Reading Our Bibles, Part 3

      II Timothy 2:15 says, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (NKJV).      The most obvious division we need to make as we read our Bibles is between the Old and New Testaments. Even a casual look at a modern Bible demonstrates this division.

      In Jeremiah 31:31-32, God said, “’Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt...’”

      Hebrews 8:7ff speaks of this whole shift, saying, “If that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second. For finding fault with them…”

      The fault was not with God’s law, but with the people who never lived up to its standards. The Old Covenant was never intended to justify anyone, but rather to demonstrate sin and our need for justification through faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:11).

      The New Covenant, on the other hand, was given to provide justification through Jesus Christ. It was given to tell us how the worship and work of the church should be conducted (I Timothy 3:15).

      While both the Old and New Testaments are God’s word of truth, we must handle them accurately. We are not under the Old Covenant (Galatians 3:24-25). The Old Testament is not our guide for how to worship and work in Christ’s church. The New Testament provides that.

      Remember what Hebrews 7:12 says, “For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also.” The Old Law is not our law. The New Law or Law of Christ governs today (I Corinthians 9:21).

      How then can we handle the Old Testament accurately? There are four ways in which we rightly divide the Old Law. First, where the Old and New coincide, we can find out more about what God thinks about a particular action or mindset. Second, as per Romans 15:4 and I Corinthians 10:11, we read examples of how God deals with His covenant people and how He expects people to follow His covenant with them. Third, we can learn through prophecy about the Messiah and the Messiah’s kingdom as Peter did in Acts 2:25-28 and James in Acts 15:15-18. Fourth, in those places where the Old Testament simply teaches how to live wisely in this world, that wisdom has remained the same even with the change of covenants. Thus the Proverbs, though not our law, so to speak, provides great wisdom for us even today.

      This, however, is merely the beginning of rightly dividing the word. We must always remember the main key. That is we must read our Bibles.

Edwin L. Crozier