At times, people speak as if the Old Testament and the New Testament present different pictures of God, with many claiming that the Old Testament features a God of anger and wrath while the New Testament features a God of love and mercy. A reading of Scripture, however, overturns such a belief, as one reads about all sorts of acts of love of God in the Old Testament (bringing the people out of Egypt, for example) and also see acts of justice in the New Testament (such as the death of Ananias and Sapphira when they lie to the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter 5). God does not change between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and the way that people are saved does not change between the Old Testament and the New Testament; from the beginning, people have always been saved by grace through faith (for example, read about the account of Abraham in Genesis 15).
Article 17 of the Belgic Confession reminds us that God has a single plan, making a single covenant of grace with fallen sinners in which he has provided a way for them to come back into relationship with him, as this article speaks about the recovery of fallen humanity. We read in this article: “We believe that our good God, by marvelous divine wisdom and goodness, seeing that Adam and Eve had plunged themselves in this manner into both physical and spiritual death and made themselves completely miserable, set out to find them, though they, trembling all over, were fleeing from God. And God comforted them, promising to give them his Son, born of a woman, to crush the head of the serpent, and to make them blessed.”
This article speaks both about the goodness of God and the depth of the fallenness of humans. It mentions God’s goodness twice in the opening words — he is a good God and because of his divine goodness. Not only is he good, but he is wise; he has good intentions and because he is wise, is able to execute on these good intentions and make something happen.
While God is good, we see here that humans are deeply fallen. It says that Adam and Eve have plunged into physical and spiritual death and that they are completely miserable. They are not looking for God but are looking to flee from God, as it notes that they were trembling all over; humans in their fallen estate seek to get away from God.
This good God does not stay away, though, as it says that he “set out to find them” and that he made a great promise to them. This promise is found just moments after the Fall, in Genesis 3:15 in which God says to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” I know the first time I read that, I was a bit confused, but the promise here is that God, through a human, will crush the serpent, that is the devil; the works of the devil will be undone by one born of a woman. This promise is fulfilled in Jesus (see Galatians 4:4), with Satan trying to destroy him but Jesus ultimately destroying the devil.
What this means is that people in the Old Testament were never saved by their works; they were saved by faith in God’s way to bring them back and the promise that God made with them. The Reformed tradition teaches that there is one covenant of grace that begins here; before Genesis 3, Adam and Eve could have inherited eternal life through works (obeying God), but now that they have broken this, their only hope is through a covenant of grace, of God making a promise to them. In addition to giving guidance for how God wants us and has designed us to live, the traditions and laws of the Old Testament were shadows that pointed to people to Christ (see Colossians 2:17; Hebrews 10:1). The Heidelberg Catechism, another one of the Reformed confessions, reminds us of this in Q and A 19.
Q: How do you come to know this?
A: The holy gospel tells me. God began to reveal the gospel already in Paradise; later God proclaimed it by the holy patriarchs and prophets and foreshadowed it by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law; and finally God fulfilled it through his own beloved Son.
Therefore, there are not two covenants with God’s people, but a single covenant of grace that looked a little different during the time of Israel than it does now, with us now seeing things more clearly than during the time of Israel. Because God never changes, he is good and brings fallen sinners back to himself through his provision. What wonderful news for us to know and believe with our heads and our hearts, and for us to confess with our mouths.
Questions about Bible or theology? E-mail them to Pastor Brian at Theology@wearefaith.org. You can also subscribe by filling out the info on the right side.
