Obi started the year with a plan. He downloaded a reading app, set a daily reminder for 5:30 a.m., and told his wife that this year he was going to read the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Genesis was wonderful. Exodus was dramatic: the plagues, the Red Sea, the mountain on fire. He kept his streak going for six straight weeks.
Then he reached Leviticus.
By the middle of February, Obi was reading about which animals were clean and unclean, what to do with mildew in a house, how to treat a skin disease, and the exact way to sprinkle the blood of a goat. He found himself reading the same paragraph three times without taking in a word. On the morning he reached chapter 11, with its list of forbidden creatures, he put his phone down and said aloud to the empty sitting room, “What has any of this got to do with me?”
That same week a colleague at his engineering firm, a thoughtful man who had recently joined a group that kept the seventh-day Sabbath and the food laws, told him over lunch that most churches had abandoned the commandments of God. “Show me where God cancelled Leviticus,” he said. “Jesus Himself said He did not come to destroy the law.” Obi had no answer. He went home troubled.
So Obi found himself pulled in two opposite directions. One voice said: the Old Testament is old, so skip it and read the Gospels. The other said: the Old Testament is God’s word, so you must keep all of it. He did not want to ignore a third of his Bible, and he did not want to start avoiding pork and keeping festivals either. He simply did not know how to read it.
He came to see me on a Saturday morning, and we sat with Leviticus 16 open between us. By the end of that morning, he told me, it had become one of his favourite chapters in the Bible.
Many believers have had some version of Obi’s February. They love the Bible. They want to read all of it. But nobody has shown them how to read the old covenant Scriptures with new covenant eyes, and so they either skip those pages or come away from them confused.
The book that is about Him
On the evening of His resurrection, Jesus appeared to His disciples in Jerusalem. They were startled and frightened. He showed them His hands and feet. He ate a piece of fish in front of them. Then He did something that shaped the way the church would read the Bible ever after:
And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
“All things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.” Those three divisions, the law, the prophets and the psalms, were the way Jews of the time spoke of the whole of their Scriptures. Jesus was saying that the whole Old Testament was about Him. Its history, its laws, its sacrifices, its poetry and its prophecy all pointed forward to His suffering, His resurrection and the preaching of forgiveness in His name.
PunchlineThen “opened he their understanding.” The disciples had read these Scriptures all their lives. They knew them better than most of us ever will. But they had not seen what the Scriptures were finally about until the risen Christ opened their minds.
Jesus had said something similar earlier, to religious leaders who were opposing Him: “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39). These men searched the Scriptures diligently. They memorised them, debated them and built their lives around them. And yet they missed the One to whom the Scriptures pointed. Jesus went on, “And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life” (John 5:40). It is possible to study the Bible carefully and still not come to Christ. The Old Testament was never meant to be an end in itself. It was a witness, pointing beyond itself to the Son.
That gives us the first principle for reading the old covenant Scriptures. We read them christologically, which simply means that we read them as a testimony to Christ. We ask how each part belongs to the story that reaches its climax in Him. This does not mean that every verse contains a hidden reference to Jesus. It means that the whole Old Testament is moving toward Him, and that no part of it can be properly understood as though He had never come.
Shadows that announce a body
Picture a compound in the evening, with children waiting for their father to come home from work. The streetlight at the end of the road throws long shadows, and before the children ever see him turn the corner, they see his shadow stretching across the compound wall. “Daddy is coming!” The shadow is real. It has his shape. It tells them truly that he is near. But when he comes through the gate, none of them runs to hug the wall.
The New Testament uses exactly this picture for the old covenant:
For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
“The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things.” The sacrifices of the law had the shape of what was coming. They taught Israel that sin is serious, that it brings death, that a substitute can die in the sinner’s place, and that God provides a way for the guilty to draw near. All of that was true. But the sacrifices could never complete the work. They had to be repeated “year by year continually.” And the writer gives the reason: “it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.”
When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him, he cried, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Every lamb on every altar in Israel’s history had been a shadow on the wall. Now the One who cast the shadow had come through the gate.
