What is the difference between the Old and New Testaments?

Much of what has already been said as to the Pentateuch being introductory to the entire Scripture applies in a special way to the Old Testament. As has already been said, the entire Scripture is divided for us in to two great portions marked out by the incarnation of the Son of God, His redemption and ascent into glory. In this way, the Old Testament forms an introduction. It is the book of shadow to which the New Testament is a necessary sequel, supplying us with the substance. It is the book of promise to which the New Testament furnishes the fulfilment of promise. It is the book of the earth and of an earthly people, to which the New Testament furnishes the addition of the heavenly side of divine things. Without the New Testament, the Old would be a fragment grand, colossal, magnificent, but a ruin, even as the nation of Israel is today a ruin.

In a similar way the New Testament is like the obverse of the seal. The Old Testament is like the reverse. And the one part fits perfectly to the other. Prophecies by the score in the Old Testament have been literally fulfilled in the New Testament. The types of the Old Testament find their antitypes in the New Testament. The shadows of the Old Testament find their answer in the substance of the New Testament. The New Testament quotes scores of times from the Old Testament as confirmatory of the intimate relation between the two parts. They are not in one sense two books, but in reality two parts of one book.

The Old Testament is like a great picture-book. And in the New Testament we have the living realities of all those pictures. It is a book of types and shadows. The New Testament contains the antitypes and substance of these types and shadows. Thus what is enfolded in the Old Testament is unfolded in the New.

(Vv. 6-9). Not only does Christ exercise a more excellent ministry in heaven, but He is the Mediator of a better covenant, established upon better promises. Of this new covenant the Apostle speaks in verses 6-13.

A covenant sets forth the terms on which two people can be in relation with each other. Scripture speaks of two great covenants between God and men, the old covenant and the new, the covenant of law and the covenant of grace. Both the old and the new covenants set forth the terms on which God can bless His earthly people. The great difference between the covenants is that under the terms of the first covenant the blessing depended upon man doing his part, whereas under the second covenant the blessing is secured by the unconditional promise of God. The mediatorial work of Christ lays a righteous basis for God to bless the believer in sovereign grace according to the terms of the new covenant.

And the Greek word for “New” here is not that which signifies repaired, or even renovated, as it may be possible to renew an article that has run out of repair, but it signifies what is absolutely and radically new, something which had not existed before. It is the same word as we find in Colossians 3:10, the “new man.”

Now this attaches great importance to the character of the “New Covenant.” It is one of a distinctly different kind and order from the old. An amalgamation or infusion of the two is not allowed. They are essentially distinct. The old may have furnished types and shadows of the new, but in nature they stand apart. The old was legal, and dealt with man on the ground of responsibility; the new is of grace, and takes up the cause of man as he is—guilty, and without strength. It is therefore a better covenant, and is established on better promises. As to its letter, it is to be made with Israel and Judah after those days—that is, with the nation when Christianity as such, and the Church, have run the course of their testimony here; but as to the spirit of it Paul could write—“Has made us able ministers of the new covenant” (2 Cor. 3), “not of the letter, but of the spirit.” And, seeing that the blood of Christ is called “the blood of the new covenant” we (Christians) have thereby the remission of our sins. Hence we read, in Hebrews 10, “Their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” That is, although the new covenant is not de facto made with Christians, yet the old covenant—as a covenant or compact—has passed away, and we stand before God on the ground of the new—that is, on the ground of grace.

The characteristic feature of the old dispensation was law, that of the new is grace. The giving of the law at Sinai ushered in the former. God formulated His demands upon men. He was to receive, and they were to give, that which was His due. The fact that failure came in immediately, failure so great as to amount to a total collapse, did not relieve men of their newly incurred responsibilities in the smallest degree. God, however, announced to Moses that He would have mercy (Ex. 33:19), and withhold the threatened destruction in view of the coming of Christ. The law still held sway as "schoolmaster," and continued so to do until Christ came (Gal. 3:24).

Thus we see, that in Old Testament times, the gospel, in its fulness was promised; but not what is called in the New Testament preached. The apostle was "separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures." (Rom. 1:1-2.) In this we have the great difference between the Old and New Testament times as to the gospel. Then, it was promised as God's great blessing to come; now, it is preached as come in all its fulness and freeness to the whole world. At the same time we are fully assured that God has never left Himself without a witness — a testimony to His mercy, and that all who then believed God according to the revelation which He gave of Himself were saved. "Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved," is a quotation from the prophet Joel. And no statement of the gospel can be more free than this; but the greatness of the salvation was not made known until Christ came. "The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." John 1:17.

Old Covenant and New Covenant are, as law and grace, completely opposed to one another. As the apostle argues, so absolutely is this true here that when the latter comes in the former must give way, to disappear before it (Heb. 8:13); and yet they are two parts of one testimony, both necessary to the Scripture rule with regard to testimony, and answering, in their very contrast to each other to the inherent reason for its being twofold. "Who that has considered it in the least but must appreciate the power of this for conviction? For such power in twofold witness proceeds largely from the diversity of character and interest that they present. They are otherwise different, ― contrasted; yet here they agree: different in such sort that you realize there is no collusion between them, ― no treachery. Nothing but the necessary unity of truth could make them one. And how will this be strengthened in proportion as the contrast is manifold, and yet the unity pervasive: and this in the two Testaments is what so demonstrates them to be of God.

In brief, the Old Testament is the history of God come down to this world, and to men upon it, in the varying forms we have noticed; and the New Testament is the record of man (in the person of Christ) gone up into the heavens. We know Him who is there to prepare a place for us; and He has promised "I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." Let us bear in mind, these two characteristic differences of the Old and New Testament, that we may discern "the manifold wisdom of God," opened out by the ministry of the prophets first, and fulfilled in the Messiah Son of David according to the flesh, when in the midst of Israel.

"The law and the prophets" was the recognized phrase for the Old Testament as a whole, the Scriptures of a dispensation already past, but which had not passed themselves with the dispensation. Thus in the Gospel of Luke He says again (Luke 16:16): "The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the Kingdom of God is preached." Thus it could be said that they were passed, and that they were not passed. They were passed as the sole and governing truth: that was now come, or at least was at hand, for which they had been preparing the way; and necessarily this must be now the higher truth, but which must by the very fact bear witness to and establish what has gone before it. No truth can pass away. The more complete that is, to which we have arrived, the more surely must it embrace and set in their place all lower and partial truths which have anticipated and led on to it.

Thus then Christ came not to destroy the law and the prophets. He came to fulfil, or rather complete, ― fill them out. What would the Old Testament be without the New? Very much like a finger, pointing into vacuity!