There is a key to understanding scripture as it flows from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Without this understanding, you will get lost. You won’t see the connection and you’ll think that everything and everyone is messed up.

That key is that we must understand that scripture is progressive revelation. As you read through the Bible, you’ll see that people in the Old Testament understood things one way. They had one view of God and the way things were. In fact, because the Old Testament covers a huge amount of time, you can even see that those views shift.

What King David believed is not the same thing that Job believed. But neither of those views were technically wrong. They only had a limited amount of information and revelation about God.

However, if you move to the Gospels, the people then had even more understanding of those same things. If you continue to read further in the Epistles, you’ll see that again, the writers have an even better understanding of those same things.

That’s because the Bible is progressive revelation – as time progresses, God’s people gain a better understanding of how things operate and who God is. God is continually revealing who He is and how He operates throughout the Bible to His people.

Our walk with God is like climbing a mountain. In the Old Testament, people were climbing, but only near the bottom. So they only had one view of everything. In the Gospels, people were climbing at a higher level and thus, could see more. In the Epistles, they were even higher and could see and understand things better because they were not only where they were, but they could also see below them – where they came from.

For you and I, we should have a greater understanding than those who lived at any of those times. We are higher on the mountain than them. Our vantage point is greater than all of those and so our understanding of the things of the past should be greater.

The Gospels recount events involving people who were spiritually dead at the time—before the New Covenant was fully in effect. However, the Gospels themselves were written for believers after the resurrection, to gain an understanding of things. In fact, the Gospels really belong in the Old Testament because that’s the covenant that they were living under.

And the Old Testament, it was written to spiritually dead people as well. It was a different time with different circumstances. Trying to live in the Old Testament will give you a very judgmental and legalistic view of God. We must take the Bible as a whole, looking at the Old Testament through the lens of the New.

Now we don’t live in the Old Testament, but we can learn things from it. There are biblical principles that still apply, whether it’s 500 BC or the 21st century. We live in the New Testament, in the Epistles. But the Bible does say that the things in the Old were written as examples for our admonition (1 Corinthians 10:11). So there are things to be learned from it.

There is a purpose of the Old Testament of course. It is to give anticipation for the New Testament. It is to prepare people for what is to come – the Messiah. Galatians 3:24 says, “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”

We must realize this so that we don’t get confused. We also need to understand, and this is where some will disagree, but we should be wiser than the those in the New Testament—including the Apostle Paul. Why is that? Because we have the entirety of the New Testament to guide our paths.

And on top of that, we have the Holy Spirit. In John 16:12-13, Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.”

The Holy Spirit will reveal things to you that aren’t necessarily written in the Bible. That doesn’t mean that those things He speaks to you will disagree with the Bible. That’s not what Jesus was saying here. In fact, He says in verse 13, “He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak;” Everything He speaks to you will agree with Jesus or else it’s not the Holy Spirit.

This is why you can be sitting in church, the Pastor reads a verse or says something and inside of you something completely different has a light bulb come on about it. That’s revelation from God. That’s something the people in the Old Testament didn’t have.
Remember that as you read through the scriptures. Stay with the Word and the Spirit.

Note: This article is taken from a section of my book “From Covenant To Covenant” about understanding the Old Covenant, the New Covenant, and what changed at the cross. If you’re interested, you can pick up your copy on Amazon or on my online store.

Ebook: https://www.kristadams.com/covenant-ebook/
Print Book: https://amzn.to/46QHpPs