April 24

The Old Testament and the New

I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. — Matt 5:17

There are not two Bibles in the one. The Old Testament and the New are not two distinct books, but parts of the same. The New Testament does not set aside the Old, but is simply the rich ripe harvest of which the Old was the sowing and the early growing. The gospel which we have in the New Testament is not a different religion from that which we have in the Old Testament, but the same more fully developed, more clearly taught. In the Old Testament Christ was foretold sometimes in prophetic promise, sometimes in picture and type; in the New these promises are fulfilled, these pictures and types find their realization, and we see the Son of God walking among men in the beauty and glory of His incarnation.

The blossoms are not destroyed when they fall off and the fruit comes in their place; the ripe fruit is but the fulfillment of the promise and prophecy of the blossom. The artist’s outline sketch is not destroyed when the splendid picture covers the canvas, hiding the first light tracings; the finished work of art is but the completion, the filling out of the original drawing until in every feature life glows.

Christ destroyed nothing of past divine revelation when He came. He was the warm summer, wooing the slumbering buds, and dry roots, and waiting prophecies of life into full, luxuriant growth. He was the great Master, taking the dim sketches and shadows of the Old Testament, and filling them out in His own blessed life and death. So we ought not to lay away our Old Testament as an antiquated book, of no value to us since we have the gospel. The Old Testament is full of precious things. One of the strongest proofs of Christianity is the wonderful fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies in the life, sufferings, and death of Jesus Christ. Let us love the whole Bible; not one word of it is obsolete.