Why Does the Old Testament God Seem Different than the New Testament God?
According to this Reddit post, the Old Testament God seems much “harsher” and “more violent” than the New Testament God. If God doesn’t change, how can we reconcile the apparent differences between his character from one testament to the other?
This question isn’t new. In fact, Marcion, an early Christian thinker, also struggled to reconcile God’s in the Old Testament with Jesus in the New. Unfortunately, this led Marcion to suggest that the “God who gave the gospel couldn’t be the same God who gave the law.”1 He even created his own canon of Scripture that included only 11 books and entirely excluded the Old Testament.
Even today, many Christians spend much of their time in the New Testament and avoid reading the Old Testament. I can empathize with this. The Old Testament isn’t the easiest to understand since its cultural background is so far removed from ours. However, all of scripture is profitable and the God of the Old Testament is the same God in the New.
Through this article, I hope to help you see that God’s character in the Old Testament is consistent with his character in the New. God is love and although he does get angry, his anger is an expression of his love towards people who sin against him, others, and ourselves.
In order to do this, I’ll first address some of the reasons why many people think God is different in the Old Testament than he is in the New, then I will explain why both justice and love are important aspects of God’s character, demonstrate how his anger often points to his love, and offer some suggestions for reading difficult passages in the Old Testament in light of God’s love.
Why Do People Think God is Different in the Old Testament than He is in the New Testament?
Many people see God’s actions in the Old Testament as “unloving.” When they read the New Testament, they find a different picture of God.
Some of the narratives in the Old Testament are hard to read — whether or not the act of violence is attributed to God or not. For example, if you are a woman, you might notice the challenging stories of injustices done to women in the Old Testament. Biblical scholar, Phyllis Trible, coined the term “texts of terror” to refer to these stories.2
When we read these things in the Old Testament, we might assume that God is okay with or at the very least indifferent to them.
Although we do read painful narratives in the New Testament, we often see Jesus stepping into these stories with healing and restoration. The picture we might form in our minds is that God is unloving or aloof in the Old Testament and Jesus is present and compassionate in the New Testament.
Next, we might disagree with or find God’s judgment against an individual, group, or nation to be unnecessary. In contrast, Jesus forgives many sinners in the New Testament. One might wonder why God isn’t as forgiving in the Old Testament.
At the heart of it, for many, the greatest challenge is reconciling God’s justice and love. How can a loving God seem so harsh in his judgments? Why doesn’t he just forgive everyone instead of punishing them?
Related: Does the Old Testament Law Still Apply to Christians?
Is God Just or Loving? Understanding God’s Character in the Old and New Testaments
There are a lot of passages in the Old Testament, and all of them help us to understand God better. However, reading these passages without a strong theology of God’s character can cause us to misunderstand God. Thankfully, God has revealed his character to us throughout scripture.
In Exodus 34:6-7, God tells Moses who he is. This passage is the core revelation in the Old Testament about God’s character. It’s quoted or alluded to many times in the Old and New Testament:
And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.”
Exodus 34:6-7 (NIV)
When reading any passage about God, try to read it in light of this one. We may not always understand God’s ways but what he has said about himself here reveals his heart and intentions for his people.
Why Both Love and Justice Are Necessary
Of course, Exodus 34:6-7 also speaks of God punishing the guilty. Both love and justice are important aspects of God’s character.
God is just (and therefore, gets angry) because God is love. Just as a parent might get angry and require consequences for a child who does something to harm themselves, others, or the relationship between the parent and the child, God gets angry when we sin against him, ourselves, or others.
In A Black Theology of Liberation, James H. Cone makes an important point about God’s love and anger for the oppressed:
Is it possible to understand what God’s love means for the oppressed without making wrath an essential ingredient of [God’s] love? … Most theological treatments of God’s love fail to place the proper emphasis on God’s wrath, suggesting that love is completely self-giving without any demand for obedience.3
Similarly, Rufus Burrow Jr., a theologian, notes that for Black and African American Christians, God’s wrath and love aren’t difficult to reconcile — I can attest to this.3 In fact, God’s wrath is a necessary component of his love. How can he be loving if he doesn’t defend the oppressed against their oppressors?
Throughout the Old Testament, there are four major things that God is often angry about:
- Breach of his holiness
- Human Violence and Injustices
- Faithlessness
- Idolatry
Interestingly, in the New Testament, Jesus is often angry about similar things too.
Related: What the Book of Ruth Teaches Us About God’s Hesed Love
Things God Gets Angry About in Old and New Testament
We’ll look at a few examples of these to see how God’s anger is an expression of his love towards people who often go astray. You’ll find that there are examples of God’s anger in both the Old and New Testaments as well as examples of God’s love in both testaments.
Breach of God’s Holiness (2 Samuel 6:7-9)
In 2 Samuel 6, David brings the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem after it had been captured by the Philistines. He decided to transport the ark on a cart although in the Law, God required that it should be carried on poles (see Exodus 25).
Unfortunately, the oxen carrying the ark began to stumble and Uzzah, one of the men guiding the cart, grabbed onto the ark to keep it from falling. God was angry with Uzzah and struck him down.
This is a difficult passage. Uzzah died trying to keep the ark from falling. Reading it, we may wonder why God didn’t spare him?
Walter Brueggemann writes that “the ark must not be presumed upon, taken for granted, or treated with familiarity. The holiness of God is indeed present in the ark, but that holiness is not readily available. To touch the ark is to impinge on God’s holiness, to draw too close and presume too much.”4
Often in the Old Testament, people are immediately struck down when they presume to incorrectly approach God’s holiness. This isn’t because God isn’t loving. Instead, it’s because God is “wholly other” — he is in a category by himself. His presence and power is so great that humans need to approach it with caution.
