Greg and Amy respond to the common misconception that the Old Testament has no relevance for Christians today and encourage believers to view Old Testament passages as part of a larger narrative instead of misapplying isolated promises.

Transcript

Question: If the Old Testament isn’t written to us, what do we do with it? Why use it? Are any of the promises in the Old Testament for us? If so, how can you tell the difference?

Greg: I think what she’s doing is reflecting on something that she thought I said, and it’s easy to misunderstand it. I never said the Old Testament isn’t for us. And, in fact, if I did, that would be directly contradicted by New Testament teaching that the Old Testament was written for our instruction. But we have to take the Old Testament texts and understand them in the context in which they were written and what the frame of reference was that they were talking within.

One of the chief offenders that I’ve talked about was Jeremiah 29:11. People cite this—”I know the plans that I have for you.” This was a promise that was spoken directly to the Jewish nation that was in exile and would be coming out of exile in 70 years, and God was going to restore the fortunes that they had lost. It’s an interesting prophecy. It was based on kind of a repentance.

If you look back at the Deuteronomy passage where the same circumstance is being anticipated, it says, “When you seek me with all of your heart.” So, this was something that was a direction that God was giving to the Jews in the Old Testament Mosaic Covenant context. The broader context, if you will, or the broader frame of reference, was those who were under the Law—Israel under this particular arrangement with God. And now they are being punished, consistent with the arrangement that God had set up with them—with Moses on Sinai—detailed in Leviticus and Exodus and, also, a second time in the book of Deuteronomy. And here they are now living out exactly what God said was going to happen—”We’re not prospering you; we’re punishing you because you abandoned me”—but there’s a rescue long-term.

Now, there is all kinds of rich history there and rich things we learn about the nature of God that are helpful for us to draw from, without at the same time purloining—stealing—the particular and peculiar promise to those people in that circumstance. What I’ve been holding out for is not taking somebody else’s promise. There’s no justification for doing that.

Does that mean there’s nothing there for us? Well, not in the verse, because the verse is a promise given to a specific group of people under a specific set of circumstances. Just like, by the way, Genesis 12:1–3. There you have a promise given to Abraham under a certain set of circumstances about God expanding his country, his offspring, making a country, protecting him to an end down the road of blessing all the Gentiles. That’s not a promise that he’s going to do that in my life—expand my family. I don’t have any heirs, actually, as it turns out—no direct heirs, no physical heirs, which is what was promised to Abraham. But there is a promise in there for me because what God says to Abraham is that this is going to have an impact of bringing a blessing on all the “goyim.” Well, I’m a “goyim.” I’m a Gentile nation. And so, in principle, I am the object of that promise—recipient of that promise. Hopefully, I have been.

So, when properly assessed, we can look at passages that have long-term application to us as New Covenant Christians, and we can look at what God did in the nation of Israel and in people’s lives there, and we can draw conclusions about God. Look, David acted underhandedly. He committed adultery with Bathsheba, and he then, to cover it up, had her husband, Uriah, murdered—essentially, put him on the front line of the battle where the fighting was the hottest, and he got killed. He arranged for that so he could cover up his illicit relationship with Bathsheba. But God saw that, and Nathan the prophet came and nailed him on it. So, wait a minute. That’s Old Testament. Yeah, but what this tells us is God’s attitude toward sin, and it tells us about human anthropology—what even good people could do and try to justify and hide sin, but God doesn’t miss anything. And, as David said in Psalm 51, which is confessional of that sin, he said, “God desires truth in the innermost being.” He was hiding it, and finally he had to admit what he did was wrong, and then he repented in sackcloth and ashes. So, there is an application that we can legitimately make from Old Testament text.

Amy: I can think of three categories of things that we learn from the Old Testament. And the first one is definitely—and this is, I think, the most important one—to know the character of God. So, everything we see happening—we see the promises he makes, the way he follows through with them, his character through the Law, through the way he punishes evil—we find out who God is through all of that. That is the bulk of the way that we know God—through the Old Testament and how he deals with people.

So, if we’re looking at the way he deals with people he’s in covenant with, and his graciousness, and his desire to do good for them, that all is true now in our covenant. And we see this in other places in the New Testament. Maybe that verse in Jeremiah wasn’t specifically to us. Maybe that was in the Old Covenant promises. But his character is the same now. So, what we see now is, God is working all things together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose. We see that this still applies now, and we can always find examples of it in our covenant.

Greg: That word “lovingkindness” in the Old Testament is usually a translation of the word “hesed,” which is referring to God’s covenant faithfulness. So, that’s going to apply with whatever covenant is in question.

