What the Old Testament Means to Us. . No. 7

THE OLD TESTAMENT IS NOT THE OLD TESTAMENT
(AND THE NEW TESTAMENT IS NOT THE NEW TESTAMENT)

It is a liberating truth to realize that the Bible you hold in your hand is not the Old and New Testaments, not really. Those are the names we have given to the two divisions of the Bible, but they are in fact misnomers. First of all, we should use the word “Covenant” instead of “Testament,” for that better represents the Biblical terms berith in Hebrew and diatheke in Greek. So, already we are closer to what I am getting at in this installment: The “Old Testament” (so-called) is not the Old Covenant, and, subsequently, the “New Testament” (so-called) is not the New Covenant. The old and new covenants are not books or writings but agreements that God has made with His people.

There was the Old Covenant, which God made with His people at Mt. Sinai, long before there were any of the writings that make up the 39 books of the “Old Testament.” Dt. 5:2 says, ‘’The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb (or Sinai).” The record goes on to say that the Lord spoke with the people face to face on the mountain from the midst of the fire. Then the Ten Commandments are recorded. Then Moses declares in v. 22:

These words the Lord spoke to all your assembly, in the mountain from the midst of the fire, the cloud, and the thick darkness, with a loud voice; and He added no more. And He wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.

This was the (Old) Covenant, ratified at Sinai, in the giving of the Ten Commandments, but it wasn’t called “Old” except in reference to the “New” Covenant that came through Christ: “In that He says, ‘A new covenant,’ He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). This does not mean that the books of the “OT” would vanish or no longer be relevant, but that the covenant itself that God made with Moses and the Israelites at Mt. Sinai would end.

The New Covenant superseded the Old in that we now have fellowship with God through Christ. This became a reality on the day of Pentecost when people were baptized into Christ—into a new agreement, a new relationship, a new community. This was before there were such writings as we call the “NT.”

So, strictly speaking, what we call the Old Testament is really the Old Covenant Scriptures, and the New Testament is the New Covenant Scriptures. This means that they are documents produced by the Old Covenant community and the New Covenant community.

This liberates us from the legalistic notion that “faithfulness to the New Testament” is a matter of exact obedience to a book. When God made a covenant with Israel at Sinai, both parties were to be faithful, always a covenantal condition. But this did not mean that the people had to understand and obey everything in the 39 books making up the “OT,” which did not even then exist. They were to be faithful to God and not go after false gods, which they were hardly ever able to do. In like manner, being faithful to the New Covenant is being true to our relationship to Christ, which does not necessarily require an exact understanding of and obedience to a collection of documents called the NT.

Recently in a Church of Christ—and this was unusual for one of our churches!—I heard a drug addict give a testimonial of his faith. He told how he had sold his body in prostitution to get money for his addiction. He praised God for delivering him from his sins through faith in and obedience to Jesus Christ. It was beautiful! But the man doesn’t know much theology, and at this point in time he may know little of the NT. He would be lost in Romans or Revelation. But he knows Christ and he is in covenant relationship with him through faith and baptism. To lay on this struggling brother the idea that to be faithful to the New Covenant he has to understand and obey everything in the 27 books of the NT would be a burden too heavy for him to bear. And it would be wrong! He is faithful to the New Covenant when he loves and obeys Christ the best he knows how. In time the Scriptures that were produced by the New Covenant community (the church) will deepen and strengthen his faith, for they are the holy Scriptures. But they are not the New Covenant!

One of the beautiful truths of the Bible is that the God it reveals is a covenant-making God. He made covenants with Noah, Abraham (which was repeated to Isaac and Jacob), David, and with Moses and all of Israel. It is always God Himself who makes or initiates the covenant, and it is always attended by a blessing or a promise. The basic covenant in the aT Scriptures was the one given at Sinai, which included these special promises for Israel:

You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 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; for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (Ex.19:4-5).

The people accepted the terms of the covenant when they responded with: “Then all the people answered together and said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do.’ So Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord” (Ex. 19:8). The promise to Israel, if they kept the covenant, is that they would be God’s special people above all other nations, a holy nation and a kingdom of priests. Since Israel violated the covenant, over and over again, these promises were never fully realized, and God’s plan for a holy nation and a royal priesthood had to find fulfillment in a New Covenant, ratified by Christ.

