Do the Old and New Testaments Reveal Two Different Gods?

God Does Not Change

Ah well, the answer is an absolute no. No. God in the Old Testament and the New Testament remain one and the same God. In Malachi 3:6 from the Old Testament, God says: “I the Lord do not change.” The apostle James, in the New Testament says: “God does not change like shifting shadows,” (James 1:17).

But I can understand how a surface reading of the Old Testament and the New Testament can make some reach the conclusion that he’s actually different. In fact, some preachers in recent years in Nigeria have said some of the recorded actions of God in the Old Testament represent the imagination of the human author, rather than the true God, who alone is found through the New Testament Jesus. As well intentioned as those preachers may be, the problem with such teachings is they fundamentally misunderstand both God as seen in the Old Testament, and Jesus as seen in the New Testament. So, what we witness as we proceed from the Old Testament to the New Testament is not the correction of God’s revelation, no, but the progression of it.

Progression Not Correction

You see, God reveals himself and his plan for creation in certain ways in the earlier parts of the Bible, that he doesn’t in the latter part of the Bible. Why? Because those earlier parts occur before his supreme revelation in the person and the work of Jesus, as Hebrews 1:1-3 tells us.

For example, it will be ridiculous for me to keep looking at the picture of my wife who had returned after a three-month trip as though she was still away. Putting the picture aside is, however, not a correction of my behaviour in the previous three months when she was away, but an acknowledgment that now she’s here, things have progressed beyond her absence.

Fulfilment in Jesus

And so, in the Old Testament, we had, for instance, physical temples as places of worship to reveal that God wanted to dwell with humanity. But when Jesus arrived, he became that meeting place between God and man because he was the God-man. This coming of Jesus invalidated the need for a temple for worship. And so, in Hebrews chapters 7 to 10, they teach the same thing regarding Levitical priesthood, temple sacrifices, and even the old covenant. Jesus wasn’t correcting the Old Testament forms of worship, but rather he came to fulfil them. There wasn’t a correction of the revelation, but the progression of it.

The Same God of Love

Now in closing, I want to say this: the Old Testament does reveal to us a God of love who, because of his love for his beloved displays his wrath on whose who would seek to destroy them. And it is the same God we see in the New Testament who saves out of his love but will destroy everything that ultimately tries to destroy his New Creation in hell at the end of time. Which is why Jesus, who was the embodiment of this divine, redemptive love, also spoke more about hell than any New Testament writer. The God of the Old Testament and New Testament are one and the same, but as we journey from the Old Testament to the New Testament, there is a progression of the revelation of himself, not the correction of it.