OLD WAY OF LIVING WAS BY EFFORT TO OBEY THE LAW

In the Old Testament, God gave laws to his people for governing their relationships with him and with each other. These laws – generally referred to as ‘the law’ – included the Ten Commandments and hundreds of supplementary ethical and ceremonial rules covering nearly every aspect of daily life.

But it was impossible for anyone to fully comply with the law. No one could be that good; not even Moses. The purpose of the law was to define sin and to demonstrate that everyone – even the best of us – is a sinner. When a person sinned, he had to offer a sacrifice to God in order to obtain forgiveness (see Topic 33) and then he would start all over again trying to be good.

Fortunately, obeying the law is no longer the key factor in our relationship with God. Now faith in Jesus Christ is the key factor.

JESUS CHRIST has totally fulfilled the law for us

Referring to the Old Testament laws, Jesus said, ‘I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.’

The New Testament explains that Jesus Christ is available as our substitute (if we personally claim him as substitute), in which case God looks at Jesus’ life (perfect!) and imputes his righteousness to us. Thus, Jesus Christ has fulfilled the law for us because God is willing to judge us on the merits of the substitute righteousness rather than on the demerits of our own sin.

The big difference between the Old Testament (old way) and the New Testament (new way) is that formerly people had to work at being good by following the law, but now we’re declared good because Jesus Christ (if we ask him) is our perfect substitute. His life is exchanged for our life (see Topic 54).

If we personally (by individual decision) accept Jesus Christ as our savior, God accepts the perfect life of Jesus as though it were our own life, so that when we stand in judgement before God we’re without sin. It’s as if we had never broken a single one of God’s laws in our life!

As with most things in God’s world, this is profoundly simple but also profoundly complex. That’s why we need the Old Testament explanations of sin and substitution to adequately understand and appreciate what Jesus Christ did by fulfilling the law for us.

NEW WAY OF LIVING IS BY POWER FROM THE HOLY SPIRIT

Jesus told his disciples that he would send the Holy Spirit to help us with our daily living. (The Holy Spirit is part of God, without a body, who relates to us individually – see Topics 7, 8, 39, 41 and 44.) At the time Jesus said this, his disciples couldn’t even comprehend the concept of it, but now we understand and experience the reality of it.

The Old Testament law is still valid because it tells us the kind of thoughts, words and actions which are pleasing to God. We shouldn’t ignore the law today on the grounds that Jesus has fulfilled it or that it only applied to the Israelites. We still look to the great moral principles that lie behind the law.

But now these principles are worked out in daily living by the Holy Spirit, who literally resides within each Christian. It’s no longer a matter of self-effort but rather a matter of letting the Holy Spirit take control and good living comes quite naturally.

It’s no wonder that the core message of the New Testament is called the ‘gospel,’ a Greek word meaning ‘good news’ (see Topic 52). The good news is that we don’t have to struggle trying to obey the law in order to be acceptable to God.

Instead, we can take Jesus Christ as our personal substitute (savior) and receive the Holy Spirit to change our desires and empower us for good and dynamic living.

SEPARATE JESUS CHRIST FROM CHRISTIANITY

The words Christian and Christianity are not Bible terms. (‘Christian’ is used a few times in the original Greek text but only to reference the name society had given to the followers of Jesus Christ.)

The usual Bible term for a person who has personally accepted God’s offer (received new life) is the phrase ‘in Christ.’ Examples: ‘if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature’... ‘brothers in Christ’... ‘they were in Christ before I was’... ‘the dead in Christ shall rise first.’ The Bible expresses concepts but doesn’t put labels on people.

Today the words Christian and Christianity are so entrenched in our language and culture that we can’t shed them, but they’re too corrupted to describe and illustrate the real message of the Bible.

Therefore, to understand what the Bible says about Jesus Christ, we need to separate him from Christianity and try to forget about religious systems and about the people who distort his words and wrongly use his name. We need to see him as the Bible presents him, not as our contemporary American culture portrays him.

NEW TESTAMENT IS ‘OFFER’ UNTIL ACCEPTED

‘Testament’ is a legal word which means covenant, pact, contract or deal. In plain language, the Old Testament is God’s old deal with mankind. The New Testament is his new deal. As with any deal, there’s no value or benefit to a person unless he accepts it. A deal is consummated only upon offer and acceptance.

Therefore, to the person who understands and accepts God’s offer, the New Testament is God’s testament which states specifically what God has promised to do for him.

