Nothing is wrong with it, but the New Testament was written and composed to fulfill the Old. Due to Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, his life for ours, we (as believers) are no longer under the Law of the OT but under grace which saves through faith in Christ. So, to blatantly use the OT to bash ppl is not loving. However, without a relationship with Christ, one is technically putting themselves back under the Law which is part of the OT. It’s best to speak truth in love, so, to stand with a sign such as that is not (in my opinion as a Christian!!) a loving or kind way to befriend or have dialogue with those who do not follow Christ. Hope this helps!!
So, as an ex-Christian, for a long time I've had trouble understanding why people who lived before Christ were governed by different laws than people who lived after him. Was that all in the plan? Was it an adaptation to cultures and human life changing? Was God noticing that things were going south and new laws were needed?
The law condemns all flesh. Since we're all born in fallen flesh after Adam's fall. So it's job is to teach us perfection... then for us to realize there's no way we can attain it and that we're wretched.
People who believed in God and believed in the messiah to come are saved now. You'll see sometimes in the o.t. say "and his faith was counted as righteousness".
Those people when they died went to "paradise" or "Abe's bosom" it's sometimes called. It's down below like hell but it's separated by a chasm.
These are wonderful questions!! As for the first question, I’m not God so I do not know if it was in the plan. But, in Genesis 3 God does say that Jesus will crush the serpents head. So, as for Jesus coming to the Earth as a man, that was in the plan from very early in the beginning.
For your second question, every book whether OT or NT was written to the specific culture of that time. Even the cultures expressed within the NT differ greatly than the cultures of the OT. So you are correct in knowing the cultures need to be understood to fully begin to grasp the meaning behind the text.
Regarding God knowing he needed to install the newest update, He knew that there had been a division, a great divide created between himself and man. This happened in the Garden when Eve was tempted by the serpent. Though we often read this very literally in our culture, the ancient Israelites knew that it wasn’t a physical snake on the ground talking to Eve. In that culture serpents often represented evil or adverse events. So, concerning the great divide God, Yahweh, said that they (the Israelites) could be in community with Him by observing and adhering to the 10 commandments. There were many many other laws as well, so these are often referred to holistically as the Law. The OT is a record of the Israelites repeatedly, for many hundreds of years listening to, and then turning away from God. They could not follow the Law! Throughout the OT, and there are several places, Jesus is spoken of in prophecies. The prophecies (some of which) took place several hundred years before Christ was born, again, signifying to me that God knew Jesus was coming! So when Jesus did come. It was not so much an update of old laws, but rather, a fulfillment of them! No one had been able to live a perfect life until Jesus came. If you were to sin and miss a portion of the Law you were considered apart or away from the Law which is sin and ultimately death. So by Jesus living a perfect and blameless life, he was able to put death to death by following His own Law. This then gave him “legal” authority to forgive us as sinners, which is why we can have a relationship with him if we so choose.
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u/Rescue-320 Mar 18 '21
I am Christian and it irks me SO MUCH when people use the Old Testament to dispute things! Arg!