Why does God seem different in the Old and New Testaments?

We are told what God is as Jehovah in the proclamation of His Name—“Merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,” etc. We see how this gave character to men of faith in the Old Testament, but it was not till the Son came that the Name of divine love—the Father’s Name—was made known.

36 The NEW TESTAMENT, as we readily perceive, has a very different character from the Old, in that, if the latter gives us the revelation of the thoughts which God communicated to those who were the instruments of this revelation, and makes us adore the wisdom that is there developed, yet God Himself in the Old Testament remains always hidden behind the veil. In the New Testament God manifests Himself; there we find Himself, gentle, meek, human: in the Gospels, God upon earth, - and then God enlightening by a divine light in the subsequent communications of the Spirit. Formerly God had made promises, as He had executed judgments; He had governed a people upon earth, and had acted towards the nations in view of this people; He had given them His law, and had bestowed on them, through the medium of the prophets, a growing light which announced as nearer and nearer the coming of Him who should tell them all things from God. But the presence of God Himself as Man in the midst of men had the effect of changing everything, where man ought to have received Him in the Person of the Christ, as the crown of blessing and glory - Him, whose presence was to banish all evil, and develop and bring to perfection every element of good, furnishing at the same time an object and a centre for all the affections rendered perfectly happy by the enjoyment of this Object. Or else, in rejecting this Christ, our poor nature must manifest itself as it is, enmity against God, and must prove the necessity for a completely new order of things, in which the happiness of man and the glory of God should be based upon a new creation. We know what happened. He who was the image of the invisible God, had to say, after the exercise of a perfect patience: "Righteous Father, the world hath not known thee"; and alas! yet more than that: "they have seen and hated both me and my Father," John 17:25; ch. 15:24.

In Old Testament times there were certain limited revelations of God's attributes and ways. The heavens declared the glory of His power, and firmament showed His handiwork. The law given at Sinai announced the uprightness of His kingdom and the justice of His throne. He showed Himself often in His providential care for men and as the covenant-keeping God; and proclaimed His Name, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth." But these partial revelations, rays from the eternal splendour, only served to make those who received them cry out for a fuller, a complete knowledge of His heart and nature, as when Moses said, "Show me Thy glory" (Ex. 33), and David pleaded, "O send out Thy light and Thy truth; let them lead me, let them bring me to Thy holy hill and to Thy tabernacles" (Ps. 43) Those soul longings have been answered in a manner that neither Moses nor David could have conceived. The glory has appeared and the light and the truth have come in the Son of God, for "God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last times spoken to us by His Son … Who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person" (Heb. 1:3). "No man has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him" (John 1:18). And the Son in whom God has spoken and who has declared what God is in His very nature and has glorified Him on the earth, said, "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12), and "I am the truth" (John 14:6).

IT is apparent, even to the ordinary reader of the Scriptures, that the revelation God has been pleased to make of Himself is gradual and progressive. Now believers walk in the light, as He is in the light; but in a former day clouds and darkness were round about Him, and necessarily so as long as righteousness and judgment were the habitation of His throne. But when Christ had accomplished the work of atonement, glorifying God in all that He is, having been made sin for us, the veil behind which God had dwelt, and which had concealed Him from His people, was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, and God could righteously gratify His own heart in coming out into the full display of what He is as revealed in Christ, on the ground of redemption. These are cardinal and fundamental truths; and they are stated as preparatory to a brief consideration of the several names of God, under which He revealed Himself in the various dispensations found in the Old Testament histories. That God is the same in, nature and attributes in both the Old and New Testaments; that, in other words, He is immutable, is a necessity of the perfections of His divine being; but it is yet true that the aspects under which He is presented in different ages vary, and it is these aspects which are embodied in His several names.

All true comfort flows from the true knowledge of God. He has revealed Himself to us in Christ in the New Testament in the fulness of His love. This was not possible in the days of the prophets, yet the fuller revelation does not cancel what went before what He was then abides, He is the same, and “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4).

The presentation of this is a very great incentive to every saint to walk in the power of these things. We have to bow our heads that we know so little of them. They involve an apprehension of what God is both in His nature and character. His nature (love), was as much towards man in Old Testament times as in those of the New. He is unchangeable in love; but when we think of His attributes this is not so. God's holiness and righteousness must necessarily be against man for he is a sinner. Hence, at the cross, not only does His love find expression, but His righteousness and holy character are met too.

We note in passing that God is indeed entitled to change the rules, the way He deals with men. He gives one covenant, based on one principle (responsibility), the system fails, and He gives another, different, covenant based on a different principle (grace). Anyone who is in any doubt about the truth that there are different 'dispensations' will do well to consider this. He indeed 'takes away the first that he may establish the second' (Heb. 10:9).

This is what we need to bear in mind. If you take the law given at Sinai, you have God requiring that which condemns a sinner. God was not manifesting Himself there as Father. Take, again, the sovereign of this country: she sends out her army to attack some foreign enemy, or a word of authority to deal with some rebellious province. Who would argue that she was acting as a mother in these cases? Who would conclude that thus we view her in relation to her children? It is as a sovereign, and with rebellious subjects, that she so acts. At Sinai there was a nation, God's rebellious subjects; and He was laying down in thunder and lightning, and with a voice more terrible than either, what He could not but require from guilty Israel. But when God, who spoke thus terribly, speaks now, how is it? By His Son. It is the same God, but His voice how different! God always maintains His right and title, not only to make good that which He uttered in connection with Israel of old, but to bring in that which is new. What means a new covenant, if it does not antiquate that which went before?

How wonderful to think of the Lord as a Man of war! Think of His fighting against people! Some find it very hard to take in the idea — to understand how a benevolent Being could act in such a character. But the difficulty arises mainly from not distinguishing between the different dispensations. It was just as consistent with the character of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to fight against His enemies, as it is with the character of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ to forgive them. And inasmuch as it is the revealed character of God that furnishes the model on which His people are to be found — the standard by which they are to act, it was quite as consistent for Israel to cut their enemies in pieces, as it is for us to love them, pray for them, and do them good.

In both scriptures, God is seen acting by means of the Son, and in each of them the Son is presented in the character suited to the theme of the passage. The New Testament Gospel displays the Son given to reveal God's love to the world, and also the Father's love to those who receive His Son. But in the Old Testament Psalm, the Son is shown as the Executor of divine judgment upon the world which is in open revolt against Jehovah and His Anointed.