Exodus 23:4–5
The Bible4Jesus.com Podcast
About this episode
We live in an age that is profoundly confused about law and grace. The modern evangelical mind, particularly when it is feeling sentimental, likes to imagine a great chasm between the Old Testament and the New. In this telling, the Old Testament is a grim, black and white affair, full of a wrathful God laying down harsh rules for a sullen people. The New Testament, by contrast, is presented in gentle pastels, where Jesus arrives to abolish all the sharp edges and replace them with a soft, therapeutic niceness. This is a caricature, a theological cartoon, and it is profoundly false. It is a lie that dishonors two-thirds of your Bible and misunderstands the God who wrote all of it. The law of God, given at Sinai, was an act of stupendous grace. It is the constitution for a redeemed nation, the household rules for the children of God.