Are there two Gods of the Bible?

So many think there are two Gods of the Bible: the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. The God in Genesis through Malachi seems angry, harsh, jealous and vindictive, whereas the God of the New is loving, warm, inviting and gentle.

To reconcile them is challenging.

• God in the Old Testament commands His people to destroy their enemies—men, women, children and even their livestock.
  
  Jesus tells us to pray for our enemies and to bless those who persecute us.
  
• A prophet of God curses a group of children who mock his baldness and 42 are killed when two bears emerge from the woods (2 Kings 2:23-24).
  
  Jesus welcomes little children, holds them in His arms, and rebukes the disciples who shooed them away. Of such, He says, is the kingdom of God.
  
• God rains fire and brimstone on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
  
  Urged by the disciples to call down fire on the cities of Samaria when they don’t welcome Him, Jesus refrains.

This seeming inconsistency has troubled many, especially the son of a bishop who lived in the early 100s A.D. Marcion believed Jesus proclaimed the true God and that the Apostle Paul understood His teachings the best. Accordingly, Marcion discarded the Old Testament, all of the Gospels except portions of Luke, and the rest of the New Testament except certain writings of Paul. The church rejected him, but Marcion persuaded enough followers to organize a counter church and proclaim himself bishop.

Few today go to Marcion’s extreme, but many still struggle with God’s apparent split personality. What are we to do?

Two themes settle our minds about God

I am coming to see the bridge between the Old and New Testaments has two spans, each built on a foundation of three words:

 Jesus is Lord
 Covenant of love

Without these, we risk being double minded and without answers, like the time Israel stood speechless when Elijah found them wavering between their God and the gods of their neighbors. “How long will you go limping between two different opinions?” he asked. “If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21, ESV). Theirs was a clear distinction: the living God or a pagan idol, yet they had no answer.

The question we’re asked is: Who is your God, the God of the Old Testament, or the God of the New? The answer is, both. There are not two deities to choose from, but One to believe in, as the opening words of The Shema proclaim, “Hear, O Israel, The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deuteronomy 6:4).

How do three simple words, “Jesus is Lord!” and the idea of a covenant of love settle our minds about God?

When we know that Jesus of the New Testament is the Lord of the Old, and that the Old Testament is as much a covenant of love as the New, then the God from Genesis to Revelation becomes one and the same: consistent in character, resolute in purpose, steadfast in mercy and grace.

These two ideas are subjects I want to explore together in future posts, and I invite you to participate in the discussion through the comments below.

One way Jesus proves He is Lord

For now, let me give one example of how this simple statement, “Jesus is Lord” helps bridge the Old and New testaments. It is so powerful that Peter ended the first Christian sermon—his Pentecost message—with this, “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36).

The Old Testament reveals that God is all-knowing. It is adamant that He is not like the sightless, speechless, breathless gods of stone and wood and gold that people fashion. Not at all. He is the awesome and great Creator, the true and living God, yet so attentive to us that the Psalmist asked, “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?” (Psalm 8:4).

Perhaps nowhere is the Lord’s mindfulness so clear as in this passage,

O LORD, You have searched me and known me.
You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off.
You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.
—Psalm 139:1-4

You can’t help but emerge from the Old Testament aware that God knows all about you—where you are, what you do, even what’s on your mind. This can be comforting, but also disconcerting, as the song we sang as children instilled:

Be careful little hands what you do.
Be careful little hands what you do.
For the Father up above
is looking down in love,
So, be careful little hands what you do.

Eyes, ears, feet and mouth were also under His scrutiny. It was hard to remember the Father’s love when it was His eye in the sky that worried us. The Lord knows everything.

When Jesus came, it wasn’t only the Jews who believed this. In the middle of a conversation a Samaritan woman blurted, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When He comes, He will tell us all things.”

And then, it got personal. She went into town, telling her neighbors, “Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” (John 4:25, 29).

Jesus had said one thing about her—she had had five husbands and was now with a sixth man who was not her husband—but she concluded that if Jesus knew this, then He knew everything.

This wasn’t her conviction alone. The disciples were with Jesus in the Upper Room when He said something that puzzled them. They whispered among themselves, “We do not know what He is saying” (John 16:18) but kept their question to themselves, no doubt embarrassed because they still had trouble understanding Him after three years together.

Without being asked, Jesus answered and they responded, “See, now You are speaking plainly, and using no figure of speech! Now we are sure that You know all things, and have no need that anyone should question You. By this we believe that You came forth from God” (John 16:29-30, emphasis mine).

Hear again their last statement: “By this we believe that You came forth from God.” By what? By the fact Jesus knew their question without them even asking.

Jesus knew their thoughts.

Jesus had just demonstrated the very character of the Lord, “You understand my thought afar off” (Psalm 139:2). This exchange resolved the question they had asked several times, “Who is this?” Now they knew: Jesus is the Lord, the one God said would come and who knows all things.

Let’s recap. Here is a Samaritan woman who had gleaned from Old Testament teaching that God would send a Messiah—the Christ—who  would explain everything, and here is Jesus, telling her “all I ever did.”

Here are disciples who watched Jesus for three years heal the sick, forgive sins, raise the dead, cast out demons, and calm storms and this night they are finally convinced that God sent Him. Why? Because He knew their thoughts.

Jesus does what the Lord does

One more time, in one of the last stories in the Gospels, Thomas missed Jesus’ post-resurrection meeting with the other ten disciples and vowed he couldn’t believe without seeing for himself. “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails,” said Thomas, “and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).

Eight days later, Jesus invited Thomas to do the very things he had insisted on. Jesus knew his thoughts.

Thomas responded, “My Lord and my God!”

No wonder he worshiped. Jesus had just done—again—what the Lord does.

We say “Jesus is Lord” for very good reason. There are not two gods in the Bible, but one, and Jesus came that we may be certain of this.

What examples come to your mind of Jesus doing what the Old Testament ascribed to the Lord? Leave a comment or contact me through the Welcome page. I’d like to collect these and develop them; I think they would be a wonderful book.