The Old Testament is Broken
A confluence of events…
- my small group has been working through The Story and we just finished the OT last night
- I’ve been researching and thinking about the connection between Old & New Testaments for a project I’m working on at Northwoods
- I’ve been challenged by the likes of Rob Bell & Scot McKnight to dig into the OT to understand the NT deeper.
So here’s a thought (feel free to critique/weigh in). I don’t think this is necessarily profound, but it’s something that I’m just starting to get.
The Old Testament is Broken…and that’s precisly the point.
This feels so simplistic as I type this — but I guess I’m coming to a deeper understanding that it was God’s intention that The Law wouldn’t work. I think at times I’ve almost believed that torah was Plan A, and when that didn’t work God imlemented Plan B — the Jesus option. But I’m just starting to see that God designed the Law in such a way that it would lead to frustration, angst, complication & catch-22. “Plan B” was always the intention — but without the failure of “Plan A,” “Plan B” would have had no context — no raison d’être.
There’s a certain beauty I see in it all — a glorious unfolding of God’s plan over time. I think that Kevin put it well in small group last night when he suggested that God, in the OT treated his people as children — but in the NT he treats us as more mature. I’m not sure that we are necessarily more mature — but I do get a sense that the NT relationship with God is a more mature of relating — one being to another.
I guess what’s so exciting about thinking through some of this is that it leads me to a place where I don’t feel like I have to justify some of the crazy stuff that one encounters in the OT — I have a greater sense of being able to say…it’s broken…and that’s the whole point.
It doesn’t sound satisfying to me to call the Old Testament “broken” and call that my explanation. Though I think you’re right about it being broken, that just doesn’t end my concerns, and my wrestling…
I saw your whiteboard in your office and wondered what in the world you were doing…Looked like you were starting a new translation of the bible or something…
Chris
March 28, 2007 at 1:38 pm
I think that you are on to something, but I don’t think that broken would be a good semantic. The NT tells us that the Law and essentially the OT was a tutor to lead us to Christ. It taught us about ourselves, our sin nature, and it taught us about God and His taking sin seriously as well as His grace. So it, the OT, did well what it was supposed to do. It was actually effective at it’s purpose. To tutor us. To school us. So that as you said when Christ came, we were ready to understand the implications.
Just some thoughts. Sift through for the wheat.
Kevin Gwin
March 28, 2007 at 7:20 pm
We are saved by faith, (Post- Jesus), but Abraham (pre-Jesus) was a man of faith and is credited righteous for his faith… it broken or did man not have it figured out…. plus its Jesus’ comming is first foretold in the early chapters of Genisis
So is it the pre fall that is plan A and post fall plan B?
Mizz
March 28, 2007 at 8:02 pm