Chapter 5
Reason Five: The Old Testament Teaches Us How to Live in Response to Grace.
At the personal level, the Old Testament offers instruction on life and godliness that not only reinforces New Testament truths, but also often deals with issues on which the New Testament spends little time or is silent. Without the Old Testament, New Testament metaphors for God’s great and gracious acts of on our behalf (such as salvation, redemption, atonement, and heart transplant) will not be understood. And without the Old Testament, we would know very little about many subjects in the New Testament. To be sure, the New Testament offers us a much fuller picture of subjects like the Holy Spirit and our future hope, but the fullest descriptions of creation, the nature of the cosmos, and how sin entered the world are found in the Old Testament.
The gospel is much bigger than providing for my personal salvation or my individual relationship with God. The Old Testament reveals God’s plan of redemption for the entire cosmos. It teaches us that God created us to be his image bearers, which means we are assigned the role of governing the world on his behalf—as he would were he physically present. The Old Testament teaches us that we are stewards of God’s creation, and that because of our sin all of creation suffers from his curse. But many psalms and the last chapters of Isaiah look forward to a future when God’s righteous rule will extend to the ends of the earth and his peace will reign over all creation.
Within the Old Testament, Deuteronomy plays a special role, like the Gospel of John among the Gospels, or the book of Romans among Paul’s epistles. Tragically, Christians today often have little interest in the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. They are viewed as outmoded after Jesus’s death and resurrection. But this attitude is wrong. The book of Deuteronomy was Jesus’s favorite biblical book, and so it should be our favorite Old Testament book as well.
In Deuteronomy, I learn of the amazing love of God, who in brilliant mercy rescues an underserving people, calls them to be his children, enters into covenant relationship with them, reveals to them his will, and promises them an eternal hope if they fear and trust him fully. In the Shema, recited by orthodox Jews morning and evening to this day, I learn what an appropriate response to grace looks like: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4–5). The Shema is a declaration of exclusive allegiance to the LORD and a declaration of how that allegiance is demonstrated—all of life devoted to the true and living God, with no energy or resources remaining for any other god. In fact, in Deuteronomy 10:12, Moses asks a question that is just as important for us as it was for the Israelites: “What does the LORD your God ask of you” He answers the question with five brief statements, one for each of the fingers on the right hand: fear the LORD your God, walk in obedience, love him, serve him with your whole being, and obey his revealed will (vv. 12–13). This is precisely the pattern that Paul called for in Romans 12:1–2:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
Paul did not invent this model. This is simply a paraphrase of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4–5), reflecting the concentric dimensions of covenant commitment illustrated in Figure 2. Worship should involve all of life. Jesus followed this model perfectly, and it should be our model as well.
The Old Testament also teaches us that faith in God and love for God are demonstrated in everyday life. In Deuteronomy 22:8, Moses instructs Israel: “When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.” This is not a law arbitrarily demanding that all houses have the specific architectural feature of parapets (guard rails around the roof). Instead, this is a plea to the heads of households to take care that everyone who enters their homes is safe. In ancient Israel (and still in the Middle East today), houses typically had flat roofs, which provided extra living space. Because it was cooler up there, people would sleep on their roofs or relax and entertain guests there. In Moses’s mind, the heads of households are responsible for the safety of all who enter.
Instead of asking whether we need to keep a specific Old Testament law, Christians today should be asking, “What is the underlying principle here, and how do I apply that principle in everyday life?” The answer to the first question is obvious: the importance of demonstrating covenant commitment (show love) to our family members, neighbors, and guests by taking practical steps to secure their safety. In a modern Midwestern context, this might mean putting a railing on steps leading up to the door or down the stairs into the basement.
This past weekend here in the suburbs of Chicago, a blizzard dumped twenty inches of snow on us. How do I apply this verse to this situation? By shoveling the sidewalk so neighbors walking by will not slip and fall and hurt themselves; by shoveling the snow away from my mailbox so the mailman can get right up to it without having to get out of his vehicle and step onto the icy street; by going over to the neighbors and asking if I could help them shovel their driveways.
Jesus rightly summarized all the laws in one simple statement with two parts: to love God with all their being, and to love their neighbor as themselves (Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30; Luke 10:27). While this may have been a new command for those who had been trained in Pharisaic religion, this command is as old as the nation of Israel (Leviticus 19:34; Deuteronomy 6:5; 10:19). This is the ideal by which Jesus lived (Philippians 2:5–11), and the Old Testament teaches us that this is the ideal by which we must live.
Sixth, and finally, perhaps the most important reason for reading the Old Testament is because in it we are presented with the gospel—the brilliant message of grace. We see God’s grace demonstrated to Adam and Eve in promising victory over sin and the serpent (Genesis 3:15–16), in God’s call of Abraham to be the agent of blessing to the world (Genesis 12:1–3), in God’s rescue of Israel from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 1–15), in his care for Ruth and Naomi and Boaz, and in picking them to be the grandparents not only of David, but also of the Messiah (Matthew 1).
But we hear the gospel proclaimed most powerfully and eloquently by God himself in Exodus 34:6–7.
Passing by in front of Moses he introduces himself: “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.”
This text catches many people by surprise, not only because this is how God defines himself, but also because it sounds so much like the New Testament.
The problem is that to many people the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament seem to be two different Gods. Either that or God became civilized over time!
The contrast in many people’s minds looks something like the pies in Figure 3, in which each piece of the pie represents a dominant characteristic of God.
But Exodus 34:6–7 is actually not an isolated text. Explicit references to God’s grace are heard as early as Genesis 6:8 (“But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD”) and echo throughout the Old Testament (Numbers 14:18; Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 51:1; 86:5, 15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Micah 7:18–20). But to me the most interesting text is Jonah 4:2. Dismayed over the repentance of the people of Nineveh after his announcement of their doom and then over the LORD’s not carrying through with his threat, Jonah complained bitterly to God:
“Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, LORD? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people” (NLT).
Jonah’s problem with God was that he was too gracious; he did not wipe out his enemies! But these echoes of Exodus 34:6–7 also carry over into the New Testament. After reflecting for decades on the life and work of Jesus, the apostle John declared:
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:14, 16–17 ESV, emphasis added)
Yes, the Torah that Israel received from God through Moses (Deuteronomy 5:1–21) was a supreme gift of grace. And yes, Jesus Christ, embodied in human form the very character of God as it was revealed to Moses at Sinai. Exodus 34:6–7 provides us with a lens through which we should read the entire Bible. Far from separating the two testaments, the gracious character of God serves as a common thread.
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