As Christians, we come to Jesus because we fall in love with his character, compassion, and salvation. Therefore, Jesus’ words from the Bible draw us, and the encouraging, challenging letters from the apostles highlight Christ’s supremacy and what it means to live for him. The New Testament writers continue to affirm Jesus as the culmination and center of God’s redemptive plan.
The Old Testament proves more difficult to enjoy. When we attempt to read through the Bible, many give up around Leviticus and Numbers with detailed Jewish law from another culture and genealogies of unfamiliar and funny names. In addition, the prophets make God seem angry and wrathful, different in some ways from the self-sacrificial love of Jesus, at least on the surface. As a result, some Christians focus on reading the New Testament. At the extreme, I’ve even heard people tell me we shouldn’t read the Old Testament since we’re no longer under the Old Covenant.
Yet Jesus and the writers of the New Testament continually quoted from the Old Testament, even to discuss the New Covenant. Since they were in the middle of writing it, the New Testament didn’t exist yet, so they referred to God’s word in the Old Testament. Jesus and the apostles obviously valued the spiritual authority of these books. So should we.
Here are seven reasons why Christians should read the Old Testament.
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Christians should read the Old Testament to understand God as Creator and his original design and intent for life before the Fall. The Old Testament provides foundational knowledge about God’s character, His creative power, and His purposes for humanity.
Genesis 1:1 opens with the profound statement, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” As the ultimate Creator, God possesses all authority and sovereignty. Further, Genesis 1 and 2 reveal God’s intentional design and order. The Lord created humanity in his image as male and female, giving them rule over the earth (Genesis 1:26-27). God originally intended a life of harmony between each other, creation, and in relationship with God. The Lord also gave Adam and Eve the purpose of stewarding Eden and having children to put the earth under godly dominion.
This life of intimacy and purpose defined Adam and Eve. As humans, we also desire the same. When God enacts his redemptive plan, he works to reinstitute his original Garden of Eden intent. Understanding God’s original design helps Christians appreciate the significance of the Fall and the subsequent need for reconciliation and redemption.
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Brokenness, pain, and evil surround us. We grieve deeply at death, and for some reason, we long for a better world without such things. The Old Testament explains the existence of evil and death through the Fall of Adam and Eve.
Genesis 3 describes the pivotal moment when sin entered the world. God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, the serpent deceived them, and they disobeyed God’s command. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” (Genesis 3:6) We call this act of disobedience the Fall.
Genesis 3:17- 19 reveals the curses placed upon humanity and the earth, as well as the immediate and far-reaching consequences. Spiritual and physical death entered the world. Women would have pain in childbirth. Adam must toil to produce food since the ground began producing thorns instead of abundant fruit. When Adam and Eve had children, one son murdered another, revealing the corrupt heart of humanity.
Yet even within this record, God promises to crush the Devil and corruption. But first, God sent the law to expose our rebellious hearts.
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As God delivered Israel from Egyptian slavery, he made a covenant with the people, giving them the Law.
God intended the Mosaic Law, given through Moses, to guide the Israelites in righteous living and maintain their covenant with God. However, the Law could not transform the human heart despite its comprehensive nature. Deuteronomy 30:19-20 captures the call to obedience: “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.”
Despite this, Israel repeatedly failed to uphold the Law. Judges 2:11-12 illustrates this cycle of rebellion: “Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt.” This persistent disobedience highlighted the inadequacy of the Law in addressing the deeper issue of the human heart.
The New Testament confirms the inadequacy of the Law and the need for something more. Romans 8:3-4 explains, “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.” Jesus fulfills the Law’s righteous requirements, providing the internal transformation the Mosaic Law could not achieve, giving us a full view of God’s redemption.
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The Lord of the Rings fantasy trilogy has become beloved by millions. Despite the victory and culmination we view in the final movie, The Return of the King, people don’t skip the first two movies. Those two films set the stage and provide important context to understand the third.
The Old and New Testaments reveal the full story of salvation. The Old Testament lays the foundation for understanding God’s covenantal relationship with humanity, his promises, and the prophecies that point to the coming of Christ.
