13. Wasn’t the Old Testament written especially to the Jews, so that it doesn’t apply in the same way to Christians?

The Old Testament was written particularly to the Jews, whom God called out from all the nations to be his special people (e.g. Deuteronomy 7:6); and so, Paul speaks of the privilege of the Jews as being very great, and consisting most especially in this, that they were given the oracles of God (Romans 3:1-2). Elsewhere, Paul consistently speaks of the Jews as having a definite temporal priority in God’s redemptive design (just as Christ had taught before him, cf. Matthew 15:24), declaring that the gospel was for the Jew first, and only afterwards for the Gentile (Romans 1:16-17).

However, the Jews ought to have recognized and embraced Christ, because they had been instructed of him in the scriptures; and indeed, their forefathers, to whom the gospel first came, looked ahead to Christ in true faith and rejoiced (e.g. John 8:56; Hebrews 11:13-16); but as a whole, they rejected him instead, and so all those who disbelieved were cast off. But even this rejection and casting-off of the majority of the Jews was not without a purpose; for Paul teaches that, according to God’s plan, the Gentiles would be brought in to know God’s mercy through the stumbling of the Jews. Thus, many Jews would be broken off from God’s people, but his nation would then be expanded, as many Gentiles were grafted into Israel by faith (see Romans 11).

This means that true Israel, and the true Jewish people, are not simply those ethnically descended from Abraham, but they are rather the remnant of ethnic Jews who believe, together with those Gentiles who have been made a part of true Israel through faith. Thus, the New Testament often speaks of Christians, whether Jew or Gentile, as the true Jews (e.g. Romans 2:28-29; 4:11-17; 9:6-8; Galatians 3:6-9, 26-29; 4:21-31; 6:16; Ephesians 2:11-22; 3:6; Phil. 3:3; 1 Pet. 2:9-10; Rev. 2:9). This means that all the promises and teachings of the Old Testament scriptures, which were written for the Jews, belong to us who are in Christ, the one true Seed of Abraham (Gal. 3:16), for we are now Abraham’s children through faith, and thus heirs of the promises made to Abraham and his offspring (Gal. 3:26-29).

2 Responses to “13. Wasn’t the Old Testament written especially to the Jews, so that it doesn’t apply in the same way to Christians?”

  1. mary says:
    August 30, 2010 at 8:28 am

    where did the Jews come from, as far as location and ancestors?

  2. pitchford says:
    August 30, 2010 at 8:43 am

    Mary,

    Ethnically, the Jewish nation came from the patriarch Abraham, whose native city was Ur of the Chaldees (prob. in modern-day Iraq, near the Persian Gulf). Abraham, called out by the Lord, spent his life wandering through the Middle East. He fathered many of the Arab nations through Ishmael, his son by Hagar (an Egyptian slave); and he fathered the Jewish nation through Isaac, his son by Sarah (his wife). Isaac’s son Jacob was later re-named Israel by God. He is the father of the Israeli people. They are also called Jewish after Jacob’s Son, Judah, who became the most prominent of the twelve tribes of Israel. But the great mystery of the Gospel, as Paul explains in the New Testament, is that all of us who believe in the promises of God, as Abraham believed, are adopted into his family, to become the true sons and heirs of Abraham, along with the Jews who still believe in the promised Christ, who came from the seed of Abraham and David some two thousand years ago.

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