But to the person who has not accepted God’s offer, the New Testament is not a testament (yet) but is an offer which, if and when accepted, will become a testament (see Topics 56 and 57).

The New Testament is a collection of 27 individual books (see Topic 29), organized as follows:

• Life of Jesus Christ (first four books)
• History of the early church (fifth book)
• Instructions to Christians (21 books)
• Glimpse into the future (last book)

Each book has a part in spelling out God’s offer, and each book provides explanations of the new life available to anyone who accepts the offer. When read together, these 27 books give an exciting picture of God’s grand plan for us.

The plan is not so complex that it takes 27 books (about 350 pages in total) to explain it. On the contrary, the plan is very simple and can be stated briefly (see Topics 53-62). Much of the New Testament is repetitive – the same principles seen from different perspectives – and this serves to make the key points very clear to us.

HOW WE GOT THE NEW TESTAMENT

The central theme (the offer) of the New Testament is commonly called the ‘gospel’ (Greek word meaning ‘good news.’). The gospel, stated in its simplest terms, is that by personal faith in Jesus Christ we can have:

• Complete forgiveness of sin
• God (Holy Spirit) living in and through us
• Eternity in heaven

All of this is offered to us by God, in love, as a free gift. The only condition (an easy one!) is that each person must personally accept the gift. A person’s relationship with God no longer depends upon ‘measuring up’ to the law and making sacrifices for sin as was required by the Old Testament.

God brought this good news to mankind in a very unique way. Approximately 2,000 years ago, he came to earth in the body of a man – Jesus Christ – to announce this new stage of his grand plan (see Topic 32) and to make the once-and-for-all sacrifice for our sins (see Topics 54 and 55). This seems like a long time ago from our perspective, but it’s quite recent from God’s perspective.

Jesus didn’t write any book himself. He spoke and modeled the message for three years in many towns and villages to audiences large and small; particularly to twelve disciples.

At first the message spread entirely by word of mouth, but as time passed and the message was carried to distant areas, there was a practical need for written materials.

No one set out to produce a ‘new’ testament to replace the ‘old’ one. The New Testament developed as apostles (those who were close eye-witnesses of Jesus’ life and teaching), under authority and inspiration of the Holy Spirit (see Topic 19), put in writing exactly what Jesus said and did.

THREE QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT MIRACLES

The Bible is an extraordinary collection of books, and as one would expect, it records some extraordinary events. Some of these events surpass conventional experience and explanation. We call them miracles.

In deciding whether or not to believe the miracles recorded in the Bible, a thoughtful person should work his way through the answers to these three questions:

• COULD God perform miracles?
• WOULD God perform miracles?
• DID God perform miracles?

The answer to each question is explored below.

QUESTION 1: COULD GOD PERFORM MIRACLES?

For something to start from nothing defies the laws of science and thus is a miracle. If God is powerful enough to create the universe (see Topic 3), he’s powerful enough to perform the smaller miracles recorded in the Bible.

God designed the laws of nature, but he’s not bound by them. He has power greater than the laws he designed. Therefore he can override those laws at any time for any special purpose.

No one can say he’s never seen a miracle. Life itself is a miracle, transcending human comprehension, and most people ascribe life to a supernatural cause.

Logic says that if a large miracle can happen, smaller ones can happen too.

QUESTION 2: WOULD GOD PERFORM MIRACLES?

There are many miracles recorded in the Bible, but they are not commonplace. In fact, they are unusual events clustered mostly around three relatively brief periods of time:

• Moses and Joshua (1490-1440 BC, escape from Egypt and desert experience)
• Elijah and Elisha (910-830 BC, establishing authority of the prophets)
• Jesus Christ and the apostles (30-70 AD, introduction of Jesus to the world)

In each of these periods, God gave a major new revelation of himself and – to enhance believability – he accompanied each new revelation with miraculous visible signs. For example, it was by walking on water, turning water into wine and healing sick people that Jesus received attention and credibility. If he had simply appeared on the scene and said he was God, no one would have believed him. The Bible specifically names 35 miracles which Jesus performed (listed on this page), all during the last three years of his life. It was his demonstration of power that made believers out of scoffers.

When we understand why he would do these things, we find it easier to believe that he actually did them.

QUESTION 3: DID GOD PERFORM MIRACLES?

If God could perform miracles and if he would have special reason to perform them, the only remaining question is whether or not he actually did perform them.

