb, baptized into Moses in the sea, consecrated at Sinai, and entrusted with the oracles of God, the sacrifices, the tabernacle, and the festivals. The land was to be the stage on which the world could see what it meant for a nation to walk in God’s ways. Moses promised that if they kept the statutes, the nations would say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deuteronomy 4:6). In this, Israel was to embody on a national scale the priestly calling given to humanity in Eden. Yet the Torah had already shown that firstborn sons frequently fail and that the birthright passes to another who walks by faith. Cain’s offering is rejected while Abel’s is accepted (Genesis 4); Ishmael is blessed but the covenant passes to Isaac (Genesis 17:18–21); Esau despises his birthright and later finds no place for repentance, though he seeks the blessing with tears (Genesis 25:34; Hebrews 12:16–17); Reuben defiles his father’s bed and loses preeminence, and the birthright is given to the sons of Joseph (Genesis 49:3–4; 1 Chronicles 5:1); Nadab and Abihu offer profane fire and are consumed, and the priesthood continues through their younger brothers (Leviticus 10:1–2); Saul is rejected as king, and the kingdom is given to David, a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14; 15:23). Taken together, these stories form a pattern: the firstborn is called and consecrated, tested under responsibility, often fails, and is replaced by another who receives the inheritance. Israel, as the corporate firstborn, rises within this pattern, and their history will show that the Adamic nature is no more able to bear the firstborn calling in a nation than it was in individual sons.
The pattern of Israel’s failure unfolds across the major periods of their history. The wilderness generation, though redeemed from Egypt and sustained by miracles, perishes without entering the land because of unbelief. Under Joshua, the next generation enters the land and sees great victories, yet they do not fully drive out the nations. They dwell among the Canaanites, take their daughters as wives, and learn their works, serving their idols which become a snare (Psalm 106:34–36). Partial obedience becomes the seed of entrenched idolatry. After Joshua, during the time of the judges, Israel repeatedly forsakes the Lord, serves the Baals and Ashtoreths, falls under oppression, cries out for deliverance, and is rescued by judges whom God raises up. Yet when the judge dies, they return to corruption “more than their fathers” (Judges 2:19). The book closes with the grim sentence, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25). The firstborn nation, called to display God’s righteousness, becomes a byword for moral chaos.
The establishment of the monarchy does not resolve this crisis. Israel demands a king “like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5), thereby rejecting the Lord as their immediate King. Saul begins in humility but ends in partial obedience and rebellion, and the kingdom is torn from him. David is a man after God’s own heart and is granted an enduring covenant, yet even his reign is marked by grievous sin and its consequences. Solomon, endowed with extraordinary wisdom and entrusted with building the temple, turns in his later years to foreign wives and their gods (1 Kings 11:1–8). After Solomon, the kingdom splits. The northern kingdom plunges into permanent idolatry from its founding; golden calves are set up at Bethel and Dan, and none of its kings departs from this sin. The Assyrians finally carry the northern tribes into exile in 722 BC, scattering them among the nations. The southern kingdom of Judah fares somewhat better, with reforming kings such as Hezekiah and Josiah, but their reforms are temporary and do not reach the heart of the people. Despite repeated prophetic warnings, Judah persists in idolatry and injustice until Babylon destroys Jerusalem, burns the temple, deposes the Davidic king, and carries the people into exile in 586 BC. The firstborn nation is expelled from the land that had been given to them, just as Adam was expelled from Eden.
Israel as Corporate Adam
The prophets interpret Israel’s history not as a slow political decline but as covenant treachery and the outworking of the law’s curses. Amos denounces a people who trample the poor, pervert justice, and then crowd the sanctuary with songs and sacrifices; the Lord responds, “I hate, I despise your feast days… But let justice run down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:21–24). Micah distills the covenant requirement into a simple triad—to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8)—and then exposes how Judah has despised even these plain demands. Isaiah sings of a vineyard planted on a very fruitful hill, cleared of stones and stocked with the choicest vine, for which the Lord “expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes” (Isaiah 5:2). When he interprets the parable, the indictment cuts deep: the Lord looked for justice but found bloodshed, for righteousness but heard only a cry of distress (Isaiah 5:7). Ezekiel, in a searing allegory, portrays Jerusalem as an abandoned infant whom the Lord rescued, washed, clothed, and adorned as a beautiful bride, only to see her turn into an unfaithful wife who prostituted herself with the nations and their gods, even sacrificing her children to idols (Ezekiel 16). Hosea, speaking from the pain of marital betrayal, shows Israel as a son whom God called out of Egypt, yet who turned again to Baals (Hosea 11:1–2).
Taken together, this prophetic witness reveals a sobering truth: Israel mirrored Adam. Both were sons placed in covenant relationship, called to obedience, entrusted with blessing, and given the opportunity to mediate God’s rule; and both broke covenant in the very place of blessing. Adam was set in the garden of Eden, a sanctuary of abundance, beauty, and divine presence. Israel was planted in Canaan, a land “flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8), described in Edenic terms as “a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity” (Deuteronomy 8:8–9). Adam received a clear command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16–17). Israel received the Torah, commandments governing every dimension of life. In both cases, the path of sonship and priesthood ran through obedience to a spoken word.
