How should we regard Sinai? Was it a legal covenant or a form of the covenant of grace? If you think it was essentially gracious, then you will say, ‘Many of the characteristics of that old order should still be carried on in the new. If they had a mixture of converted and unconverted in the church then, there is no reason why we can’t now.’ Now, if you believe that old covenant, the law covenant, the Sinaitic covenant was not a version of the covenant of grace, but was legal, then you understand more clearly that the New Testament church is a clean break with what went before. God has said, ‘I have finished with saints and sinners mixed together in my precious church. Now it will be a regenerate church membership. Only those who love the Lord will be included in this covenant, and so far as fallible church officers are able to achieve it, only born again people should be admitted to church membership.’