The differences between the Old Testament Bible and the New are astounding. While there are so many wonderful works of God in the old, it isn’t complete without the new. What saves the old is the revelation of Jesus. Jesus makes the old brand new and unifies both as one gospel. Jesus completes the old; without Him, there is no resurrection for those who lived in the old.
God was faithful in the old way and was always good to His people. But in the idea of oneness, for the people of old, God was someone outside of them that they served by commandments. For thousands of years, living for God without sin was impossible for most because the desire for sin was too great. People couldn’t overcome the evil within them because their help was still outside them.
Interestingly enough, while they saw God as a Spirit outside of them, sin and death were in their hearts and lived within them. That means that man’s spirit was more relatable to people than God’s. That was a big problem because the spirit of man had become so sinful in nature that there was no escaping it without help from God. The old fixed nothing, so God came to the rescue in the new.
There was only one way to fix the old way: God had to end the old and set the new in place. The new meant a different way where God no longer had to visit a temple made with hands. In the new, He made you and I the temple so He could always commune with us by His Spirit. That’s a much better way.
This is where Jesus comes in. Jesus acted as the mediator that entered the people and worked on God’s behalf to regenerate man’s spirit and enable him to rise above sin. We can call Jesus an outside power or source that came from God, entered His people, and empowered them to walk in the Spirit of God free from sin. Now that applies to us today.
When Jesus first appeared in the flesh, He was a man outside of the people He appeared to. As He spoke, His words entered those who heard, but they still struggled to be faithful. After His resurrection, The flesh no longer limited Him, and now as a Spirit He could enter into His people without limitations. That is a game changer for those who follow God. He provided a way into the new that wasn’t present in the old—a new and living way to become one with God.
Jesus is better.
The book of Hebrews is a book that highlights the superiority of Jesus Christ and the better way that He provided over the old way. This new way makes Jesus so much better than everyone and everything that came before Him and after. That includes all the saints who glorified God before He came.
Sometimes as modern-day saints, we can easily miss the magnitude of what it meant when Jesus appeared in the flesh and turned the religious world on its head. His coming was the most significant event in the history of man’s consciousness. We must remember that everyone who served God at that time worshipped God by the law of Moses under the burden of the flesh. They had a promise that God would come and write His laws on their hearts through the Spirit, but they did not have the timing or the understanding of how that would work. Therefore Jesus caught many off guard. Yet when He appeared, that promise, as well as all others, was fulfilled.
The gospel that Jesus taught flipped the script and made it possible to live in the Spirit and not just with the Spirit. In the new, the law became a work of love, not labor. Works finally took a backseat to rest as the Spirit of Christ entered the heart of people.
No one at that time had ever heard anything like His gospel; some followed, and some didn’t. But those who did entered a new way of living that had never been experienced before. These New Testament people were the trailblazers for us who live today and follow after. We should examine closely the lives of those witnesses who walked in the Spirit and had the words of Christ written in their hearts, and we must follow their examples.
The new is for us today.
We who live today have grown up with the knowledge of Jesus, free from the law of Moses, yet somehow, the old teachings still find their way into our churches. Many teachers have convinced us through the commandments of men to serve God by works of the flesh, disguised as works of God. I’m not saying the things we do in the flesh are bad; we need to manifest faithfulness in our lives, but it’s the mindset in which we do them, either old or new, that matters to God. It’s better to serve God through the new way Jesus Christ provided than revert to the old way. In simplicity, Jesus loved God above all else and walked by the Spirit. The Spirit was in Him, and He was in the Spirit. They were one!
We also must be one with Jesus to accomplish the new and better way in our lives. We are the temple of God and have the Spirit of God abiding within. Knowing we are God’s temple changes how we live for God. Because of Jesus, we can live connected with Him. If you still see God as someone outside of you, you must know today that there is a better way. Jesus is the better way, so I encourage you to seek His Spirit with great zeal to fill and establish you in a new and living way.