In both cases, the test was met with unbelief and grasping. Adam listened to the serpent’s promise, “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5), and reached out his hand to the forbidden tree. Israel listened to the promises of the nations and their gods, trusting foreign alliances and fertility cults rather than the Lord who had brought them out of Egypt. The serpent in Eden and the idols in Canaan held out different forms of the same lie: life, security, and exaltation apart from obedience to God. In both stories, the son believed the lie and broke the command. Adam’s disobedience resulted in expulsion from the garden: “So He drove out the man” (Genesis 3:24). Israel’s disobedience resulted in expulsion from the land: “So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria” (2 Kings 17:23), and later, “Judah was carried away captive to Babylon” (2 Kings 25:21). Exile is thus Israel’s Eden-moment—their being driven out from the place of rest and presence because they transgressed the covenant.
Hosea may make this parallel explicit: “But like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt treacherously with Me” (Hosea 6:7, ESV, literal). The Hebrew phrase ke’adam can be rendered “like Adam,” and if this is the correct reading, the prophet directly identifies Israel’s covenant-breaking with Adam’s primal disobedience. In both cases, a son of God breaks covenant in the very place where blessing has been bestowed. Adam forfeits Eden; Israel forfeits the firstborn inheritance in the land. Yet in both cases, the failure of the son does not signal the failure of the Father’s purpose. Rather, the Adam–Israel parallel reveals that Israel’s failure is not merely national but representative. Israel is not an unusually corrupt people set alongside an otherwise promising humanity. Instead, Israel is humanity under magnification. What Adam did in a garden, Israel did in a land; what the flesh could not achieve in one man, it could not achieve in a nation endowed with law, temple, and sacrifice.
In this arrangement, Scripture presents Israel as a corporate Adam, recapitulating humanity’s original story on a national scale. Their failure under the law shows that the problem is not with the law, which is holy and good, but with the heart that stands beneath it. The same Adamic nature that grasped at forbidden knowledge in Eden now grasps at forbidden gods in Canaan. The firstborn nation mirrors the first man, and in doing so exposes the universal human condition: left to itself, flesh cannot keep covenant, cannot bear priestly responsibility, and cannot secure the firstborn inheritance. This prepares the way for the faithful Firstborn who will come as the Last Adam and true Israel, succeeding where Adam and Israel fell, and securing in Himself the inheritance that no earthly firstborn could hold.
The Prophetic Hope for a Faithful Servant-Son
The prophets do more than catalogue failure; they announce a future work of God in which the firstborn calling will be fulfilled rather than forfeited. Isaiah’s Servant Songs speak of a mysterious figure who is called “Israel” and yet is sent to restore Israel, to bring Jacob back, and to be a light to the Gentiles, that God’s salvation might reach to the ends of the earth (Isaiah 49:3–6). In this Servant, the faithful remnant is reduced to One, and Israel’s vocation is concentrated in a single, obedient Son. Jeremiah promises a righteous Branch from David’s line who will reign as King, execute justice and righteousness in the earth, and bear the name “THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS” (Jeremiah 23:5–6), indicating that in Him the righteousness Israel lacked will be provided. Isaiah declares that a Child will be born, a Son given, upon whose shoulder the government will rest, and whose reign upon the throne of David will extend “from that time forward, even forever” (Isaiah 9:6–7). Daniel sees “One like the Son of Man” coming with the clouds of heaven, approaching the Ancient of Days, and receiving dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him; “His dominion is a dominion to the age, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13–14 literal; “to the age” renders the Aramaic phrase for an age-lasting dominion; see Appendix O). Later in the same vision he is told that the kingdom will be given to “the saints of the Most High” (Daniel 7:27), revealing that this Son of Man both represents and incorporates a people. In seed-form, the prophets thus announce a faithful Servant-Son, a true Israelite, a righteous Branch, a Son of Man, who will succeed where Adam and Israel failed, and in whom the firstborn calling will finally be fulfilled.
The Law as Tutor and the Need for a New Covenant
In light of this, Paul’s analysis of the law becomes clear. He calls the law a paidagōgos, a tutor or guardian, whose purpose was to lead Israel to Christ (Galatians 3:24). The law was given not to cure sin but to reveal it, not to impart life but to expose death. “I would not have known sin except through the law,” he says; “for I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet’” (Romans 7:7). The commandment, holy in itself, becomes the occasion by which sin works “all manner of evil desire” (Romans 7:8) in the Adamic heart. In this way, “the law entered that the offense might abound” (Romans 5:20). The law is therefore “weak through the flesh” (Romans 8:3); its weakness lies not in its content but in those to whom it is given. It can diagnose the disease and intensify the symptoms, but it cannot supply the cure. Israel’s repeated covenant-breaking is thus the law’s own testimony that the Adamic nature cannot bear the firstborn call. The Sinai covenant achieves its God-ordained purpose when it drives Israel to the end of themselves and prepares the way for the Seed in whom the promise will be fulfilled.
