Over the past couple of years, I have come across people who believe that the Old Testament cannot be trusted. To them, it depicts an angry God—one who kills people for the minutest of reasons—and presents prophets who seem to lack self-control, at times appearing so enraged that they call down death on others rather than choosing forgiveness.
In their attempt to “defend” the character of God, they argue that the Old Testament was written by people who did not have a full revelation of who God truly is. They caution others to instead focus on the life of Jesus Christ in order to fully grasp God’s nature, and in doing so, they discredit the actions of God as portrayed in the Old Testament. They often say, “We only truly know God by studying the life of Jesus Christ,” they insist, even as they ridicule passages such as 2 Kings 2:23–24—where Elisha pronounces a curse on young men in the name of the Lord for mocking him. They dismiss him as an insecure prophet with low self-esteem, unable to control his anger.
They also mock the account of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, arguing that it contradicts God’s command not to kill—especially one’s own child. In the same way, they question how a good God could strike down Uzzah simply for trying to steady the Ark of God from falling.
In essence, they single out portions of Scripture that portray God executing judgment, responding in anger, or prophets calling down divine wrath, and they reject these as true reflections of who God is. Instead, they narrow their focus to the life of Jesus Christ—zooming in on His compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and His call to love rather than hatred or anger—and use this to define God’s character. For them, this is who God truly is, while the Old Testament is dismissed as a distorted, wrath-filled portrayal that should be set aside.
This way of interpreting Scripture can be traced back to a man named Marcion of Sinope, who taught in the second century. He rejected the Old Testament entirely and argued that the God of the Old Testament was different from the Father revealed by Jesus. Most Christians today would strongly reject Marcion himself as heretical, yet a kind of functional Marcionism still surfaces whenever people downplay or distrust the Old Testament—treating its portrayal of God as inferior or mistaken, or elevating the Gospels in a way that disconnects Jesus from the rest of Scripture.
There is also a more modern interpretive tendency that prioritizes the words and actions of Jesus—“the red letters”—over the rest of Scripture. While this may sound Christ-centered, it often ends up setting Jesus against the Old Testament rather than seeing Him as its fulfillment. It can also lead to a selective emphasis on His mercy while overlooking His teachings on judgment (such as hell and the final judgment). In doing so, it subtly treats other parts of Scripture as less authoritative, which is unbiblical. As 2 Timothy 3:16 reminds us, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”
In more progressive circles, Scripture is sometimes approached as a human record of people trying to understand God—culturally conditioned and therefore, at times, mistaken about Him. From that perspective, difficult Old Testament passages are explained away as ancient misunderstandings of God’s character or morally primitive depictions that Jesus later “corrects.” Modern readers often struggle with themes like divine judgment, violence in Scripture, and the holiness of God expressed in wrath. Rather than wrestling honestly with these tensions, some resolve them by redefining God as only loving and filtering Scripture through what feels morally acceptable today. But this view falls short of the truth.
The Bible in its entirety is the Word of God—from Genesis to Revelation. I’m aware of the debates surrounding how and which books were ultimately recognized and included in the canon, but that is not the focus of this post. For the sake of this post, we will proceed with the established understanding that the Bible consists of the Old and New Testaments, comprising the 66 books. With this foundation, we can then make a case for why the Old Testament remains relevant and essential in revealing the character and attributes of God, and how the New Testament comes as the fulfillment of the Old in the person of Jesus Christ.
The prophets of the Bible—those who spoke on behalf of God such as Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Nathan, Elisha and others—would receive a message from God and pass it on to the people. They would typically preface their declarations with the words, “Thus says the Lord.” Other prophets, such as Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, are often referred to as the “writing prophets,” whose messages were preserved in scrolls as Scripture. These writings were not the product of their own human will, as though they were merely sharing personal opinions or their own understanding of God. Rather, they spoke and wrote under the inspiration of the Spirit of God Himself. As 2 Peter 1:21 puts it: “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” The basic definition of prophecy is “a message from God”. Therefore, to prophesy is to proclaim God’s message. While prophecy can include elements of foretelling the future, this is not a necessary component. However, since only God knows the future, any authoritative declaration of a future event would, by definition, be considered prophecy—that is, the delivering of a message from God.
Having this in mind, we can therefore conclude that all that the prophets spoke and wrote in what we read as Scripture did not originate from their own minds. Rather, they were inspired and carried along by the Spirit of God as they wrote. God has always revealed Himself to humanity in different ways: we know Him through His written Word and through the Word who became flesh—Jesus Christ. Faithful interpretation of Scripture therefore requires that we seek to understand why God did what He did, rather than dismissing it as a false or flawed narrative about Him.
In this regard, let us therefore look at the attributes of God as revealed in the Old Testament.