None of us is a personal observer of everything God has done through the ages. Just because something isn’t occurring in our presence today doesn’t mean that it’s never occurred in the past.

Even though nearly all secular historical documents from antiquity have decayed or been lost (see Topic 20), we still have outside corroborating evidence for the miracles. For example, the most profound and important miracle recorded in the Bible is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The Bible says he was crucified on a cross and placed in a sealed tomb guarded by Roman soldiers, but three days later he came back to life and vanished from the tomb. Over the next 40 days, he was seen by over 500 witnesses. During that time, he taught his disciples about the gospel (‘good news’) and told them to tell the whole world. Then he ascended out of sight into the clouds.

Even apart from the Bible record, there’s strong logical and historical evidence supporting this miracle:

• The tomb had to be empty, otherwise the disciples could not have successfully proclaimed the resurrection in the very city where Christ’s dead body was being guarded by soldiers and there would not have been such a great number of believers.
• If the tomb were still occupied when word of the resurrection spread throughout Jerusalem – which caused embarrassment for the authorities and fueled the very kind of belief they were trying to eradicate – they would no doubt have publicly displayed the body to quell this electrifying story if the body were still there.
• Secular history shows clearly that the early church completely disregarded the tomb; illustrating that they worshiped the risen Christ. They changed their day of worship from Saturday to Sunday in commemoration of the resurrection. The sacraments of baptism and communion were practiced by the church and would have been meaningless apart from the resurrection.
• Secular history reports how the disciples gave their lives – many were martyred (see Topic 22) – in telling this story and it’s highly unlikely that they would be willing to die for something they knew was a hoax.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IS BEST PROOF OF A MIRACLE

The miracles recorded in the Bible are extraneous to our personal experience. We know about them only from what we read and they can no longer be corroborated by living testimony.

However, the Bible speaks of another kind of miracle – called the ‘new birth’ (see Topic 62) – which is personally experiential and also verifiable by testimony of others. People who have experienced this personal miracle in their lives, and/or talked to others who have experienced it, have less difficulty believing the historical miracles of the Bible than do people who don’t know anything about the personal miracles.

Anyone who is skeptical of miracles can make a private experiment to prove or disprove personally whether or not a miracle (supernatural happening) is really possible. The result will be his own personal miracle. The Bible provides all the necessary information for this experiment as summarized in Topics 53-62.

WHY WE SHOULD STILL READ THE OLD TESTAMENT

The word ‘testament’ means covenant, pact, contract or deal. In plain language, the Old Testament is God’s old deal with mankind. The New Testament is his new deal.

That raises questions: Is the Old Testament outdated and irrelevant? Should we now read just the New Testament?

Answer: The New Testament contains everything essential for us to know today. However, we can understand the New Testament much better when we have the background information contained in the Old Testament. For best comprehension of God’s plan, the two should be read together.

GOD CHOSE JEWISH RACE FOR SPECIAL ROLE

Although Jewish people account for less than half of one percent of the world’s population, they have had the leading role in God’s revelation of himself to mankind. The Old Testament is essentially the story of what God taught the Jews before the birth of Jesus Christ.

He chose them as a special race to convey to the world the following basic spiritual principles:

• THERE’S ONLY ONE GOD. This view was contrary to the religious notions of other people at that time who believed in thousands of deities arising out of pre-existent matter of unknown origin.
• GOD DEFINES GOOD AND EVIL. God gave the Jews moral and religious laws (like the ten commandments) so they would know the difference between good and evil. The laws defined and revealed sin.
• EVERYONE SINS. The laws showed that it’s impossible for anyone to live a life acceptable to God without God’s special help. Everyone sins and sin is man’s biggest problem.
• GOD REQUIRES A BLOOD SACRIFICE. God understands our sin nature and will forgive all our sins, but his forgiveness is not automatic. God has decreed that forgiveness can be obtained only when a blood sacrifice is made to prove that the sinner recognizes the gravity of his sin and is truly sorry for it. (Blood is the essence of life, the highest price.)

In the Old Testament, people received forgiveness for their sins by sacrificing a lamb on an altar. Knowing this, we see the significance in the New Testament of Christ’s death on the cross, which was the once-and-for-all sacrifice for everyone who believes and personally appropriates it.