The writer to the Hebrews applies this diagnosis to the sacrificial system as well. The law, with its repeated sacrifices, “can never… make those who approach perfect” (Hebrews 10:1). If it could, the sacrifices would have ceased; instead, “in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year” (Hebrews 10:3). The blood of bulls and goats could sanctify for the purifying of the flesh, but it could not cleanse the conscience or remove the deep stain of sin. What was needed was not a more refined law or a more elaborate ritual but a new covenant grounded in a better sacrifice and operating by the power of a new heart. Thus Jeremiah speaks of a covenant “not according to the covenant” made at the Exodus, “My covenant which they broke,” but one in which the Lord will “put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts” and “remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Ezekiel joins this promise with the gift of a new heart and a new spirit: “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes” (Ezekiel 36:26–27). In this promise the focus shifts from external command to internal transformation, from the letter written on stone to the law engraved on living hearts.
Common Misreadings of Israel’s Failure
Misreading 1: “Israel’s failure means God’s covenant has failed.”
This misreading confuses the Sinai covenant with the Abrahamic covenant. Israel failed under the Sinai covenant—the conditional arrangement that promised blessing for obedience and curse for disobedience. The curses came; the exile occurred; the nation suffered the consequences of its unfaithfulness. But the Abrahamic covenant—the unconditional covenant established by divine oath—remains in force. God’s promise to Abraham that in his Seed all the families of the earth would be blessed was not contingent on Israel’s obedience under the Sinai administration. Israel’s failure therefore displays the purpose of the Sinai covenant (to reveal sin and to lead to Christ), not the collapse of God’s ultimate design grounded in His promise to Abraham.
Misreading 2: “The Old Covenant was a mistake that God later corrected.”
This misreading treats the Sinai covenant as a failed experiment rather than a deliberate and necessary stage in God’s redemptive plan. The law was not a mistake; it was “added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come” (Galatians 3:19). It served its God-ordained purpose: revealing sin, multiplying transgression, exposing human inability, and leading Israel to Christ. The new covenant is not a correction of some divine miscalculation but the fulfillment of divine intention. The Old Covenant was always preparatory and provisional; the new covenant is what it was given to anticipate and prepare for.
Misreading 3: “Israel’s failure means the church has replaced Israel entirely.”
This misreading, often called supersessionism or replacement theology, treats the church as a completely new entity that has permanently displaced Israel in God’s purposes. In this view, Israel’s story becomes little more than a negative backdrop for the “real” story of the church, and Israel’s ongoing identity and calling are effectively erased. The Apostles will not allow this. Paul asks, “Has God cast away His people?” and answers with the strongest possible denial: “Certainly not!… God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew” (Romans 11:1–2). He describes Israel and the nations not as two separate plants, one replacing the other, but as one cultivated olive tree. Some branches (unbelieving Jews) have been broken off because of unbelief; wild branches (believing Gentiles) have been grafted in among the remaining branches to share “the root and fatness of the olive tree” (Romans 11:17–18). The church, therefore, is not a substitute for Israel but the beginning of a renewed Israel of God—Jew and Gentile together in the one Messiah, sharing in Israel’s covenants and promises by grace. In this renewed Israel of God, the firstborn name and vocation are defined not by ethnic boundary, but by union with the faithful Firstborn. At the same time, Paul insists that Israel’s present hardness is neither total nor final. There is even now “a remnant according to the election of grace” (Romans 11:5), and there remains a future turning of the nation: “And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob’” (Romans 11:26). Israel’s failure under the Old Covenant brings real judgment in history, but it does not annul God’s choice of them or His intention to restore. “The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:29). The church of the firstborn, then, does not erase Israel’s identity; it reveals the firstfruits of Israel’s true destiny in the Messiah and anticipates a wider restoration in the ages to come, in which a restored Israel stands among the renewed nations in right relationship to the Firstborn Son and His celestial priesthood.
Conclusion
Israel’s Failure and the Faithful Firstborn
Taken together, Israel’s story under the Old Covenant reveals a profound truth: the firstborn calling cannot be fulfilled by the Adamic nature. Israel, chosen as the national firstborn, redeemed from Egypt, consecrated at Sinai, entrusted with the law, the temple, and the promises, failed the covenantal test, not because God’s purpose faltered, but because the flesh cannot inherit the promises of God. Their history mirrors Adam’s fall, exposes the universal condition of humanity, and prepares the stage for the faithful Firstborn who will come as the true Seed of Abraham, the true Israel, the Last Adam. The law has done its work as tutor and guardian; the prophets have announced the Servant-Son; the Abrahamic promise still waits for its full realization. The question before us is how the Lord Jesus and His Apostles read this entire story and how they proclaim its fulfillment in Him.
Before we turn directly to His covenantal fulfillment as the faithful Firstborn, we must understand how the New Testament reinterprets the Old Testament. The next chapter, “How the New Testament Reinterprets the Old Testament,” will consider the apostolic hermeneutic through which Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms are read in the light of Christ. There we will see how the Apostles understand Israel’s failure, how they proclaim the Lord Jesus as the One who embodies and completes Israel’s vocation, and how they define the identity and calling of those who are united to Him as the church of the firstborn, destined, in the ages to come, to share His inheritance and His priestly ministry.
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