Genesis 3:15 offers the first glimpse of God’s redemptive plan. He declares that the offspring of the woman (who first ate the forbidden fruit) will crush the serpent’s head, foretelling the ultimate defeat of sin and Satan through Jesus. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12:3, promising that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you,” which sets the stage for the coming Messiah who would bless all people.
This covenant relationship between God and humanity continues to expand and reveal itself through various historical eras, each one dynamic and often tragic as Israel, God’s chosen people, continues to reject the Lord. Within these events and people, God appears and intervenes to save, deliver, speak, and call Israel back to himself. Despite God’s continued compassion, Israel and her kings fall to idolatry and perversion.
The Old Testament ends on a desperate note. They look forward to the Messiah God promised.
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God promises to ultimately send a Messiah, a holy priest-prophet-king who would establish a righteous kingdom and redeem Israel and the whole earth, fulfilling the promise to Abraham to bless all nations through his seed (Genesis 12).
Isaiah 53:5-6 vividly describes the suffering servant who would bear the sins of many: “But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds, we are healed.” Micah 5:2 foretells the birthplace of the Messiah, stating, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” This specific prophecy underscores God's plan and the Messiah's divine nature.
The Old Testament’s sacrificial system points to the ultimate sacrifice of Christ, his death and resurrection. Hebrews 10:1 explains, “The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming—not the realities themselves.” The sacrifices in the Old Testament foreshadow Jesus’ final, perfect sacrifice, which is essential for understanding the full scope of redemption.
Jesus fulfills every Messianic prophecy, of which there are many. Along with the coming Christ, the Old Testament promises a new covenant, one better than the old.
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As revealed in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, God promises to establish a new relationship with his people, addressing the failures of the Old Covenant and offering hope for renewal and transformation.
Jeremiah 31:31-34 presents the future new covenant: “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors... I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Humanity needed a covenant beyond external adherence to the Law, focusing instead on internal transformation and a personal relationship with God.
Ezekiel 36:26-27 further emphasizes the need for this new covenant. “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” This prophecy underscores the Old Covenant’s inadequacy; it couldn’t change the human heart’s rebellious nature, and the new promises a transformative work of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus instituted this New Covenant during the Passover meal with his disciples the night before his crucifixion. The Messiah is also the New Covenant. The book of Acts shows the Holy Spirit’s promise fulfilled on the Day of Pentecost.
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In John 5:39-40, Jesus says, “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” Since the Old Testament was the only “scripture” of the time, this declaration emphasizes that these writings point to Christ, and studying them helps us grasp the full scope of his significance. From Genesis to Malachi, we read hints and symbols of Jesus throughout.
In Genesis 1, during creation, God speaks “let there be light” and light existed. John’s gospel explains Christ’s divinity as the word that makes all things. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him, nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:1-3)
Beginning there in Genesis, one character or event after another reveals Christ in some way. Christ is the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45). He is the promised Son of David, a model righteous king (Matthew 1:1), and the High Priest after Melchizedek (Hebrews 7:17).
This continues throughout the Old Testament, including the history, kings, prophets, and lineages, until the last book, Malachi, promises the Word will come and fill the Temple (Malachi 3:1).
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These reasons highlight only a few of the numerous ways we see the Father’s work and the person of Christ through the Old Testament. Jesus once told a parable of a man who found a treasure in a field. He sold all he had and bought the field. He didn’t take the treasure only. He purchased the whole field (Matthew 13:44). Why? He likely believed there to be more treasure in the field.
We can interpret that parable in different ways, but looking through the Old Testament and the treasure of Christ, our search through those older scriptures will continually bring us more treasure. Since God inspired those words, he reveals himself and the Son and the Spirit throughout those pages. In relationship with God, take the time to explore and discover great value through the Old Testament.
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This article is part of our larger resource library of Christian questions important to the Christian faith. From core beliefs to what the Bible says about angels, we want to provide easy to read and understand articles that answer your questions about Christian living.
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Originally published May 23, 2024.