Many statements in the New Testament which would otherwise seem strange now have potent meaning, as when John the Baptist first saw Jesus and exclaimed, ‘Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’

OLD TESTAMENT SAID A SAVIOR WOULD COME

A key concept running throughout the Old Testament is that in due time God would send a ‘messiah’ (someone who would save people from their sins). It wasn’t clear when or how he would come, or what he would do, but it was clear that he would be the great savior and that quality of life after his coming would be much better.

Now, with the New Testament and with our personal experience, we know that the messiah (savior) is Jesus Christ. When he came to earth, how he came, what he said and what he did – as recorded in the New Testament – now makes perfect sense to us because of all the background information recorded in the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is the central theme of the entire Bible.

THE BIBLE GIVES BASIC PATTERN OF GOD’S PLAN

The first two chapters of the Bible, Genesis 1 and 2, are foundation chapters because they show the broad pattern of what God is doing. God’s work so far, as it pertains to us, is outlined in these chapters as seven stages (or ‘days,’ see Topic 3):

1. Creation of light (all spectrums and sources)
2. Creation of a life-sustaining atmosphere (air between moisture suspended as cloud cover and moisture condensed as water on the earth’s surface)
3. Formation of land mass protruding through the water, with vegetation emerging by process of photosynthesis
4. Parting of cloud cover to allow direct sunlight to fall on the earth and to allow for observation of the movements of the sun, moon and stars
5. Creation of marine life, reptiles, birds and insects
6. Creation of animal life and man
7. God ‘rests’ (stops his creative work for an interlude to allow man to respond to him)

We’re still in the 7th stage, but other stages will follow. The next stage will be ‘the day of the Lord,’ when Jesus Christ will come to earth again. But death will have sealed the eternal destiny of all people who have died before that time.

GOD’S PERSPECTIVE OF TIME IS LONG-TERM

Our minds rarely plan beyond ten years, and certainly not beyond a hundred years. A thousand years into the future is almost inconceivable to us.

The Bible says God has a different concept of time:

‘With the Lord, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’

From our short-term perspective, it seems like God is inactive because we don’t see him doing anything new. But from God’s perspective, everything is right on schedule (it’s still the 7th day). The problem is that our minds can’t comprehend complex time concepts, like long ages and eternity, and because our short life span makes us impatient.

To understand what God is doing, we need to see his plan set in his time frame, as revealed to us in the Bible. Briefly stated, the plan is this:

God made the universe. Man is his crowning creation, made ‘in the image of God’ (literally, a little less than God), the only creature with body, soul and spirit; possessing an eternal nature (continuing after death). God desires to have a personal love relationship with every human being.

Love can exist only when there’s free will. Thus, God allows man to sin (make choices that are contrary to his character and instructions). In old days, sins could be forgiven, and the relationship restored, when the sinner confessed and offered a sacrifice (preferably an animal blood sacrifice). When he sinned again, he would have to sacrifice again… over and over.

Then God offered a new plan. Jesus Christ (part of God in a human body) came to earth and died as the once-and-for-all sacrifice. Today all a person has to do is ‘believe’ (appreciate and personally accept what Jesus did). This gives him an intimate and permanent relationship which entitles him to spend the rest of eternity with God (heaven). If a person knows about this plan but doesn’t appreciate and personally accept it, he will spend the rest of eternity separated from God (hell).

Everything is building toward the wonderful (or horrible) life after death, which we are individually determining now by the way we respond to God.

MODERN TRANSLATIONS ARE EASY TO READ

The Bible was written in Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament). All Bibles today are translations from those two languages.

There are now more than a dozen major English translations, and all of them are adequately accurate for conveying the meanings contained in the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. We don’t need to worry about whether or not a particular Bible is a ‘true’ Bible because excellent translation has gone into all of them.

Ideally, to capture depth of meaning, each paragraph from the Bible should be read concurrently in several different translations.

THE BIBLE IS ITS OWN BEST INTERPRETER

Many people ignore the Bible with the excuse that it can be interpreted to say anything anyone wants it to say.

That often happens when words are pulled out of context by persons wanting to use a Bible quotation to defend a particular pre-determined view. But, as with any document, intelligent understanding requires that words be read in context and interpreted by the other words and concepts in the same document. Read in its entirety, the Bible is its own best interpreter… and it’s consistent.

The Bible uses metaphors, similes, parables and other figures of speech, like we use them in expressions today. The rule for interpretation is that if the literal words make sense, read it literally. A figurative meaning should be accepted only if the literal meaning doesn’t fit the context or doesn’t fit other portions clearly addressing the subject.