Paul uses the same language for other parts of the old covenant:
Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days : Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
“Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.” Food laws, festivals, new moons and Sabbaths were shadows. The body, the substance that cast the shadow, belongs to Christ. That is why Paul tells the Colossian believers not to let anyone judge them in these matters. To insist on the shadow once the body has arrived is to miss the point the shadow was making.
This gives us a second principle. Much of the Old Testament’s ceremonial and covenantal arrangement was designed to point forward. We do not throw those chapters away. They give us the vocabulary to understand what Christ has done: atonement, priesthood, sacrifice, cleansing, covenant, mediator. But we do not try to keep the shadows as though the body had not come. Leviticus helps us understand Calvary. Calvary means we no longer need to offer what Leviticus required.
Written for our admonition
Does that mean the Old Testament is only a collection of shadows that have now passed? Not at all. Paul tells the Corinthian church that Israel’s history has a direct message for Christians:
Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.
“Now these things were our examples.” The word is typoi, from which we get types. The events of the wilderness happened to Israel, but they were written down “for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” Paul applies them directly to a church that was flirting with idolatry, sexual immorality and grumbling. God’s character has not changed. The same holiness that judged idolatry in the wilderness still opposes it in the church.
Notice, though, how Paul reads the wilderness story. A few verses earlier he says of the water from the rock, “they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). Even when Paul draws moral warnings from the Old Testament, he reads it with Christ at the centre. Israel’s failures are a warning to us precisely because we, like them, have been given grace, and grace can be despised.
Paul also tells the Romans that the earlier Scriptures were given to encourage: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4). The Old Testament teaches us how to lament in the Psalms, how to trust God through long waiting in the story of Joseph, how God sees the vulnerable in the story of Ruth and Boaz, and how He keeps His promises across centuries. It is full of comfort as well as warning.
So a third principle: the moral and spiritual lessons of the Old Testament still instruct us, but they come to us through Christ and the apostles. We ask how the New Testament itself takes up a passage, and we let the apostles show us how to apply it.
Reading a passage in four steps
How does this work when you open your Bible on an ordinary morning and find yourself in Leviticus, or Judges, or Ezekiel? Here is a simple way to proceed.
First, ask what the passage meant to its first hearers. A law given to Israel had a place in Israel’s national life. A prophet was speaking to real people about real sin, real judgement and real hope. Before we ask what the passage says to us, we should understand what it was saying to them. That protects us from turning the text into a container for whatever message we already intended to preach.
Second, ask where the passage sits in the larger story. Is it before or after the giving of the law? Is it addressed to Israel in the land, or in exile? Is it a promise tied to the old covenant, or one rooted in God’s earlier promise to Abraham? The answer will often change how directly it applies.
Third, ask how Christ fulfils it. Some passages are fulfilled in Him as shadows are fulfilled in a body. The sacrifices, the priesthood and the temple are obvious examples. Some laws find their fulfilment in the new covenant’s transformation of the heart. Jesus, for instance, taught that what goes into a person’s stomach does not defile him, and Mark adds a comment that many translations render as Jesus declaring all foods clean (Mark 7:19). Peter’s vision in Acts 10 confirmed it. The food laws had served their purpose as a sign of Israel’s separation. In Christ, the separation that matters is of the heart.
Fourth, ask how the apostles apply it. The New Testament quotes the Old Testament hundreds of times. When it does, it shows us how to read. Paul takes the command not to muzzle the ox and applies it to the support of ministers (1 Corinthians 9:9). Peter takes the call to Israel to be holy and applies it to the church (1 Peter 1:16). Hebrews takes the tabernacle and shows how it pictured Christ’s priesthood. These are our models.
One caution. Christ-centred reading does not mean inventing a secret meaning for every colour, number or tent peg in the tabernacle. Some patterns are explained by Scripture itself. Others may be useful illustrations, and they can be offered as such. But a teacher should never give an imaginative association the same authority as the plain meaning of the passage.
