Is the God of the Old Testament the Same as the God of the New Testament?

 When asked, “Is the God of the Old Testament the same as the God of the New Testament?”, people have strange views. Even among people who claim to be Christian, I suspect the majority would answer “no.”  The reason, I think, is emotional.  They think God in the Old Testament is mean-spirited and bloody, and they don’t want that kind of God judging them in the last day. Pastors must feel the same way, since I have only heard a sermon from the Old Testament a couple of times.  They would prefer Jesus (whom they selectively portray as soft on sin in the New Testament) doing the judging, since He was a healer, wasn’t afraid to be with sinners, and defended the common people against the stick-in-the-mud Pharisees.  The “good” guy, right?

But we’re here to study All of Scripture, not just guided by emotional response.  See II Timothy 3:16-17:

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, ¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Scripture is God’s voice of unchanging truth to us.  It contains the advice for godly behavior. Old Testament as well as New.

We begin with the truth that God doesn’t change, James 1:17:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

So, God doesn’t change, or “evolve,” from Old to New Testaments.

Yes, it is true that He has covenants by which He deals with different people in different promises.  But they have one common goal, and it is an oversimplification to argue that the Covenant of Law in the Old Testament means He dealt harshly with sin, while the Covenant of Grace in the New Testament "says" that He is non-judgmental on “non-serious” sin if you accept Jesus.  Life is not that simple; as I argue in another series of blogs (Escaping Hell).  It is necessary to obey Christ’s commands (which go well beyond the Ten Commandments) to continue to be saved.  For instance, He commanded that You must abide in Christ, as was presented in John 15:1-6:

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. ² Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit… ⁴ Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.

⁵ “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. ⁶ If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.

This clearly says that your judgment likely is hell if you don’t have a regular relationship with Him (as the word “abide” says). So God—and Jesus--don’t ignore sin like some might hope, in the New Testament.  On the other hand, God can be forgiving in the Old Testament—and in the New.  He can send you to hell for unrepented sin—in the New Testament as in the Old.  As Paul argues (Romans 4), Abraham, an obviously Old Testament guy, was saved by staying close to God through faith in His promises through trials.  I think God's most challenging command was telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. It was a test, and his potential sacrifice of Isaac was a type, with God the Father and Jesus the Son being the antitype. He knew, with His knowledge of the future, that Abraham would be willing to do it. This was to teach us great lessons about agape love and sacrifice. None of that was because He was capricious, or primitive in His dealing with people.  Abraham obeyed God--he got up early the next morning to do it.  I think he believed that God would raise him from the dead, since God had promised that a new nation would come through Isaac. And he believed that promise was still good.

Obedience to His command is also necessary in the New Testament (John 14:21). Too many people break God's commands in something significant, yet don't worry--"I accepted Jesus, so I'm saved."

Many people have these countervailing feelings, I’ll call them “biases,” about the Old and New Testament.  Let me try to balance both of them out, by pointing out the opposite of their expectations in each. We will look at God's kindness and mercy in the Old Testament, and His harsh side in the New—as stated by Jesus, who is God.  We’ll start by looking at God’s mercy in the Old Testament.  Let’s begin with Numbers 14:18-19, where Moses is interceding for the sinful people of Israel:

‘The Lord is longsuffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He by no means clears the guilty…¹⁹ Pardon the iniquity of this people, I pray, according to the greatness of Your mercy, just as You have forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.”

If you read the Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Old Testament) carefully, the children of Israel traveling in the desert had one miracle after another shown to them (the plagues mostly did not hit them). They lost no life by obeying the Passover, while Pharaoh’s disobedience led to all Egyptian families losing their firstborn. Not only that, his army was wiped out. God gave the Jews food, their shoes never broke down, the miracles were so many I can’t name them all.  Yet they still didn’t trust God or Moses for leadership.   God redeemed the nation later, when they finally obeyed Him. See Acts 7:39b-42, where Steven is summarizing the hard-heartedness of most of these people:

And in their hearts they turned back to Egypt, ⁴⁰ saying to Aaron, ‘Make us gods to go before us; as for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.’ ⁴¹ And they made a calf in those days, offered sacrifices to the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands. ⁴² Then God turned and gave them up to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the Prophets

But they had to obey His commands to escape His anger--and almost all adults in the early days did not, and died in His anger, and never got to the Promised Land. They were supposed to rely on Him. Their children were obedient, and fought for it—and made it.

