Scripture - the written Word of God - is the great, true story of God’s revealing and redemptive purposes through all time, culminating in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; the incarnate Word and God’s ultimate self-revelation and self-giving on the behalf of humanity. The Old Testament is best understood, as a whole, within the context of this great over-arching story: the story of God’s perfect intentions for humanity, our rebellion, and the great redemptive movement of God throughout history on our behalf to restore humanity unto himself.
Through the Old Testament, we see the first movements of this grand narrative laid out: God’s goodness and purposes in creation, humanity’s fall from those purposes, and the initiation of God’s redemption and restoration of the world through a particular people: Israel. Beginning with the Abrahamic covenant, the central message of the Old Testament is laid out: God is seeking a people for Himself; people who He might draw back into the life, blessing and relationship with himself for which they were created. God is seeking a people who would be the true image of Himself which they were created to be; a kingdom of priests, representatives, Holy “idols”; a people as wide and as rich and diverse as the world itself, called back to himself by, because of, and through His great love.
God begins with the descendents of one faithful man; choosing them, blessing them, setting them apart from all the world for his purposes; to be a picture of - and vehicle for – his blessing of that world. Through the struggles, trials and failures of this people we find two things: God’s holy covenant faithfulness and love, and humanity’s inability to return these to God. In the OT, among a great many other things, we come face to face with humanity’s desperate, inescapable need for – not merely perfect and sufficient instruction, but - a perfect and sufficient savior. In this way, the stage is set perfectly through the record which we find in the Old Testament for our longing for the rescue and redemption which we find in the New Testament.
Again, the unity of scripture, as I see it, is that it is together, the old and new covenants, the one, overarching story of God’s gracious and redemptive purposes across human history and experience. It is a single story, and it is the story of grace. Where the old and new covenants diverge , however, is in the manner in which mankind is able to experience that grace. Throughout the Old Testament, God’s covenant-building with the people of Israel was exercised through an outworking of his purposes and his grace that was largely external to people: God was walking in faithfulness with, and calling unto faithfulness, a people who were essentially – internally and eternally – broken.
Though they might periodically respond in love and obedience to the God who had called them out as a people and blessed them, and though there were certain people in their history who were more inclined to faithfulness than most, the reality remained that covenant faithfulness, obedience and righteousness were ultimately fruits that were foreign to the tree of the hearts of humanity; even Israel. Despite the overwhelming and miraculous workings of YAHWEH around them and on their behalf, we find that Israel was amazingly prone to infidelity, forgetfulness and rebellion. From the outside looking in, it is easy, in fact, for us to be incredulous at how easily God’s covenant people fell away from him, again and again. The reality comes more clearly into focus, however, when we realize that Israel, despite being graciously called into special relationship with God, and called to be his representatives in the world, still consisted of a people whose hearts were, essentially, defined by rebellion and sin. Because sin and death had not yet been ultimately dealt with by God, God could walk alongside a people, instructing, exhorting and blessing them, but God could not, without causing their immediate destruction, dwell within them.
This – a change of spirit – is precisely what we see alluded to in the new covenant promises of the Old Testament, and brought more clearly into focus in light of Christ. Ezekial 36:26 says, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” Notice here, how obedience is ultimately contingent upon the movement of a transplanted spirit within people; this has been the missing element for Israel throughout their history, and God now promises that his purpose is to give to humanity a new spirit – a spirit able to live in right relationship with God. We see this again in Jeremiah 31; "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." In the context of the Old Testament, God could write his law upon tablets of stone; a very real work of grace, but one external to the hearts of his people. In the New Testament, we find that because of what has been accomplished by Christ through his sacrificial death and victorious resurrection, God is able to do an internal work of grace within us; sending His own Spirit to dwell within us, essentially transforming us from a people of rebellion to a people of righteousness. The New Covenant is new, because it is marked by God’s moving within humanity, here and now, to do a work of new creation within our very hearts.
Ultimately, Paul describes this far better than I in Romans 8; “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2. because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. 3For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, 4in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
5Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; 7the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. 8Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.
9You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 10But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. 11And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”
Thanks be to God.
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