"The same salvation" is not the same as "everything stayed the same."

Brakel holds those two sentences together at once. That is necessary, because his emphasis on one covenant of grace can otherwise easily sound as if the coming of Christ changes almost nothing.

A really new administration

Brakel acknowledges that believers in the New Testament receive greater clarity and freedom. The Messiah is no longer only promised but has come. The shadows have reached their goal. The Gospel goes in broader openness to the nations. The ministry of the Spirit appears with a new richness.

That is why he can take seriously texts about old and new, letter and Spirit, bondage and sonship, without deriving from them two different grounds of salvation.

"Degree" as key word

When Brakel discusses Galatians 4, he points out that the contrast between Jews and Gentiles and between different redemptive-historical phases must be kept carefully apart. Gentiles who formerly served idols now likewise receive the goods of the covenant of grace. That is expansion, not proof that believing Israelites formerly knew no sonship.

Jeremiah 31

The new covenant of Jeremiah 31 remains an important test. The text really says "not according to the covenant" at the exodus, and speaks of Torah in the heart, knowledge of God and forgiveness. Brakel's model therefore requires explaining that difference as a difference of administration without losing the continuity of the promise of grace.

Here we must not harmonise Brakel faster than he himself does. His system gives an answer, but Scripture must judge whether that answer sufficiently carries all the words of Jeremiah and Hebrews.

Fulfilment without contempt

A fruitful consequence of Brakel's approach is that he does not have to humiliate the old in order to magnify the new. The greater glory of the fulfilment presupposes precisely that the preceding administration really came from God.

Scripture above Brakel: the question is not whether we can build a fine system, but whether continuity and newness each keep their full biblical weight.

Now the nations come emphatically into view

From this transition we come to the church of the New Testament. Brakel speaks of Jews and Gentiles who together form one church. But does that unity mean that Israel, as a Jewish nation, has no separate future any more? He himself will later say: no.