The Christianity of the Old Testament by Prof. G. H. Schodde, Ph. D.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 8, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 14.

The Christianity of the Old Testament.

By Prof. G. H. Schodde, Ph. D.

HISTORICALLY and doctrinally the Old Testament is the foundation of the New. To attempt to understand the gospels and the epistles without Moses and the prophets is like trying to erect a house without first having laid a foundation. This great truth is clearly recognized by Christ, and with him by the whole New Testament revelation, both directly and by implication. His coming is declared to have taken place "in the fullness of time," that is, when the gradual unfolding of God's plan for the redemption of mankind, of which development the Old Testament is the history and record, had reached such a stage that the central character in this kingdom of God on earth could appear in the flesh and find all things ready for him and his gospel. It is this idea of the kingdom of God on earth, and its unfolding in time, that forms the connecting link between the two Testaments and gives them their pivot and unity. They are both the records of one development, but describe this development in two phases. They accordingly belong together, and neither can be understood without the other.

Such being the inner relation and connection between the two Testaments, according to Christ and the New Testament, who are the best exegetes of, and the best commentary on, the Old Testament, it is no more than a natural conclusion that the same great principles of salvation which are the characteristic marks of the religion of the New Testament should also be found to prevail in the Old; and that the Christian gospel should be found to be the controlling factor in Old Testament religious life, however darkly and inadequately it might be expressed formaliter. And in fact an examination of the Old Testament religion, as this is laid open to us in the positive teachings and the actual religious life of the best representatives of genuine theocratic life, reveals the fact that the great truths of sin, repentance, and acceptance of God's grace through faith, which are the leading truths of Christ's gospel, were also the central and fundamental ideas of Israel's religion. The object of God's special covenant with Abraham, and later with Abraham's family and nation, and the selection of the peculiar means of a theocratico-political government, separating his people from all the surrounding nations, was to implant in Israel, and to develop in the religious life of this people, the great truths of salvation that are common to both dispensations.

His education of this one peculiar people, in his own way and manner, was to make through them the great gospel truths the lessons of history. The law was by no means the principle of the Old Testament covenant, nor did it directly or indirectly teach the doctrine of legal righteousness. Christ himself says (Matt. 23:23) that the weightier matters of the law were "judgment, mercy, and faith." And Paul (Gal. 3:24) says that the law was intended to be a "schoolmaster unto Christ." The law was then not to be, as later Rabbinical Judaism understood, or rather misunderstood it to be, a corpus of behests, the obedience to which entitled the person to the claim of righteousness and satisfaction for all transgression. The law had a deeper purpose. It was not an end in itself, but only the means to an end. Its aim was, by showing to the children of the covenant what the sum of duties were which God, by virtue of their sinful condition and of the special covenant relation, could and did claim from them, to lead them to a recognition of their actual state and relation towards God. It was intended to convict men of sin. Its purpose was in the old covenant the same as in the new; the great difference, however, being this, that in the old, on account of the theocratical government in Israel, in which the whole life of the Israelite was under the direct guidance of Jehovah, there was added to the moral law, which holds good for all times and for all men, a large number of laws teaching the theocratic life of the people. For them these ceremonial laws were of equal importance with the moral; but in the new dispensation they have fallen away, with the outward theocracy which they necessarily accompanied. The distinction between moral and ceremonial law is, then, not one formally stated in sacred Scripture, but one made by the course of development in the kingdom of God on earth. But the object of the law, in Israel's religious life, had as its first aim the conviction of sin, and as its further object, the directing of the repentant sinner to the mercy-seat.

For this, too, was evidently within the scope of the law. The Giver of the law manifestly never supposed that those living under it could ever comply with its commands, but that they would become unfaithful to their covenant relation, and would forfeit the blessings of this relation. The law, therefore, brought with it the sacrificial system of atonement and pardon, and thereby visibly represented to the eye of repentant faith the willingness of Jehovah to receive back into favor those who returned with contrite heart for their former disobedience. The system of the law, in its complex character, thus brought to life in the hearts of the faithful Israelites the fundamental truths of sin, repentance, and pardon through God's grace, and directed them on the paths of faith.

Hand in hand with this goes prophecy. The prophets, not only the literary prophets of later date, but also the earlier prophets, beginning with Moses himself, were the special ambassadors of God sent to direct and guide Israel in the growth of her national and religious life; and in the performance of this duty, it was their work to inculcate the great principles of this faith under the various vicissitudes of the wonderful history of this people. Yet their preaching at all times is a call to repentance to those who had departed from the landmarks set up by their covenant relation, and a promise that a return in contrition would find Jehovah full of grace and mercy. It was also within the sphere of prophecy to proclaim, with constantly growing clearness, the advent of the Messiah as the objective basis of this free grace of God. In the famous fifty-third chapter of Isaiah this Messianic gospel reaches such a height that the reader would suppose that the prophet had stood on Mount Calvary, and not that he had lived seven hundred years before that time.

The lives of representative men under the old covenant show the power of these great principles of Israel's faith. Their grandest expression we find in the psalms; these are the finest exposition in word and spirit of the central truths that filled the heart of the faithful. And here it is that we hear the gospel of sin, repentance, faith, and grace, uttered in such clear tones that none can mistake their meaning. These sacred songs show, as indeed the whole Old Testament does, that there was a Christianity before Christ, and that there were Christians before the day of Pentecost. There is indeed a difference between the two Testaments; but it is one of degree rather than of kind. They both describe the gradual unfolding in history and in the hearts of men of the great truths of salvation; the one describing this growth in its preparatory stage, and in a manner suitable to this stage; the other pictures it in its fullness and splendor after the Word had become flesh.—Prof. G. H. Schodde, Ph. D., in Old Testament Student.