Amy: The second category is that the Old Testament gives us knowledge about love. And I’ve said this over and over—that the New Testament says that the Old Testament was given to us to show us how to love. What does love mean? Well, we can make up all sorts of things in our fallen minds that aren’t actually true. But what God did was set down all of these principles about dealing with other people fairly, justly, lovingly—taking care of people, giving people what they have deserved, punishing people correctly. All of these things are taught in the Old Testament. So, we learn what it means to treat people well. We learn what it means to love.

Greg: Well, of the commandments, the two greatest are love commandments: love God, love people. But it’s interesting, in support of what you’re saying, that Jesus said all of the Law can be summarized in these two love commandments. But there’s substance there. That’s the point. It’s not just love floating around out there as a disembodied sentiment.

Amy: And sometimes people make the mistake of thinking, “Oh, well, that’s the greatest, so that takes precedence over the others.” No, no. It summarizes the others. It’s not that love suddenly overcomes all of these other things. It’s that these other things are teaching you how to love. So, that’s a summary of all the Law. So, that’s the second category.

And the third category is that the Old Testament is giving us knowledge of Christ. It’s setting up what was to come. There’s all sorts of foreshadowing. The whole way that the tabernacle is set up is to show the need for sacrifices and the need for a perfect sacrifice who would come and take the punishment for our sins so that we could be reconciled to God. It showed our need for God. It showed that we were sinners and had to be cleansed and forgiven and all these things.

So, the Old Testament—this is where we learn about these things. We learn about who God is. We learn about what it means to love. We learn about who Christ is and why he was needed. All of that comes from the Old Testament. And this is how we round out our view. If we just look at the last bit, we’re missing the whole setup. It’s like coming in and reading the last novel in a series of novels, trying to understand it—or the last chapter of a novel. You come in and, “Who is this character?” “Well, I don’t really understand.” You could make up all sorts of ideas about what the book is about without knowing what it’s actually about.

What I would say in response to the question “How do you tell the difference when you’re looking at a passage?” is look at what it’s teaching you about God. How does he treat people? And, in terms of promises, the greatest promise in the Old Testament is the promise of who God is because God doesn’t change. So, if you can get from any passage in the Old Testament who God is, that’s a promise that you can depend on.

So, when God makes promises about who he is, that always applies everywhere. But when God makes a promise to give something specific, you have to look at the context to see if he’s making this promise in the context of a unique situation, or maybe under the terms of the Old Testament—or the Mosaic covenant—or he’s making a promise more broadly to everyone, or as part of the New Covenant, or whatever it is.

So, this is how you can look at this. But it’s so upsetting to me that people are dismissing the Old Testament these days, and I’m seeing more of it. Like Andy Stanley is talking about unhitching us from the Old Testament. I think part of it is we don’t really understand it, and it’s a lot easier if you don’t have to explain it or try to make sense of it.

Greg: Part of the concern I’ve expressed in the past is people isolating verses and taking them as discrete promises for themselves. And the question is, “How does this verse apply to my life?” And my response is, “That verse doesn’t apply to your life.” And they say, “Well, if it doesn’t apply to my life, then why is it in the Bible?’

Notice how the problem comes up because of an artificial difficulty that happened hundreds of years ago, for a good reason, but created problems, and that is, somebody added verse references to the Bible so we can find things more easily—we could navigate more easily. But, the fact is, there are no verses in the Bible, and there are no chapter divisions in the Bible—not in the original. And so, what we have to do is look at entire sections—narratives—and see what part the narrative plays in our spiritual development. But first, we have to look at what part it played in their spiritual development and then make accurate application. And, by the way, this is not always easy, but it’s a whole lot easier than most people make of it, because they don’t even do it. They just look for the verse–”God gave me a verse for you”—and then they cite the verse, and they don’t pay any attention to the things that you mentioned—the broader context. Who is it being written to? What is the purpose? Is this their promise as Jews in that unique covenantal situation, or is this the world’s promise? And the distinction there is one you made. Does it tell us about the Jewish situation, or does it tell us about the person of God? Because God doesn’t change. If God keeps his covenant and his promise regarding Jeremiah 31:29, then he’s going to keep his promise regarding Jeremiah 31, which is the passage promising the New Covenant.

So, the Old Testament is really important if it’s properly understood, and the way it’s properly understood is, get out of the habit of asking the question “What does this verse mean to me?” because there are no verses in the Bible. Look, rather, at the larger passage, figure out what it’s about, and then ask, “What can I learn about God and the Jewish people that may have some application to my circumstance?” But you can’t purloin promises that aren’t yours or warnings that aren’t yours. People usually steal the promises rather than the warnings.