Blessings, curses and the believer
NuggetThe same principles help with one of the most troubling questions believers bring to the Old Testament: what to do with its blessings and curses.
Deuteronomy 28 sets before Israel the blessings that would follow obedience to the covenant and the curses that would follow disobedience. The blessings are wonderful: fruitful fields, healthy families, victory over enemies. The curses are terrible: disease, drought, defeat and finally exile from the land. These were the terms of the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai, renewed on the plains of Moab before they entered Canaan. Read with step one, we see they were spoken to a nation about life in a land under a particular covenant. Read with step three, we ask what Christ has done in relation to them.
Paul answers that question directly: “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Galatians 3:13). The curse of the law was real. It was not cancelled by being ignored. It was carried. And the purpose follows in the next verse: “That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.” Notice which blessing Paul names. Not the blessings of Deuteronomy 28 as a reward for law-keeping, but the blessing of Abraham, given by promise long before Sinai, which Paul identifies with justification by faith and the promise of the Spirit.
So the believer does not read the curses to find out whether God is punishing him this week. He reads them to understand what Christ bore. A later article in this series, When Scripture Is Read Without Covenant Confusion, walks through Deuteronomy 28 and Malachi 3 in detail, so I will not repeat that here.
The curse of the law was not cancelled by being ignored. It was carried by Christ on the tree, so that the blessing of Abraham might come on us through faith.
Two guard-rails belong with this. First, the Bible itself warns us against reading every hardship as a curse. When the disciples saw a man born blind and asked who had sinned, “this man, or his parents,” Jesus answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents” (John 9:2-3). We live in a fallen world, and floods, sickness and dishonest people are part of it. Second, being free from the curse does not mean being free from the consequences of our choices or from the Father’s loving correction. “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7), and “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Hebrews 12:6). A father’s discipline of his children is not a curse. It is love toward those who already belong to him.
Reading Leviticus with Obi
Let me show you what happened that Saturday morning with Leviticus 16, because it puts all of these principles together.
Leviticus 16 describes the Day of Atonement, the most solemn day in Israel’s year. On that one day, the high priest entered the Most Holy Place behind the veil. He first had to offer a sacrifice for his own sins. Then he took two goats. One was killed as a sin offering, and its blood was carried behind the veil and sprinkled on the mercy seat. On the other, the living goat, he laid both his hands and confessed over it “all the iniquities of the children of Israel” (Leviticus 16:21). Then the goat was led away into the wilderness, carrying their sins to a land not inhabited.
Step one: what did it mean to Israel? It meant that God was holy, that sin had to be dealt with by blood, that a priest stood between the people and God, and that their sins could be carried away. Step two: where does it sit? Inside the Sinai covenant, repeated every single year. Step three: how does Christ fulfil it? The letter to the Hebrews tells us that Christ, “by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12). He is both the priest and the sacrifice. He is the goat whose blood was sprinkled, and the goat who carried our sins far away. “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). Step four: how do the apostles apply it? Hebrews draws the conclusion that we may now draw near with confidence, because the veil has been opened.
Obi sat back in his chair. “So Leviticus is a picture of the cross,” he said, “drawn fifteen hundred years in advance.”
That was exactly it. And it also answered his colleague’s challenge. Jesus did not destroy the law. He fulfilled it, the way a body fulfils its shadow. Keeping the Day of Atonement today would be like a man who has received the title deed to his house insisting on paying rent. We honour Leviticus by seeing what it pointed to, and by resting in the One who completed it.
Beginning at the same scripture
There is a scene in Acts that shows us, perhaps better than any other, what it looks like to read the old covenant Scriptures with new covenant eyes. It takes place on a desert road running south from Jerusalem toward Gaza. A senior official from the court of the queen of the Ethiopians, the man in charge of all her treasure, was riding home in his chariot after travelling to Jerusalem to worship (Acts 8:27). The “Ethiopia” of the Bible lay south of Egypt, in the region of the upper Nile. This African statesman had made a journey of many weeks to worship the God of Israel, and he was going home with a scroll of the prophet Isaiah, reading it aloud as he travelled. The Spirit sent the evangelist Philip to run alongside the chariot:
And Philip ran thither to him , and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest? And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him. The place of the scripture which he read was this, He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth. And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man? Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.
