Foy E. Wallace, Jr.
The Old and the New Testaments represent together the continuity of Divine revelation. We are not under the Old Testament—but that does not mean that we do not believe it. When we try to show people that we are not under the Old Testament, they think that we do not believe the Old Testament. Let us ask, who it is that does not believe the Old Testament—do you believe that it has been taken away? If you say no—then you do not believe the Old Testament, because the Old Testament is the book that said, “In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). Here Paul showed that what the Old Testament said in advance about itself had been done. That was a quotation from the Old Testament. So, if you do not believe that the Old Testament has vanished away, then you are the one who does not believe the Old Testament.
I believe the Old Testament, but we are not under it. That does not mean that it is not true; it means that it was fulfilled and has been abrogated. It was not called the “Old Testament” as long as it was in force. There is not a law on the statue books of the State of Tennessee that you would call an “old” law while it is in operation. When a law is repealed, when it is abrogated, when it is relegated, it becomes an old law.
Then why is the Old Testament “old”? Not because it was written first, not because it is older than the New Testament—Paul said, in Hebrews 8:13, that God made it old. “In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old.” He made it old by abrogating it, taking it out of the way. The Old Testament is true as the revelation of God and the history of man, and of God’s people Israel, and as an inspired record of the development of the Divine plan of redemption. All of that is in the Old Testament. The Bible is thus the longest thread of thought ever woven in the loom of time. There is no repudiation of the Old Testament, but we recognize the difference in the dispensations under which men have lived and served God.