KEY ATTRIBUTES OF GOD AS REVEALED IN THE OT
- God is Holy – This means that He is morally perfect and incapable of doing wrong. (Leviticus 11:44; Isaiah 6:1–5)
- God is just and righteous – He judges sin fairly and does not ignore evil. Though at times it may feel as though He is silent in the face of injustice, we can rest in the assurance that He will never overlook evil. He has appointed a day when all wrongdoing will be addressed—the Lord’s Day. Therefore, we are called to wait patiently, for He is just. (Deuteronomy 32:4; Genesis 18:25)
- God is merciful and compassionate – He repeatedly shows mercy to the undeserving, such as the rebellious Israelites and the wicked city of Nineveh. He also extends compassion to the rejected and unwanted, as seen in the story of Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant.
- God is patient, but ultimately executes judgment – He is slow to anger and gives people time to repent. However, His patience is not endless; it does come to an end, even if after many generations. Ultimately, He executes judgment on those who remain persistently rebellious.
- God is present and relational – He made Himself known and accessible to His people through His dwelling among them, even in the tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant. Though there was a great separation between a holy God and sinful humanity, He still made provision for how He could be approached and by whom.
- God is faithful and unchanging – He remained faithful to His covenant with Israel, even when they broke it through their sin and unfaithfulness.
- God is sovereign over all creation – The Lord does whatever pleases Him, for He rules over the kingdoms of men. (Psalm 135:6; Daniel 4:17)
- God is loving and covenant-keeping – Throughout Scripture, love is central to His nature. He loved us so deeply that He gave us the law to reveal our need for a Savior, and ultimately gave Himself as the Savior of the world so that we would not perish but have eternal life.
- God is jealous – He is jealous in the sense of exclusive covenant loyalty, like a husband for his bride or a mother for her children. He knows that apart from Him we cannot find true love or security. The god of this world seeks to lure us away from the Father, promising love and good things, yet ultimately brings destruction. But our loving Father guards us jealously because He is committed to our good.
How then does Jesus Christ reveal the fullness of these attributes?
- Jesus Christ—God incarnate—came to dwell among humanity. He was born of a virgin, not inheriting the Adamic sin nature. He was completely sinless, yet fully man and fully God. His sinless life perfectly reflects the holiness of God.
- He was merciful and compassionate to all who came to Him. He healed the sick, cleansed the unclean, and forgave sins. He fed the hungry and taught about loving our neighbors, including those who hate us. In every way, He embodied the mercy and compassion of God.
- Though He had no outward form or majesty that would make Him attractive, He willingly set aside His heavenly glory and took on the frailty of human flesh so that He could relate with us. In the past, God related with humanity through mediators and symbols such as the Ark of the Covenant, but in Christ, God Himself came near—becoming man to dwell among us.
- He is sovereign. Jesus demonstrated His authority over nature, disease, demons, sin, and even death. His earthly life was a continual revelation of divine power, confirming His identity as the Son of God.
- Ultimately, through His finished work on the cross, Jesus has been given authority over all things in heaven and on earth, and He will judge the living and the dead. He will execute righteous judgment over the whole earth, and those who persist in rejecting His saving grace will stand without excuse.
- All of this shows that Jesus—the Son—is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being” (Hebrews 1:3). He does not come to correct wrong ideas about God, but to fully reveal Him. In the cross, we see the seriousness of sin and the justice of God, as He poured out judgment upon His Son. Though Jesus’ death was brutal, Scripture declares that it pleased the Lord (Isaiah 53:10), not because of cruelty, but because His righteous plan of redemption was being fulfilled. God’s judgments are just and righteous, and in Christ, that judgment was fully satisfied as He became our atoning Lamb.
We should therefore be careful in how we handle the Scriptures, because they are the very words of God. Jesus Himself said that He came to fulfill the Scriptures. At that time, what was recognized as Scripture was the Old Testament. In fact, after His resurrection, on the road to Emmaus, He walked with two men and explained to them everything written about Him in the Old Testament. Rather than correcting or dismissing it, He affirmed it—showing that it faithfully pointed to Him. This should give us confidence that the Scriptures are trustworthy and should be handled with reverence and care.
Jesus became the ultimate High Priest, the ultimate Prophet, and the ultimate King—fulfilling all that the prophets, priests, and kings of the Old Testament pointed toward. When the prophets pronounced judgment, they did so in the name of the Lord. But Jesus is not merely a messenger of God’s word—He is the Lord of all the earth. If such weighty judgments were declared before, through servants speaking on God’s behalf, how much more serious is the judgment now, after the Son of God has been crucified—and still, people choose to reject Him?
What, then, are the implications of claiming that the God of the Old Testament is different from Jesus Christ? The implication is this: if the Jesus you believe in is different from the God of the Old Testament, then you may be believing in a false Jesus. This is a very serious matter.
Your salvation rests on faith in Jesus Christ—the Son of God, the God revealed in Scripture. No other can offer salvation, and certainly not a false version of Him. It is therefore crucial to examine your faith and be sure of what you believe. Take time to confirm that your understanding of Jesus is true, lest you be mistaken about the very identity of your Savior.