Summary
One God Across Both Testaments
It is tempting, when reading Scripture, to encounter the harder narratives of the Old Testament—the destruction of Sodom in Genesis 19, the devotion of Jericho to destruction in Joshua 6, the death of Uzzah beside the ark in 2 Samuel 6—and to recoil. Some skip ahead to the New Testament, hoping to find a kinder, gentler God there. Critics like Richard Dawkins go further, painting the God of the Old Testament as a monster fundamentally unlike the God revealed in Christ. Both responses make the same mistake: they divide God into two.
The error is to take a single difficult narrative and let it carry the whole weight of who God is, rather than letting Scripture interpret Scripture. The proper distinction is between two testaments, not two gods. The Lord who walked with Adam, called Abraham, sent Moses to Pharaoh, raised up Nathan to speak to David, and spoke through Isaiah and Jeremiah is the same Lord who speaks finally in His Son. As Hebrews 1:1-2 puts it, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son."
The prophets were not delivering a message from a different deity. They were directing Israel toward Jesus. Isaiah promised that scarlet sins would become white as snow. Jeremiah foretold a righteous Branch from David called "The Lord is our righteousness." Every prophetic word pointed forward to the redemption that would arrive in Christ. When the risen Jesus walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke 24:27 tells us He began with Moses and all the prophets and "interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." The whole story has always been about Him.
What changes between the testaments is not God's character but the form of His self-disclosure. Where prophets carried God's message, Jesus is the message. He is "the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature" Hebrews 1:3. "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" John 14:9. The Son and the Father are one. In the Old Testament, redemption was sought through sacrifice, dietary law, circumcision, and obedience to the covenant. In the New, that whole framework is fulfilled in Jesus Himself, who is the New Covenant in His body and blood, given for the forgiveness of sins.
This is why Luther warned against despising the Old Testament and urged Christians to read it with diligence: it is the foundation upon which the New stands. The new does not replace the old; it completes it. The promises God made—to bless the nations through Abraham, to establish David's throne forever, to wash sins white as snow—are not abandoned but kept, and kept in Christ. Difficult narratives are still difficult, but they are read rightly only when they are read in light of the whole, with the cross as the lens.
The confidence of the Christian, then, rests on a God who does not shift. He is consistent in mercy, consistent in love, consistent in promise. He sustains His creation now through Word, baptism, communion, and the Church, and He has pledged a future where He will dwell with His people and wipe away every tear Revelation 21:3-4. The God who spoke through the prophets has spoken His final Word in Jesus Christ—the same God yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Video citations
- "Same God Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" August 12, 2018 — All summer long, we've been turning to Scripture to ask questions. We asked, why do we worry? What's the point in praying? Why do bad things happen to good people? And today we're going to ask…