City Life Starter

The Word: Hebrews 13:8

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

By Scott Fiddler

There is a common misconception that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are very different; the God of the Old Testament is full of wrath and judgment, and the God of the New Testament is loving and merciful. Non-Christians cite this alleged incongruity as an argument against Christianity. Christians often implicitly accept the alleged incongruity as true and as a result, spend the majority of their Bible study time in the New Testament reading about the kinder and gentler God.

This misconception, however, does not arise from a study of the whole Bible. The God who struck down Uzzah for being careless in the transportation of the Ark of the Covenant (2 Sam. 6:1-7) is the same God who struck down Ananias and Sapphira when they lied about the sale of their land (Acts 5:1-11). The same God who told Israel to love their neighbor (Lev. 19:17-18) is the same God who told first century Jews to love their neighbors as themselves (Matt. 22:39).

As the Scripture above shows, God is the same today as He was in the past and will be in the future. He hasn’t changed and isn’t going to change. But God is personal, meaning He has a personality. There are things He loves, things He hates, and things about which He is indifferent. He is not a robot, and He is not an impersonal force (sorry, Pantheists).

That God appears different in the Old Testament than in the New Testament is like saying I appear different at Church on Sunday than I am in a deposition on Monday. The difference is not me but the context in which I am acting. If I appear shy and reserved in person but confident and outgoing in public speaking it doesn’t mean I am two different people but the same person in two different contexts. Notably, those who spend time with me in both contexts know me much better than those who only see me in one.

In the Old Testament God related to Israel in the context of the old covenant. In the New Testament, God is revealed relating to His people in the context of the new covenant. But He is the same God.

Application

The good news is that God can be known. He has revealed Himself in the pages of the Bible for this very reason. The Old Testament and the New Testament provide us the opportunity to know God in a much deeper way because we can observe how He relates to people in different contexts. Only reading the New Testament ensures one will have a limited, and likely, misleading view of who God is.

God is not the caricature of naive kindness those who only read the New Testament present; nor is He the simple ogre portrayed by those who cite only to the Old Testament. He is infinitely more interesting, worth knowing, and worthy of our devotion.