“Understandest thou what thou readest?” It is a question every reader of the Old Testament should be willing to hear. The official answered with great humility: “How can I, except some man should guide me?” He was a powerful and educated man, and he did not pretend to understand what he did not.
He was reading Isaiah 53, the passage about the servant of the Lord who was led as a sheep to the slaughter, who was silent before his accusers, whose life was taken from the earth. And he asked exactly the right question: “Of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?” That is the question of the first step we described above. What did this passage mean? Whom was it about?
“Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus.” Notice what Philip did not do. He did not tell the man to put Isaiah away and read something more relevant. He did not invent a hidden meaning from a stray detail of the text. He began at the same scripture, with the very words the man was reading, and showed him that they described Jesus: the Lamb led to slaughter, silent before Pilate, cut off from the land of the living for the transgression of His people. The passage itself led to Christ. Philip simply walked through the door it opened.
The result was joy. The official asked to be baptised there and then, at the first water they came to, and Luke tells us that “he went on his way rejoicing” (Acts 8:39). The old covenant Scripture, read in the light of Christ, had brought him into the new covenant.
That is the pattern for us. We begin where the text is. We take its words seriously in their own setting. And we follow where they lead, which is always, in the end, to the Son. Even the hardest parts of the Old Testament are transformed when they are read in His presence. When we read the psalms that call for judgement on enemies, we learn from them to bring our anger honestly to God and to leave vengeance with Him, for “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19). We do not use them as a licence to curse people who offend us, because the Lamb of Isaiah 53 taught us to “pray for them which despitefully use you” (Matthew 5:44).
PunchlineThe Old Testament is the word of God. It is read rightly when it is read, like the Ethiopian’s scroll, with Jesus beside us in the chariot.
The tithe, fairly stated
Two practical questions come up again and again when believers begin to read the Old Testament through the new covenant. The first concerns the tithe. Sincere believers hold different views, and both deserve a fair hearing.
Many believers hold that the tithe continues as a standard or at least a sound starting point for Christian giving. They point out that it predates the law of Moses. Abraham gave Melchizedek “tithes of all” (Genesis 14:20), and Hebrews 7 draws out the significance of that act. Jacob vowed a tenth at Bethel (Genesis 28:22). Jesus told the Pharisees that tithing was something “these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone” (Matthew 23:23). On this view, the tithe is a principle of honouring God with the first portion of one’s income, and new covenant believers, who have received more, should hardly give less.
Other believers hold that the tithe belongs to the Mosaic system. The law’s tithes supported the Levites, who had no land of their own (Numbers 18:21), and also funded festivals and the care of the poor (Deuteronomy 14:28-29). Abraham’s tithe was a single gift from the spoils of a battle, not a regular giving pattern. Jesus’ words in Matthew 23 were spoken to Pharisees who were still under the law, before the cross. And the New Testament letters never command a tithe. Instead they teach generous, proportionate, cheerful giving: “Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7).
There is a great deal of common ground between these views. Both agree that believers should give generously. Both agree that those who teach the word should be supported: “Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things” (Galatians 6:6). Both agree that giving is an act of worship, not a payment to buy God’s favour.
And there is one point that new covenant eyes must hold firmly, whatever view a believer takes of the tithe. Malachi 3 contains the words “Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me” (Malachi 3:9). Those words were addressed to the nation of Israel under the old covenant. A believer who struggles to give, or who has not tithed, is not under a curse, because Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. Many who tithe gladly would agree with that. Generosity flows best from a heart that knows it has already been blessed in Christ, not from fear of what will happen if it does not give.
The Sabbath, fairly stated
The second question concerns the Sabbath. Again, sincere Christians hold different views.
