The old is gone – the new is here
December 29, 2017
The first thing you should notice about the Bible is that it is divided into two parts labeled “old” and “new.” This distinction is important because it suggests that there is a difference between what is old and what is new. If there were no difference, the labels “Old Testament” and “New Testament” would be meaningless. Sometimes Christians try to smooth over this difference by arguing that God is the same in the Old Testament as he is in the New Testament. While this may be true, the fact of the matter is that everything about his way of dealing with mankind is different in the New Testament.
This change has come about because of the finished work of Christ on the cross. In the Old Testament, individuals were judged and condemned for their own sins and transgressions. In the New Testament, however, we are told that Christ “bore our sins in his own body on the tree,” and that he “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” The result is that since Jesus was judged and condemned on the cross in our place, putting away sin by his own sacrifice, the New Testament speaks of forgiveness, not as something to be obtained, but as something preemptively granted by God, as a present-tense fact.
We find expressions like this, describing the resurrection of Christ: “God raised him from the dead … having forgiven you of all trespasses,” and that we should forgive one another “even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.” In other words, God’s forgiveness of sins has already taken place as the result of the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross.
This is true not just for Christians, but for the whole world. John writes that Jesus was the sacrifice for our sins (meaning Christians) and then adds, “and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” Paul writes concerning the death of Christ, that God was at work “reconciling the world to himself” and adds that he was “not imputing their trespasses to them, but blotting them out.” In other words, God was not (and is not now) imputing sin to the world. The reason is that he has already imputed the sins of the world to Jesus, who put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
The difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament could be summed up this way: the Old Testament is about what you do for God; the New Testament is about what God has done for you. What does that leave for us to do? Our part in all of this is very simple. In fact, this is the only thing God wants from you: that you believe; that you place your faith and confidence in what he has already done for you through Christ and his finished work on the cross.
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