John 3:16 and the Importance of the Old Testament

 
May 6th, 2007 by Michael

My adult Bible study is starting an Old Testament survey for the summer months in preparation for studying I Kings this fall. I did this little exercise with them this morning. I guess it’s kind of original with me. I’ve never seen anyone else do it. Consider it all yours for the glory of God.
Why should we study the Old Testament? You know all the usual reasons. Let me illustrate the importance of the Old Testament with a well known New Testament text that can’t be understood or interpreted correctly without the Old Testament:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16 ESV)

We can’t understand John 3:16 without the Old Testament. That may strike you as odd, but it’s very true. Think of the crucial concepts at the heart of this verse, and each one of them depends on the Old Testament for meaning.

1) What GOD are we talking about in John 3:16? Any God that the reader or hearer wants to imagine? The idea of God we all carry around in our head that basically approves us as we are? The distorted ideas of God in the culture or other religions?
The God of John 3:16 is the God of the Old Testament. A particular God, with a particular character and attributes. A God with a particular way of relating to this world. The God revealed in Jesus is the God of the Old Testament.
God is persistent in the Old Testament that he is not any God or like all ideas of God. He is the one, true, only God. No other God’s compete with him in any way. Many Old Testament passages taunt those who worship other God’s as fools playing with the ultimate fire.
2) What is the WORLD that God loves? The Old Testament tells us that it is the world that God created in Genesis 1-2; the world that rebelled against God in Adam and Eve’s fall; the world that rejected God’s mercy in Cain; the world God judged through the flood in Genesis 11. It’s the world from which he calls a people, a world of peoples who will be blessed in Abraham and his descendants.
This world isn’t planet earth, but it is the world that occupies planet earth. Only in the Old Testament do we see this world clearly enough to understand God’s great love and how it unfolds in Jesus.

3) What is God’s LOVE? In fact, the Old Testament word for God’s love, hesed, introduces us to God’s covenant love for his people, the way he has chosen to relate to and rescue this world.
Love is one of the most misdefined and misunderstood words in all of human language. In the Old Testament, God’s love for the world he has created is set alongside God’s just and holy character. We see that God’s love goes back to creation, but that this love must deal with the sin that separates God and his world.
Over and over the Old Testament illustrates God’s faith, covenant-making love. We see it in story after story and example after example. The love of God is all over the Old Testament. To say that God’s love is a New Testament reality is a great myth. It’s in the Old Testament that we see God’s merciful, promise-keeping, patient, suffering, sacrificial love introduced and illustrated.
4) What does it mean to BELIEVE? Here is another word that is so misdefined that we can’t leave it up to the hearer to interpret. “Believing” is the response of Abraham to God’s promise in Abraham 15:6. “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
Adam and Eve refused to believe, trust and value God as worth believing and obeying. As God saves people of faith in the Old Testament, it is always because they have believed. Enoch. Noah. Abraham. To believe is to trust enough, to consider God worth enough, to depend on him in life and obedience.
In fact, in John 3, Jesus himself uses the Old Testament story of the bronze serpent to illustrate what happens when we believe in the one lifted up to bear the curse for his people.
5) What does PERISH mean? God is a holy God. His character cannot overlook sin forever. Perish is the separation from God that comes to sinners whose sin is not removed. Over and over we see this happening in the Old Testament, as sinners perish because of their sin. The Bible tells us that God was patient with sinners in the Old Testament, and he is merciful with amazing grace in the New Testament. The frightening descriptions of gehenna and the lake of fire in the New Testament are taking the Old Testament stories of judgement in Genesis 11 and 14 and showing them in their ultimate manifestations.
The Old Testament law reminds us that those who are not forgiven perish. The severity of God’s justice can’t be compromised, but in Jesus Christ justice, love and mercy meet perfectly.
6) Who is the SON? According the Genesis 22, Abraham obeyed God by taking his son, his “only” son to the mountain of sacrifice. This is an awful scene if it is not preparation for John 3:16. In the light of the Gospel, it is preparation for God’s incarnational gift of himself in his son, Jesus.
But there is more. In Psalm 2, the word “son” is used of the anointed King. The Old Testament tells us that God’s anointed king is his beloved, his “son.” That son will rule in Zion, and will rule all nations. In the story of David and his descendants, the Old Testament tells us the story of Israel and Judah’s many kings, all teaching us that the true anointed King is still on the way. When he comes, he will be the king over every king, the sovereign over all sovereigns.
The word “son” is a royal word, not an incarnational word, in the Old Testament, but in Jesus we meet the son who is King, Lord, God with us.
You see, without the Old Testament, the most familiar verse in the New Testament loses its rich meaning, and becomes whatever we want it to be. Our study of the Old Testament is crucial for understanding the glory of the New Testament gospel.

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