But isn’t that the same story in the New Testament?  Jesus was completely innocent, yet He was killed by the insistence of the Jews. Their people were screaming for His blood. The Gentiles (Romans) were accessories. Yet His redemption, and heaven, are still available!  He was, and is, longsuffering—but there comes a point where He gives up a person committed to sin—as indicated in the Acts 7 verse above. But there are conditions to avoid His anger--which most people have missed.

Consider Ezekiel 18:20-24, another Old Testament passage:

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son….²¹ “But if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. ²² None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; because of the righteousness which he has done, he shall live. ²³ Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” says the Lord God, “and not that he should turn from his ways and live? ²⁴ “But when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and does according to all the abominations that the wicked man does, shall he live? All the righteousness which he has done shall not be remembered; because of the unfaithfulness of which he is guilty and the sin which he has committed, because of them he shall die.

These verses explain, first of all, that God does not carry a grudge against a sinful man’s son or his grandson.  (But the sins that the father unfortunately taught his son, the son tends to copy). God judges them individually.  Secondly, the verses show a truth also taught in the New Testament--God loves repentance (v. 21: “turns from”).  If you repent, believe in what Jesus did, and live righteously, He will forgive you and forget your earlier sin.  But if you were first righteous, then became set in sin, He forgets the earlier days too--that means hell for that person.  (Keep in mind when you read: “live” means heaven, “die” is hell.)  And these verses, despite being in the Old Testament, are repeated in the New Testament, where we are urged to continue abiding in Him and not fall away.  Falling away, failing to abide, failing to obey Him, amount to denying Him; and means hell (John 15 above).  The words from this Old Testament passage that I want to inspire you with are in v. 23: “Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?” says the Lord God.  God does not love to send people to hell.  But the majority go there because they are disobedient or care nothing for God or His commandments (Matthew 7:13-14).

Read this self-description of God in the Old Testament. Does this sound primitive and bloody?  You can see that He is merciful in Exodus 34:5-10, the Old Testament:

Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him (Moses) there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. ⁶ And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, ⁷ keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.” ⁸ So Moses made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.⁹ Then he said, “If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff
-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.”  And He said: “Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels such as have not been done in all the earth

Isn’t it wonderful that God calls Himself “merciful, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness?”  Thank you, God!  Now keep in mind, these blessed words happened immediately after the sin of Israel in making a golden calf idol.  Yet God here proclaimed His longsuffering mercy.  Don’t get the idea that God ignored their sin; notice the phrase, "by no means clearing the guilty."  Soon after this, He set a plague against the guilty ones of another sin--but He also set up a tabernacle of meeting where He showed Himself to Moses, and renewed His Covenant with the Jews.

So…I hope I balanced out your image of God that you may have felt was a “bloody God” in the Old Testament. You still may say, "why did God tell the Jews to kill all the people of Canaan, women and children as well?"  The answer to that question is, to assimilate at all with the Canaanites would have a strange result--it would infect their DNA with a demonic presence.  My strange charge can be explained in my blog on the Nephilim and with the word "DNA" in the title.

So let’s balance things out in the New Testament now, by showing His sternness there. Remember, Jesus is God; and their character is the exact same. Was Jesus all-forgiving in the New Testament?  Was He as nonjudgmental as it seems, since we like to remember when He forgave the woman in adultery, and entertained sinners?  And when He scoffed at the law (the "law" as defined by the Pharisees)?  Here I would like to quote David Limbaugh, author of Jesus on Trial, about the Gospel of Mark:

Jesus tells people to repent.  He tells people to quit their jobs and follow him.  He tells a demon to shut up.  After He heals a leper, He swears him to silence, too.  Then He picks a fight with Sunday School teachers, He tells His mom He’s busy, He rebukes the wind, He kills two thousand pigs, “he offends people but doesn’t go to sensitivity training.”  He calls people hypocrites (ed, this is spoken to regular people, not just the scribes or Pharisees), and seems to call Peter Satan.  He curses and kills a tree, He tells people they’re going to hell, and He rebukes the disciples for falling asleep on Him.  

