Oil and Water

A sweet friend of mine commented  to me recently, “I am having a hard time reconciling the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament.”  She was referring to the struggle she was having reading through the Old Testament and interpreting some of God’s actions.

It is a challenging read.  We live in a culture of entitlement and self.  We have  many filters based in the lies that our culture saturates us with about what we read in scripture.  So I implore you, don’t give up.  Here are some thoughts I have about reconciling the God of the Old with the God of the New.

First of all, it is the same God so it is imperative that you read in light of God’s character.  He is holy, which means literally, “different.”  He is different than we are.  That fact alone can make reading about some of his actions confusing.  Second, he is righteous.  That means, literally, “right.”  Not in an opinionated sort of way, just in the reality that “right” had to start somewhere and it started with Him.  He is right.  He is righteous.  Next, God is good.  This is the hardest for most people to read in the Old Testament.  How could a “good God” kill so many people?  Then, God is merciful.  He is not interested in mindless obedience; he wants our hearts to love him of our own accord.  Finally, God is love.  He authored it.  We frequently confuse the original love, which is God, with the confused, mindless substitute of our day also known as lust.  A clear definition of the original love can be found in I Corinthians 13:3-10.

We started out in the Garden of Eden completely connected to God; his goodness, his righteousness, his mercy and love. Life was simple.  Adam and Eve walked and talked with God.  They had his ear for everything.  His presence was assumed.  They were with God.  God was with them.  Everything they could possibly want or need was provided for them.  The enemy showed up and tempted Eve to want something less; to doubt God’s words were true.  She succumbed and brought Adam with her into a new existence under a curse.  The curse, simply, was death.  Having sinned, God in his mercy shortened their lives.  But Adam and Eve had also, in their sin, chosen to separate themselves from God.  The rest of the story in the Old Testament is the unfolding of man’s walk away from God and God’s passionate pursuit to regain their love.

But what about all those rules and those “unreasonable” punishments? Like stoning someone for breaking the Sabbath? (Numbers 15:32-36)

To me, reading the Old Testament is reading about the curse; death.  It is reading about life separate from God.  It is studying the depravity of sin, how it separates us from the truth about God.  God is good.  He is the source of Love.  He is Love.  To be separate from Goodness and Love is to walk with depravity and apathy.  If you are not walking in Life, you are walking toward death.  The consequence for walking away from Life is to walk into death.  The only “gray” area of this distinction is essentially our years alive.  By the time our own mortality runs out, there is no more “gray” area; you are either going to remain alive in eternity or you are not.   To me, the “rules” in the Old Testament are more about measuring God’s righteousness and holiness than they are about anything else.  Breaking the rules sheds light on our walk away from Him.  When we walk away from Him, we walk toward death.  Spiritual death.  We cannot remain alive in Him and his righteousness with any sin in our lives.  It’s simply incompatible; like oil and water.

So I read the Old Testament in light of God’s character and I see more and more clearly how insidious and evil sin is.  God cannot look on sin because it is incompatible with his righteousness.  As I read the Old Testament, I see the consequences play out time and time again of walking away from Him.  I see his mercy in not forcing anyone to walk with Him but loving us enough to continue to pursue us.   The God of the Old Testament is revealing a clear understanding of the incredible work of salvation needed that the God of the New Testament, in Jesus, must do in order to bring us back to Him.