“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” (2Ti 3:16-17)

We were accused of the following recently:

“Your claim is based upon Old Testament references, I know that nothing in the New Testament upholds it.”

I am not going to explain what claim we made – it was based on both Old and New Testament references, of course – but would like to concentrate on the statement made.

This person says that, since our claim is based on Old Testament references alone, it is invalid and only if something is “upheld” in the New Testament, it is still valid and binding for Christians today.

Now you can argue about the idea of something being “upheld”, since in order to find out if it is or not, you would have to go much deeper into Scripture than just look for a word that might or might not be repeated. You will have to look for concepts, for the mindset of the people, and make sure that you understand what is going on in the New Testament based on the mindset of the people who Jesus met and dealt with, who the letters were addressed too.

But the point I am trying to make is so much more simple:

  1. Jesus is God in the flesh (Joh 1:1;14). God does not change (Mal 3:6), Jesus does not change (Heb 13:8). Whatever command is made in the Old Testament, therefore, is still valid today unless specifically ended, like the sacrificial law: Jesus himself was the last sacrifice, the last Passover lamb to be slain (1Co 5:7; Heb 10:12).
  2. When Jesus argues in the New Testament, He quotes Scripture. What does he quote ? When met with temptation, He quotes Deuteronomy (for example Mat 4:4); we find Him referring to Isaiah when He explains why He speaks in parables (for example Mat 13:14-15), and He refers back to Exodus and Deuteronomy when it comes to the Ten Commandments, just as examples. Of course He quotes Old Testament Scriptures, as the New Testament was not written yet. The same counts for Paul when he labels all Scripture to be breathed by God and profitable (2Ti 3:16-17)- all Scripture, that was, in his time, the Old Testament only. Now while we believe that both Old and New Testament are inspired by God and thus inerrant and eternal, it is important to point out that the Old Testament constitutes not only the major part of our bible, but also lays the foundations needed to understand what happens in the New Testament.

Rather than dismissing something that is based on Old Testament Scripture only, we should be careful if a claim relies on New Testament Scriptures alone, and contradicts Old Testament Scripture. The claim might very well be resting on a modern understanding of a biblical concept and hence be wrongly handling the word of truth (2Ti 2:15).

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 1:46 pm and is filed under NT, OT, Tota Scriptura. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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