One of the biggest heresies and great accomplishments of Satan in his quest to distort or twist Scripture is the hermeneutic proposition that the New Testament REPLACED the Old Testament for the Church and for the Christian.
If this is not a heresy, then at least it is apostasy.
The correct hermeneutic principle here should be that the New Testament explains and completes the Old Testament. There are very important doctrinal implications of this principle but we shall only give the big picture here.
The Kingdom of God
The Ten Commandments
Obviously, the Law (Torah) still holds true today as it was when it was written. Nothing has changed. Even Christ Himself confirmed this in Matthew 5:17-20 when He declared that He came to fulfill the Law and not abolish nor replace it. He even threatened that those who break the Law in verse 17. He also stated that not a letter nor punctuation will pass from the law until "all is accomplished". Those who propose that all was accomplished at the cross have a very limited view of a Righteous God.
The God who loves (Kheced)
The Psalmists continually appeal to the lovingkindness, mercy, steadfast love, unfailing love of God. The Hebrew word behind all these english words is kheced. In the New Testament context, this is a combination of agape and phileo. with agape being the foundation and phileo being the internal and external expression of love. We will explore this further in another blog. We just need to mention here that the opposite view to our doctrine are those that believe that the love of God is only agape. This has produced a breed of Christians who do not know how to express true love and many do not even know how it feels. As a result, the quality of true Christian koinonia has deteriorated to an intellectual exercise instead of a true rewarding experience.
The God who curses and ordains consequences
And this is the biggest problem of the opposite view. Under the assumption that the New Testament has replaced the old, and Grace has replaced the Law, the principles that apply ONLY to salvation are being propagated to Christian living where there is very little fear of God when a Christian decides to be carnal.
But the Old Testament shows a true God who truly curses. Just read Deuteronomy chapters 27 to 29.
The biggest tragedy which produces tons of defeated Christians today is the teaching that "Grace overcomes all". Although that is partially true, Grace rarely if ever overcomes the consequences of sin. This is both a biblical and empirical truth. A murderer may be forgiven totally of his sins but that will not negate the consequences of his punishment nor can he restore the murdered person back to life. Those are God-ordained consequences that will not change. Even David, the man after God's own heart was forgiven for murdering Uriah and committing adultery with Bathsheba but God cursed him and NEVER lifted that curse. "The sword shall never leave your house." He did suspend the curse for some of the obedient kings but it was never lifted.
We have a generation of modern day Christians who are not afraid of divorce and remarriage on unbiblical grounds, Christians who evade taxes, skip the payment of their tithes and just generally IGNORANT Christians when it comes to what the Law requires. Ignorance, unfortunately does not exempt the Christian from the consequences of his sin and that is what produces these depressed, defeated and unfaithful so-called Christians.
Now, if all Christians are really aware that the Old Testament is as much for the Christian as it is for the Jew, I personally believe that this will bring the FEAR of GOD back into the lives of these creatures who are content to just have a free ride to eternal life without further obligations to the giver of eternal life.
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