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How Should We Use the Old Testament?
by Jon Zens
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The Old Testament was the “Bible” of the first churches. How Christians are to use the Old Testament is an important question. Obviously, we can with safety assert that the Old Testament is Christ-centered “they testify of Me” (John 5:39). However, given theoretical assent on this proposition, Christians still have radical disagreements about the use of the Old Testament.
Theological emphases tend to divert people from the Christ-centeredness of the Old Testament. Dispensationalists see the Old Testament as focused on God*s earthly purpose for Israel. Some Covenant Theologians emphasize the “commandments” in the Old Testament that Christians and magistrates are to obey Many Bible-believers use the Old Testament in a subjective-devotional manner, often falling back on the allegorical method.
The basic answer as to how we are to read and apply the Old Testament is discovered by examining how the New Testament employs the Old. [1] If this is done, it will be apparent that the “first Christians read it only from the perspective of the Jesus revelation.” [2] Even the “ethical” use of the Old Testament (per 2 Timothy 3:16) is permeated with a Christ-centered viewpoint.
There is no evidence that the New Testament uses the Old Testament in a “case-law” fashion. Abraham Kuyper, perhaps inconsistently with his total theology, made the following remarks:
“Hence the Old Testament passages which refer to this service (Romans 9:4) have not the meaning for us which they had for them. Every feature of it had a binding force for them. And they who in the New Testament dispensation seek to introduce tithing, or to restore the kingdom and the judiciary of the days of the Old Testament undertake, according to past experience, a hopeless task: their efforts show poor success, and their whole attitude proves that they do not enjoy the full measure of the liberty of the children of God.” (The Work of the Holy Spirit, 1900, p. 53)
Not only does the New Testament not use the Old Testament as a law-book, it is not concerned to “find” Christ in every goat*s hair and spice mentioned in the Old Testament. It is ironic to note that initially the Old Testament provided unity for the churches as long as Christ was viewed as central in it. But as time elapsed, its misuse became a source of division in the churches as some sought to impose the Jewish way of life on Gentile converts (Acts 15:1, 5).
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Notes for “Moses Wrote of Me”
[1] Samuel Davidson, “Quotations from the Old Testament in the New,” Sacred Hermeneutics, 1843, pp. 338-447.
[2] James D.G. Dunn, Unity & Diversity in the New Testament, 1977 p, 102.
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