Old or New Testament: Which is More Important?
Mark John 'mj' Ostrum - 2012-08-31 00:00:00
About a year ago I wrote False, Heretical Tests Of Faith. These emails, and now Facebook posts, continue to persist.
How many times have you received an email with a beautiful, uplifting story only to have it end after a page or two with the statement, ?If you believe in Jesus, pass this on. If you don?t, delete it?? How many pictures of Jesus or the Bible have you see on Facebook or Twitter (disclosure, I don?t tweet) that say, ?Like if you believe in ?.? How many times have you taken the action to prove your faith.
Recently on my personal FB news feed there was a picture of the Bible with a caption "Like if you believe in this book." I made a comment on that posting about how annoying it is, in fact insulting, that such false tests of faith are so prevalent in our world; in Facebook, emails, etc.
God does not and would not test us in this manner. Read Job. Did his tests involve public questioning of faith, where if he were insulted by the question he would not answer it and then be perceived as not believing in God? No, God does things or allow things to happen to us that will test whether or not we really DO TRUST in him. He tests our HEARTS, not our clicking fingers.
Hebrews 5:13-14 says ?Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.?
Isn?t it time we, as Christians, take it upon ourselves to read our Bibles every day, beginning to end, over and over again? Isn?t it time we let God tell us what he wants us to know about him and stop relying on the pastors and teachers we have in our churches? Isn?t it time to learn to be Berean in our faith, as the write explained in Acts 17:11, ?Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true??
I saw a comment in the thread by someone who stated that he doesn't really follow Old Testament because there is too much smiting. He likes and believes the New Testament because it is so filled with LOVE.
I agree that the Old is a lot of smiting, and the New is LOVE. But I felt compelled to message this person privately. In my message I pointed out the value of the Old Testament, as a lesson about how we would still be required to live by the law and the penalties it prescribes, which more often than not is death.
While on the other hand the New Testament teaches us about the life of Christ Jesus, and how he lived and died vicariously to pay the penalty we deserve for our sins. He lived fulfilling the law of the Old Testament, and did NOT deserve to die a sinner's death. But he did that because God the Father KNEW we humans are NOT able to live our lives according to his law. Heck, we couldn't even do the sacrifices properly to atone for our sins.
The Old Testament is very important, and without it, the New Testament is useless. We must know about how we cannot live without Christ as our Savior unless we know how God wanted us to live in the first place.
As I am writing this, I know there are a lot of Christians who will argue against homosexuality and same sex marriage using Old Testament Scriptures and describing those penalties. Those in favor of same sex marriage also use those same passages accusingly toward Christians in order to call Christians hateful.
What most do not understand goes hand in hand with what I said in the previous section. Jesus fulfilled the law and paid the penalty demanded by the law so that we, in New Testament times, do not have to pay that penalty for our sin.
What we also do not realize, I think, is that even though we are not paying the penalty for our sins against the law of God as specified in the Old Testament, each one of us still pays the penalty for original sin, when we each die at the end of our respective lives. And yet, that is not even a penalty to those of us who believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, for it is in fact a graduation from mortality to immortality and a homecoming to our mansions in heaven that Christ has prepared in advance for us to go to.
If we read the Bible, and just read it without putting a lot of thought into it, we can allow God to speak to us through his Word. He can open our heart, and he will give us gifts of the Spirit that we can use in our daily life, to know what is right, what is wrong, what is truth, what is false. I believe this is the only way to true Spiritual revival. How can we expect revival if we do not put any effort into knowing God?