Some believe the seventh-day Sabbath remains binding. They point out that God rested on the seventh day at creation (Genesis 2:2-3), before the law was given, and that the Sabbath command stands in the Ten Commandments alongside commands everyone agrees still apply. Seventh-day Adventists and Seventh Day Baptists hold this view and gather for worship on Saturday.
Others believe that the principle of one day of rest and worship in seven continues for Christians, but has moved to the first day of the week in honour of the resurrection. This is the historic view of many Reformed and Presbyterian churches, and it is common among Protestants in Nigeria who speak of Sunday as “the Sabbath.”
Still others believe that the Sabbath, as a specific law, was a sign of the covenant between God and Israel (Exodus 31:13), and that it has been fulfilled in Christ. They point to Colossians 2:16-17, which lists Sabbath days among the shadows, to Hebrews 4, which says “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” and links that rest with ceasing from our own works (Hebrews 4:9-10), and to Romans 14, where Paul says that one person esteems one day above another while another esteems every day alike: “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind” (Romans 14:5). On this view, Christians gather on the first day of the week, as the early church did (Acts 20:7), out of love and freedom rather than as a Sabbath requirement.
Here too there is common ground. Jesus said, “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Rest is a gift, and believers who never stop working are not more spiritual than others. Gathering regularly with God’s people matters. And all agree that Christ Himself is our true rest, the One in whom we cease from trying to earn God’s favour. Paul’s instruction is also clear: “Let no man therefore judge you” in respect of the sabbath days (Colossians 2:16), and we should not judge one another either.
Obi finished Leviticus that year. He did not suddenly find every chapter thrilling, and he admitted that the regulations about mildew remained hard going. But he read them differently. Each morning, before he started, he asked one question: how does this point to Jesus? Some days the answer was obvious. Some days he had to look it up. On a few days he wrote “not sure yet” in the margin and kept going.
He also went back to his colleague, not to win an argument but to share what he had seen. He showed him Hebrews 9 and Colossians 2:16-17, and he did it with respect, because he could see that the man loved God and wanted to honour His word. They did not end up agreeing on everything. But they parted as brothers.
By December Obi had reached Revelation. In the last chapters he found the Lamb on the throne, the tree of life, the river, and the promise that “there shall be no more curse” (Revelation 22:3). He told me that when he read that line, he thought straight back to Leviticus 16 and the goat walking into the wilderness. “It was the same story the whole time,” he said. “I just needed to know who it was about.”
That is how a believer can read the old covenant Scriptures. Not by skipping the pages that confuse or frighten us. Not by living under them as though Christ had never come. We read them as the shadows that announced Him, the history that warns and encourages us, the law He fulfilled and the curse He bore. Open the Old Testament with confidence. The One it is about has opened your understanding, and He is standing in the room.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Which parts of the Old Testament have you found hardest to read? How might Luke 24:44-47 change the way you approach them?
- What is the difference between a shadow and a body? Which Old Testament practices does Colossians 2:16-17 describe as shadows?
- Have you ever read a hardship in your life as a curse? How does Galatians 3:13-14 speak to that fear?
- The Ethiopian official asked, “Of whom speaketh the prophet this?” How might asking that question change the way you read Isaiah, the Psalms or the law?
- Where do you stand on the tithe and the Sabbath? Can you state the other view fairly and respect believers who hold it?
This Week
This week, choose one Old Testament passage you have found difficult, such as a chapter of Leviticus, Deuteronomy 28 or one of the psalms that call for judgement. Read it slowly each day and work through the four steps: what it meant to its first hearers, where it sits in the larger story, how Christ fulfils it, and how the apostles apply it. Write your answers in a notebook. On the final day, read the passage again and write in the margin one sentence about what Jesus has done in relation to it.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that all the Scriptures speak of You. Open my understanding, as You opened the understanding of Your disciples, so that I may see You in the law, the prophets and the psalms. Thank You for redeeming me from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for me. Deliver me from fear when I read difficult passages, and from pride when I read about the failures of others. Teach me to learn from every page of Your word, to walk in the blessing of Abraham, and to rest in You as my true Sabbath. In Your name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.