The promise in the covenant with Noah (Gen. 9:9-17) was universal, everlasting, and unconditional: Never again would the earth be destroyed by a flood of water. The rainbow was given as a sign. The promise in the covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15:8-18;17:1-14) was both land and descendents. Circumcision was the sign. The covenant with Abraham was renewed again and again in the generations that followed. Then came the Mosaic covenant at Sinai, which was the basic covenant in that it centered in the giving of the Ten Commandments and the actual creation of the covenant community. Its sign was sacrifice and the sprinkling of blood.

The covenant with David promised an everlasting kingdom. The sign was that God’s mercy would never be taken from David as it was from Saul (2 Sam. 7:12-17). The promise of the New Covenant in Christ was the remission of sins and the indwelling Spirit, God’s continuing presence, and the sign was baptism (Acts 2:38).

When we ask why the God of heaven in all His holiness would choose to make covenants with sinful man, we have no answer except that God is love. God has power but the Bible never says that God is power. God has wisdom, but it never says that God is wisdom. God is love! is the great declaration of the nature of God, and that is why he is a covenant-making God. God takes the initiative. While man is of course to respond, it is God who, as “the Hound of Heaven,” pursues man so as to bring him close to Himself. This is expressed in one of the great words in the OT Scriptures, hesed, God’s covenant love, which is translated as His lovingkindness or as His mercy.

When finally in Jer. 31:31 it is foretold that God will make a New Covenant with His people, there were to be two things that would be significantly different. While in the covenant with Israel the law was written upon tables of stone, in the New Covenant it would be written upon their hearts and minds. This means that inner response would replace outward demand. They would obey God by “second nature” and because of their love for God rather than because they had to.

The other distinction of the New Covenant is puzzling if not incredible, for it implies that teaching would no longer be necessary: “No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jer. 31:34).

Since those of us who are part of the New Covenant community believe that we continue to need teaching and to teach, we may conclude that the prophet’s vision reaches beyond where we are presently. The time may come when every Tom, Dick, and Harry will know God’s will without having to be taught, something intuitive perhaps, but we are not there yet.

The coming of the New Covenant also emphasizes the great promise, “I will be their God and they shall be My people (Jer. 31:33). While this promise was identified with the New Covenant, we can think of it as basic to all the covenants God has made with His people. That is why He made covenants, because He is our God and He wants us to be His people—and to behave as if we were His people! This is the point of covenant-making. God shows his mercy, His covenant love, by being our God. We respond by being His people and conducting ourselves accordingly. Therein has been the problem all along, that God’s people hardly ever conduct themselves as if they are His own special people. This is why the prophets were forever condemning the people for not keeping the covenant. While God was always faithful, Israel did not act as if they were a covenant community. Do we Christians do a better job of behaving as a covenant people than did ancient Israel?

In concluding this I am left wondering in have made myself clear as to the vital distinction between the Old Covenant and the writings (39 books) produced by the Old Covenant community—and subsequently the difference between the New Covenant and the Scriptures produced by the New Covenant (church) community. It appears to be very difficult for us to see that what we call the “New Testament” is not really the New Testament (Covenant). The word “Testament” is the Latin for “Covenant.” To say that the “New Testament” is not the New Testament seems threatening to people, and they suppose it to be heresy.

I have searched for an illustration, and I find one in another kind of covenant, the marriage agreement. When a man and a woman are joined in holy matrimony they have made a covenant with each other and with God, and that is why it is so serious to be unfaithful. They may be married a half century or longer, but the covenant was made when they first married. In the meantime they might write love letters to each other during times of separation. These letters might be collected into a volume. Would those “Love Letters” be the covenant between them? Of course not, for the covenant was the agreement they made when they got married. The “Love Letters” are products of their covenantal relationship. Those letters might point back to the covenant and draw values from it, but they would not be the covenant itself.

That is what the OT and NT writings are—love letters, history, prophecy, wisdom, psalms—documents produced by God covenant community. But the covenant itself was made at Sinai (OT) and Pentecost (NT).

This distinction disentangles us from a lot of legalistic thinking about the Bible. Once this distinction dawns on us we will not accuse people of being unfaithful to the New Testament when they do not agree with our interpretations. We will see that one is faithful to the Covenant when he is loyal to his commitment to Jesus Christ, and this can be the case when his understanding of the Bible is less than perfect. One might be wrong about a lot of things and yet be right in her relationship with Jesus Christ in the New Covenant.—the Editor

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People are God’s language!