Not exactly the view of Him in your mind, I suspect. A careful reading of all the Gospels will show the truth of every one the author alludes to.  Jesus was blunt! Upon careful reading of all the Gospels, you’ll see that Jesus had a lot to say about hell--a subject we avoid.  In Matthew 6:15, He told people God would not forgive them if they didn’t forgive people.  In Luke 16, He tells of a man is on his way to hell, with no reason explicitly given for it.  One can only surmise it was because he, a rich man, cared nothing for the poor—and thought he was better than them; he repeatedly ignored a poor man in his daily path, begging for bread (for further proof of the danger of ignoring the poor, see James 2:15-17). In Matthew 11:23, He pronounces judgment on an entire city (Capernaum) because they did not believe in Him.  He predicts their judgment will be worse than Sodom (which reeked of rapist homosexuals).  In Matthew 5:30, He recommends that we take extreme measures to prevent sinning, lest we go to hell.  In Matthew 23 He calls scribes and Pharisees hypocrites, a brood of vipers, and sons of hell.   He asks them, “How can you escape the condemnation of hell?”

Lest you think His harsh judgmental words were for the scribes and Pharisees only, He has an extensive argument stretching over three chapters (John 6-8) He tells his brothers that the world hated Him because “I testify of it that its works are evil.”  A rather critical view of people.   He tells all those listening that “none of you keeps the law.”  He tells them that “He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know.”  He tells them “I go to Him who sent me…and where I am you cannot come.”  He tells all of them “you do not know where I come from and where I am going….You know neither Me nor My Father….you will seek me, and will die in your sin… you are of this world…you do not believe that I am He…you seek to kill Me, because My word has no place in you…you do not hear, because you are not of God…you have not known Him…And if I say, ‘I do not know Him,’ I shall be a liar like you…you are not able to listen to My word.  I speak what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have seen with your father… You are of your father the devil.  Again, these candid, undiplomatic statements were for everyone to hear and be warned.

I hope you’re as surprised as I was, when I first really read those words.  Jesus the bare-knuckler. God/Jesus has harsh penalties for those who persist in sin. God/Jesus hates sin.

I’m not being sarcastic when I say, in faith, that He is The Master Teacher, and knew the right evangelistic skills. He wasn’t just blowing them off, out of anger.  His approach, I suspect, is:  He forces them to make a decision about Him—do you believe I am God, being that I have performed miracles that no man can do, if I judge you at present?  Do you believe that I hate sin so much that I am willing to use harsh language to wake people up?  Or am I going to make you so angry that you’ll rage within, “I hate you!”--and reveal your own condemnation to yourself?  No lukewarm preaching here.  No one skids blissfully to hell on ignorance--such as is happening in today's soft-sell, never mentioning hell, "preaching".  If you were for Him, you were hated by many, just like He was made to be.  He was killed because He was too radical for them. Yet He and His followers evangelized thousands and turned the world upside down--so His "tough love" method worked.  What does that say for us, and our evangelistic methods?  His method of talking about sin definitely would not work in seeker-friendly churches.

These three chapters in John 6-8 also have His discussion with the adulterous woman.  The woman was repentant, so Jesus forgave her.  But, a lot of people forget that He also said to her, “Go, and sin (i.e., this sin) no more.”  God hates divorce and adultery. And He scoffed at the Pharisee “laws” because they were not God’s laws, but man’s laws--“supplements” to God’s law—too often a burden.  Such as their not wanting Jesus to heal people on the Sabbath.

Thus, Jesus is no milquetoast, and He doesn’t display the words for today—“tolerant and nonjudgmental.”

Now I hope I balanced the New Testament like I did with the Old.  Thus, since the "rough" Jesus is also God, this is the same God, with the same qualities—love and a hatred of sin—occupying both Testaments.  Judgment and hell hang over each of us from the day of our accountability.  God provided a way of redemption for you, to get rid of the penalty and power of sin.  In careful Scripture reading, especially the Master Teacher in the Gospels, with an eye to getting a comprehensive view, you can find your way to heaven. Don’t assume since you’ve been “pretty good” that you’ll pass. Even one sin will keep you away from God for eternity. We all should be humble before Him, confessing our sins—not just once, when we “got saved.” Salvation is a path—a path of sanctification. God bless your Scriptural searching--keep in mind, few people are interested.  They just assume they’re “good enough.”  Let Matthew 7:13-14 ring in your ears, and try to make it ring in their ears:

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. ¹⁴ Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.  

Yes, the New Testament tells us that few find their way to heaven.  Be one of the few.

Acknowledgement:  David Limbaugh, Jesus on Trial