The Bible is not as simple as it seems.

People say, “Oh, I believe in the Good Book. Whatever it says, I want to do.” But secretly people have all kinds of questions and confusion about the “Good Book.”

The New Testament says that we’re not just to read the Bible; we’re also to rightly divide it (see 2 Timothy 2:15). That’s not just for pastors and Bible teachers—it’s for all of us. So how do we do it?

In the book of John, we read, “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17, NIV). This shows a division. There’s the law, or the Old Testament. Then there’s grace, God’s unmerited favor shown through Jesus Christ in the New Testament. In Hebrews 8 these are called the old covenant and the new covenant (see Hebrews 8:6–9). A covenant is a contract God makes with people at any given point for any given period of time.

So let’s go back to basics. The Bible has sixty-six books divided into two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The Old Testament, the law, is represented by Moses. The covenant of the law was God saying to the people, “Here are My commands. Obey them and you’ll live. The soul that sins will die” (see Deuteronomy 30:16; Ezekiel 18:20).

There are more than five hundred commands in the Old Testament: No eating pork. After a woman gives birth, she can’t worship at the tabernacle for a period of time. If a child curses his or her parents, that child is stoned. God told Moses that the people must obey all of them. No picking and choosing—it was not a menu.

What was the result of that covenant? Total disaster. No one could obey it!

But God never gave the law so people could obey it to be saved. The Bible tells us that the law was given to represent God’s holiness. Nobody could obey the law well enough for God to say, “Good job. Come on into heaven. You did it perfectly.” No, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, NIV). So the law brings guilt and condemnation—and shows us that we need a Savior.

The New Testament is a different, better covenant.

The new covenant—based on grace, the unmerited favor of God—is characterized by Jesus. The old covenant says, “Do it or die,” while the new covenant says, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you’ll receive eternal life” (see Acts 16:31).

Nothing we do saves us; we are saved only through faith. What is faith? It’s the hand that reaches out and receives the gift that God freely offers: salvation through Jesus Christ. That’s the new covenant. We can’t become righteous by obeying the law.

So here’s the bottom line about rightly dividing the Bible: no command or promise in the Old Testament has anything to do with you and me unless it’s repeated or illustrated in the New Testament. The laws and promises in the Old Testament were given to the children of Israel, not me and you.

I grew up hearing ministers pound certain commands in the Old Testament: “Oh, you’ve got to do this and this.” With other commands, they’d say, “Oh, those aren’t for us today.” Who gave us the right to pick and choose which commands apply to us?

Don’t listen to con artists who take verses from the Old Testament and use them to get money for themselves. “If you give to my ministry, you’ll have a bigger house and a bigger car.” No, we pick and choose which commands from the Old Testament apply to us this way: whatever the New Testament repeats and illustrates, we apply.

In fact, the teaching of Jesus goes much deeper than the law of Moses. We obey not in order to get saved but to live in a way that pleases God.

Years ago, one man who got saved at the Brooklyn Tabernacle began asking the leaders, “It says in the Bible to farm your land six years in a row, but on the seventh year, you’re not allowed to farm the land. But Christian farmers around the country farm their land every year! And I saw somebody having pork ribs the other day, but God said not to eat from the pig! What’s up with that?” He was reading laws from the Old Testament that Christians are not under. We’re under the gospel. We’re children of God.

So remember, we don’t have to obey laws today in order to be saved. We are Christians. Instead, we obey the teachings of the Lord through the grace of God and the help of the Holy Spirit so He’ll say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” (Matthew 25:21, NIV). That’s the difference between law and grace.

Prayer

God, thank You for sending Your Son to be the sacrifice for our sins and bring us out from under the law. Help us to rightly divide Your Word and live in Your freedom and grace today.

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