The Bible should be read simply for what it says, no more and no less.

When reading the Bible, it’s helpful to always remember that the Old Testament is background for the New Testament, and that the New Testament is good news about God’s offer of new life for us and about how this life should be lived out.

THE HOLY SPIRIT WILL GIVE THE READER UNDERSTANDING

Because the Bible is a spiritual book, it helps to have spiritual assistance. The same Holy Spirit who inspired the Bible writers to write it now helps readers to understand it (see Topic 19). This is why the Bible is such a profound book. A professor can spend a lifetime studying the Bible and still not exhaust it, and yet an uneducated person can read from it (or listen to it) for the first time and understand what’s needed for him at that moment.

We don’t have to rely upon a priest, pastor or churchman to tell us what God is saying. We can learn from God directly by reading the Bible.

‘BIBLE STUDY’ IS COMMON CHRISTIAN EXPRESSION

The term Bible study is a frequently used Christian expression. People say they’re doing a Bible study, in a Bible study, going to a Bible study, etc.

This refers to the way many Christians, alone or in groups, carefully investigate the exact words of the Bible; often with the assistance of other books and commentaries. They probe, cross-reference, challenge and share understanding.

Intensive study of the Bible, with an open spirit, provides great understanding of God’s plan and purpose for our lives.

BIBLE READING REQUIRES A PERSONAL RESPONSE

Like food and exercise, a ‘little and often’ is the best approach to Bible study. We need to take time to digest what we’ve just read.

The real test of our sincerity is not how much we’ve read, or how often we’ve read it, but how much we’ve understood and obeyed, and how we’re applying it to our life. Bible study always requires a personal response.

We should never use the Bible as a lucky dip or horoscope by just opening it at random and expecting some magic word or thought. It’s the Word of God and we must study it seriously, carefully and methodically.

THE BIBLE IS COLLECTION OF 66 SEPARATE BOOKS

Actually, the Bible isn’t one book but rather a collection of 66 separate books, usually bound together for convenience into a single volume. The Bible is a miniature library consisting of all the primary source books which contain factual information about God. The word ‘Bible’ is derived from the Latin biblia and the Greek biblia, words which mean ‘books.’ The word is capitalized to denote God’s books.

The books of the Bible are listed below and shown in the order they appear in printed volumes. The order is sequential, starting with God’s creation, then tracing God’s revelation of himself to people he chose to be his communicators, then eye-witness accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, followed by a history of the early church and letters of instruction to Christians, and finally a shadowy glimpse of the future. For each book, the table also shows the name of the writer (see Topics 19 and 24).

Some of the books are named for their contents; such as Genesis (beginnings), Exodus (Israelites leaving Egypt), Kings (record of the Kings of Israel), Proverbs (wise sayings), Acts (what the early church did), Revelation (what the future will be). Other books are named after the writer; such as Joshua, Isaiah, Micah, Matthew, John and Peter. Still other books are named after the church to which it was addressed; such as Romans (to the Christians who live in Rome), Galatians (to the Christians who live in Galatia), II Thessalonians (second letter to the Christians who live in Thessalonica).

Names of the books and chapter and verse divisions were not part of the original text but have been added by translators to make reading and referencing easier for us.

The Bible is divided into two basic parts: The Old Testament (see Topic 33) and the New Testament (see Topic 36). The word ‘testament’ means covenant, agreement or deal. In other words, the Bible consists of the old deal (for background) and the new deal (for current action). In the New Testament, God makes an incredible offer to us (see Topics 54-59) which we individually must either accept or reject. As with any offer, no response is the same as rejection. The Old Testament shows how and why the offer developed, and the New Testament presents it for our response.

Depending upon page size and type size, the full Bible is typically about 1,000 pages, of which three-fourths is Old Testament and one-fourth is New Testament. Compared to the sacred writings of the major religions (see Topics 13 and 14), the Bible is very compact and easy to read.

BIBLE BOOKS HAVE WIDE DIVERSITY OF STYLE

Each book of the Bible has its own unique literary style, reflecting its time and purpose as well as the personality of the writer. In addition to straight-forward history and moral teaching, various books contain poetry, maxims, allegories and illustrations – all of which were widely and meaningfully used in the ancient world and are still used in our modern world as creative writing and drama.

Rather than giving bare historical facts, most Biblical narratives make use of literary techniques to interest and involve the reader. History is simplified, interpreted and punctuated with human emotion so that it can more easily be understood and remembered.