The short answer
The Old Testament still matters because it tells the first half of the one story the New Testament completes — and without it, the gospel makes no sense. There is no creation, no Fall to be rescued from, no covenant, and no promise for Jesus to fulfil apart from it. As Crossway’s summary of the theme puts it bluntly, “without the Old Testament, we wouldn’t understand the problem for which Jesus and the New Testament supply the solution” (Crossway). It was, after all, the only Scripture Jesus and the earliest church ever read.
Many Christians quietly treat the Old Testament as optional — a long, difficult prelude they can skip in favour of the Gospels. This article makes the opposite case: that the Old Testament is indispensable, both for understanding who Jesus is and for grasping how God works. It closes with the Divine Principle’s reading of the Old Testament as a deliberate age of preparation — not a shelved first draft, but the foundation on which everything that follows is built. For the larger arc, it helps to begin with God’s plan of restoration.
Without it, the gospel has no setup
The New Testament is the second half of a story that begins in Genesis; read on its own, it is a resolution to a problem never stated. The gospel announces that Christ saves us from sin and death — but what sin, and whose death, and why? Those questions are answered only in the Old Testament: the good creation, the Fall of man, the entrance of death, and the long ache for a rescuer. “The Old Testament sets the stage for Jesus to enter the story,” and the New Testament “is the continuation of a story that began in Genesis” (Crossway).
This is why the New Testament quotes and alludes to the Old on nearly every page. Jesus is called the seed of Abraham, the son of David, the Passover lamb, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53 — titles that mean nothing without the earlier text. When Jesus explained himself to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, he did it “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets” (Luke 24:27). The risen Christ taught the Old Testament as the key to his own identity. To cut it away is to lose the very framework the apostles used to understand him.
It reveals the unchanging character of God
The Old Testament matters because the God it reveals is the same God and Father of Jesus Christ — his character has not changed. John Piper puts the principle simply: “God has not changed, and wherever we rightly understand his character and his ways in the Old Testament, we are learning something true about the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Desiring God). The God who creates, grieves over sin, keeps covenant, judges justly and pursues his people with steadfast love is not a different deity from the one who sends his Son.
This guards us against a common distortion — the idea of a harsh Old Testament God replaced by a gentle New Testament one. Scripture will not allow it. The same mercy that sends Jesus already floods the Psalms; the same holiness that burns on Sinai stands behind the cross. Reading the Old Testament stretches and corrects our picture of God, filling in a portrait the New Testament assumes we already know. It is where we learn the heart of the God we meet fully in Christ.
Law, promise and the question of obedience
Christians are not under the Old Testament law as a system of righteousness, but the law still matters as a revelation of God’s holiness and the measure of human need. The New Testament is clear that believers live under “the law of Christ,” fulfilled in love of God and neighbour (Galatians 6:2; Romans 13:8–10), rather than under the ceremonial and civil code given to ancient Israel. One resource notes plainly that “the Old Testament law was given to the ancient nation of Israel, not to Christians” (GotQuestions). Jesus is the one who fulfils it, not a loophole that makes it meaningless.
But here is the key: the law is no longer the ladder we climb, yet it still shows us what climbing could never achieve. By revealing God’s standard and our inability to meet it, the law drives us toward grace — it is, as Paul says, a “guardian until Christ came” (Galatians 3:24). Jesus himself insisted, “I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Matthew 5:17). The promises woven through the law — of a new covenant, a new heart, a coming King — are precisely what Christ comes to keep. To understand why those promises required the cross, see whether the cross was God’s plan.
The Old Testament as the age of preparation
The Divine Principle calls the Old Testament era the age of preparation for the Messiah — a long providence in which God rebuilt, step by step, the foundation that was lost at the Fall. In this reading the Old Testament is not a collection of ancient tales but a single, purposeful work advancing toward Christ. God works through chosen people — Noah, Abraham, Moses, the prophets — and through symbolic offerings and conditions, patiently preparing a people and a foundation able to receive the Messiah when he comes.
This is why the Old Testament is so full of recurring patterns. The number forty marks period after period of separation and preparation; figures and events foreshadow later ones; the Exodus itself unfolds as a providence of restoration. The Divine Principle teaches that these are not coincidences but the signature of God working through restoration through indemnity — re-laying foundations across centuries. Read this way, the Old Testament becomes intensely relevant: it shows the method by which God restores, a method that did not stop at the first coming. To see one such pattern in detail, read Moses and the Exodus as restoration.
How to read it well today
Read the Old Testament as the first part of one continuous story that leads to Christ, not as a disconnected rulebook to obey or ignore. The practical key is to read through Christ rather than around him. Ask of each passage: what does this reveal about God’s character and purpose? How does it prepare for Jesus? Where does it foreshadow the work of salvation? The New Testament models this constantly, sending us back to the Old to understand what God has been doing from the beginning.
Approached this way, even the hard parts — the genealogies, the sacrifices, the long histories of flawed people — begin to speak. They show a God who does not give up on a fallen world but works within it, generation after generation, to prepare the way home. The Old Testament is not a museum piece; it is the opening movement of the same symphony that resolves in Christ and still plays on. For how that larger story reaches its goal, see God’s plan of restoration, and for the thread that ties the testaments together, why lineage is central to salvation.
Frequently asked questions
Why does the Old Testament still matter for Christians?
The Old Testament still matters because it tells the first half of the one story the New Testament completes. Without it, there is no account of creation, no Fall to be saved from, no promises for Jesus to fulfil, and no picture of God’s character to make sense of the cross. As one summary puts it, “without the Old Testament, we wouldn’t understand the problem for which Jesus and the New Testament supply the solution.” It was also the only Scripture Jesus and the first church had.
Did Jesus cancel the Old Testament?
No. Jesus said plainly, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them” (Matthew 5:17). Fulfilment is not cancellation — it is completion. The ceremonial system pointing forward to Christ finds its goal in him, but the Old Testament’s revelation of God, his purpose and his promises remains fully in force and is assumed on every page of the New Testament.
Do Christians have to keep the Old Testament law?
Christians are not under the Old Testament law as a system of righteousness; the New Testament teaches that believers live under the law of Christ, fulfilled in love of God and neighbour. But that does not make the law worthless to read. It reveals God’s holiness, exposes the depth of human need, and points toward the grace that meets it. The law is no longer the ladder we climb, but it still shows us what climbing could never achieve.
How does the Divine Principle view the Old Testament?
The Divine Principle calls the Old Testament era the age of preparation for the coming of the Messiah — a long age in which God worked through chosen people and symbolic offerings to rebuild the foundation lost at the Fall. Its figures and events are not merely history but a providence advancing toward Christ, which is why patterns like the number forty and the restoration of key figures recur throughout it.
How should a Christian read the Old Testament today?
Read it as the first part of one continuous story that leads to Christ, not as a disconnected rulebook. Look for what each passage reveals about God’s character and purpose, how it prepares for Jesus, and where it foreshadows the work of salvation. Read through Christ rather than around him: the New Testament constantly sends us back to the Old to understand what God has been doing all along.