A slight detour from Ephesus
- Michael Calhoun
- Mar 21
- 3 min read
Subtitled: Hit a bump, but didn't get discouraged...
I thought I was going to have to drop my Old Testament course at Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne due to increased travel for work and confusion over accreditation. Instead of letting my disappointment and frustration overtake me, I let go and let God. I'm back on track and turned in my first assignment today.
Why do we even need the Old Testament? Didn't Gospel negate Law?
Short answer: no. Christ fulfilled the law! But that doesn't mean that the Tanakh (an acronym for Torah, Nevi'im. K'tuvim: Torah, Prophets, Writings of the Hebrew Bible) and the rest of the Old Testament are no longer valid or important to Christians.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." (Matthew 5:17, ESV).
"23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith." (Galatians 3:23-24).
I will confess to being one of those New Testament Christians in the past. While I grew up with the Old Testament and the stories, and never once doubted their canonicity (before I knew what that meant), I was taught in the non-denominational churches that Jesus “re-wrote” the Ten Commandments in the Sermon on the Mount. Aside from the fact that this is poor theology from even a contextual standpoint, I now see it as a harmful doctrine that diminishes the whole of God’s Word.
As a young man, growing into myself, I was exposed to many philosophies. My Nana was an Irish Catholic, my Dad, a Southern Baptist. I taught martial arts for 20+ years and was exposed to the Eastern philosophies of the Tao and the Buddha. I even studied some philosophy that skewed my thinking a bit in my undergraduate work. Friedrich Nietzche – famous philosopher and Christian basher (whom I would call a nihilist, cynical and iniquitous to the point of being evil) once stated: “Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.”[1]. This is frequently quoted by fellow nihilists and “moralists”, who also ignore this quote from the same work: “I have a contempt for humanity. I despise the people I have been fated to call my contemporaries.” The point being that we, quite often as a society are led away from the complete demonstration of God’s inspired Word, and most often it is by those who need it most.
This week, we establish the Old Testament’s validity not only as that Word, but as the validation of the Messiah – Jesus Christ Himself as the Son of God, in the flesh from the beginning of time. McDowell[2] encompasses this thought beautifully in saying: “In spite of its diversity, the Bible presents a single unfolding story: God's redemption of human beings… "The 'Paradise Lost' of Genesis becomes the 'Paradise Regained' of Revelation. Whereas the gate to the tree of life is closed in Genesis, it is opened forevermore in Revelation." (p. 6). “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Rev. 22:13, ESV). If one ties this with John 1:1- “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”, it is clear that the entirety of the canonical Scripture is incomplete without the Old Testament - there is no Alpha.
If for no other reason, the Old Testament is considered important in the words of the New Testament: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” (Rom. 15:4). In Luther’s own words: “For the Law has its terminus, defining how far it is to go and what it is to achieve, namely, to terrify the impenitent with the wrath and displeasure of God and drive them to Christ.”[3] Scripture is incomplete without both Testaments of God’s Word.
[1] Friedrich Nietzche, The Anti-Christ, (Buffalo, NY. Promethius Books, 1911).
[2] Josh D. McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, (San Bernadino, CA., Here’s Life Publications, 1999), 6.
[3] Martin Luther, The Distinction between the Law and the Gospel: A Sermon by Martin Luther
January 1,1532. Accessed 03-20-2025. https://www.ccle.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/LutherSermon.pdf
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