When you open your Bible, the first thing you might notice is that it’s organized into two main parts. The first and longest section is called the Old Testament, while the second, shorter one is called the New Testament. Testament isn’t a word that’s in use very often these days, so what does it mean? And why is the Bible split into “old” and “new” sections? Are they both still relevant to us today?
Jesus’ Bible (and Backstory): The Old Testament
Also called the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament consists of 39 individual books from a wide range of authors. These books also cover a range of genres including history, poetry, prophecy, and law. The books of the Hebrew Bible were written long before the birth of Christ, and Jesus would have had access to these scriptures and studied them extensively. Unsurprisingly, He demonstrated a much better understanding of them than the major religious scholars of His day.
The word testament essentially means covenant (an agreement or promise made between parties). Put simply, the Old Testament tells the story of the covenant (agreement or promise) between the Creator God and the nation of Israel. It tells how God created the world and human beings (Genesis 1-2), how humans rebelled against God and polluted the world with sin (Genesis 3-11), and how God created a plan to heal the world and restore His relationship with man (Genesis 12-Malachi). This healing starting by God choosing the descendants of Abraham (later known as the nation of Israel) to be His people and making a covenant with them. Several times, God renewed His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying that if they kept the covenant, He would be with them and their descendants, multiply their offspring, and bless the entire world through them (Genesis 17, Genesis 26:1-5, Genesis 28:10-22). Later, after using Moses to rescue the Israelites from captivity in Egypt, God spelled out the terms of this covenant (twice) and gave instructions that would make Israel stand out as different from all the other nations around them, demonstrating their special relationship with God (Exodus 24, Deuteronomy 29). If you read the rest of the Old Testament, you’ll see it generally did not go well. When Israel failed to remain different, repeatedly rebelling against God again and again, He sent prophets to warn them of their downfall, but also to give hope of a descendant of Abraham and David who would later be born to save the whole world, just as promised.
Promises Kept: The New Testament
The New Testament or New Covenant contains 27 books. These include gospels (first and second-hand accounts of the life of Jesus and the good news of salvation), historical narrative about how the early Christian church was first formed, letters to individuals and churches, and prophecy. These were all written after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. Many of the letters were written to help early Christians figure out how to live as believers in this new world where everything had just changed.
The covenant changed with the arrival of Jesus Christ, as it was always meant to. From the beginning, God promised a Messiah, or Anointed One, who would bless all nations through Israel. Sure enough, from the nation of Israel came Jesus. While the Old Testament provides the backstory, the New Testament completes God’s plan to redeem the world from the pollution of sin by sending His Son as a final sacrifice.
Comparing some differences between the two covenants:
The Old Covenant
- The original covenant was for the nation of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with a promise of future nations to be blessed.
- A right relationship with God came from showing trust in Him by following His commandments for the nation of Israel, including the sacrifice of animals (for example, see Leviticus 1:1- 5). This established the precedent that blood was needed to atone for sin, picturing or previewing the sacrifice of Jesus that would come later.
- Worship centered on a tabernacle or temple which housed God’s presence among His people. There was a large curtain covering the entrance into the Holy of Holies (or the Most Holy Place), the inner part of the tabernacle containing the ark of the covenant (Exodus 40). Only one person, the high priest, was permitted to go into the Holy of Holies once per year to offer a blood sacrifice (Hebrews 9:1-7).
The New Covenant
- For all peoples of every nation (Matthew 28:19-20)
- A right relationship with God comes through showing trust in Jesus Christ’s one-time sacrifice for the sins of all people who believe in Him for all time, making further animal sacrifices unnecessary (see Hebrews 10:1-18).
- We can worship and come into God’s presence personally at any time and from anywhere, without centering on any particular place (John 4:21-24). God’s presence is no longer represented in a temple, but His Spirit indwells each person who believes in Jesus Christ. Of course, God has always been omnipresent, meaning He would hear His people wherever they were. But still, this permission to approach God as a Father, no matter our nationality or ethnicity, no matter where we are or what we’ve done, this is unprecedented access. As a symbol of this change, at the moment Jesus died on the cross, the curtain forming a barrier in front of the Holy of Holies in the temple of Jerusalem ripped in two (Matthew 27:50-51).
Myth: The New Testament makes the Old Testament unimportant to us today
Reality: There can be a misunderstanding that because the new covenant did away with the need for the old one, the Old Testament is irrelevant for modern believers. However, without it, we wouldn’t know how or why we were created, how sin came to enter the world, or how Jesus’ coming fulfills thousands of years’ worth of prophecy. In Matthew 5:17, Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” The Old Testament, part of which Jesus refers to here as the Law and the Prophets, explains why we needed Jesus’ sacrifice and how that came about to complete God’s plan for redemption. Together, the OT and NT tell one cohesive story and give us a fuller picture of who God is.
To learn more about how the new covenant fulfills what the old one pictured, I encourage you to read the book of Hebrews, which explains in detail how the whole of the Old Testament points to Jesus and how different elements of Israel’s worship relate to Christ’s saving work.
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