Still, because God loves his people, he wants to have a relationship with us. This is the reason for the countless laws in the Old Testament, and it’s the reason why Jesus chose to give his life on the cross.
Uzzah knew the law surrounding how the ark should be carried. However, he still reached out and touched it anyway.5 His breach of God’s holiness not only made God angry but, if not dealt with, could have prevented God’s people from being able to enjoy a relationship with him.
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Human Violence and Injustices (Matthew 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-18)
In this passage, Jesus is angry with those who are buying and selling in the temple courts. He turned over their tables and forbade them from carrying any merchandise through the courts. His problem wasn’t with the buying and selling. People who were traveling a far distance to the temple needed to purchase a sacrifice once they were nearby (see Deut 14:24-27).
Instead, Jesus was concerned that the location of the buying and selling prevented Gentiles from being able to worship the Lord. God’s house was meant to be a house of prayer for all nations. Yet, the merchants were making it a “den of robbers.”6
Remember 2 Samuel 6? In that passage, God’s anger breaks out against Uzzah for breaching his holiness — coming too close to his presence and thereby, making it difficult for the whole community of Israel to have a relationship with God. Similarly, here, Jesus is angry with the merchants whose actions are preventing people from coming to know the Lord.
Faithlessness (Numbers 13 & 14)
Next, God often gets angry because of faithlessness. We can also refer to “faithlessness” as rebellion and distrust. It’s not that God gets angry with people who struggle with doubt. There’s a difference between struggling to believe and refusing to believe.
Numbers 13 and 14 recount the story of the Wilderness Generation’s refusal to enter the promised land. They refused to enter because they believed that the Lord was bringing them into the land to “fall by the sword (Numbers 14:2).” Instead of trusting in God’s goodness, they preferred to trust in what they knew and planned to replace Moses as their leader with someone who would lead them back to Egypt.
God was angry and the consequences for the community were severe. Those who refused to enter the promised land ended up being forbidden from entering. The generations after them would enter the land but only after the ones who refused to trust in the Lord had died.
It is because of his love that God cares whether we are faithful or not. If he didn’t love humanity, he wouldn’t care and would leave us to our own devices. Left to our own devices, things wouldn’t go so well for us.
Idolatry (Exodus 32 and Mark 6-7)
Of course, God also gets angry at idolatry. Idolatry is the worship of anything or anyone instead of God.
In Exodus 32, the Israelites create a golden calf to worship as their god.7 However, right before this incident, God explained to them that they were not to make idols or graven images and worship them (Exodus 20:4-5). God was deeply grieved at their idolatry. He punished those who were directly involved in the false worship and as a result of what happened, he revealed his name and character to Moses.8
In the New Testament, God’s people didn’t struggle with idolatry in the same way they did here. However, there is a parallel. The Pharisees and teachers of the law often held their interpretation of the law above all else. For example, they were ready to accuse Jesus for healing someone on the Sabbath and criticized his disciples for eating with unwashed hands (see Mark 6:1-6 and 7:1-7). This was certainly a form of idolatry. Jesus was “angry” and “deeply distressed” because of them:
He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” Mark 6:5 (NIV)
Hopefully, this has helped demonstrate that God gets angry in both the Old and New Testaments, and his anger doesn’t make him unloving or wrathful. His anger is an expression of his love and righteousness. Ultimately, God wants a relationship with humans, and at times, human sinfulness gets in the way.
Why Is There More Violence and Anger in the Old Testament than in the New
It’s true that there does seem to be more violence in the Old Testament than in the New Testament. In a nutshell, this is because in the Old Testament we are seeing God’s interactions with nations and larger communities, while in the New Testament, Jesus is interacting with individuals and smaller groups.
As a whole, Ancient Near Eastern cultures approached life differently than we do. They had more wars and more “harsh” judgments for things that we might not consider worthy of judgment.
We might read about Ancient Near Eastern cultures and feel that certain things are unjustified but we need to remember that there is a wide cultural river between us and them. This is where background studies come into play. Learning more about these cultures will give us a better perspective on why certain things that feel foreign to us might have been normal to them.
Tips for Reading Difficult Passages in the Old Testament
The passages we discussed in this article are a few of many that give us a window into God’s anger. When reading other difficult passages about God’s anger in the Old (or New) Testament, here’s what you can do:
- Focus on God’s character. God is love. He is compassionate, gracious, and slow to anger. He is quicker to forgive than he is to punish. Read the Bible through this lens of trust in God’s character. This will help you when you struggle to understand individual actions of God.
- Be okay with not being able to reconcile some difficult passages in scripture. We are allowed to ask questions, wrestle, and struggle with the text.
- Remember that God’s justice doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love. Love and justice go hand in hand.
Conclusion
This article barely scratched the surface of all the things one might consider about God in the Old Testament and in the New. So, if you would like to read further, here are some resources I recommend.
- For learning to navigate difficult seasons with faith in the Lord, my Bible Study, Habakkuk: Living by Faith in A Broken World
- I didn’t discuss the Canaanite conquest passages, but Is God A Moral Monster by Paul Copan is a great book to read on this.
- If you want to learn how to interpret the Bible better, check out this article here on the blog or the book Grasping God’s Word by J. Daniel Hays and J. Scott Duvall.
- The Old Testament IVP Bible Background Commentary is a wonderful resource for understanding the background of the Old Testament.
- If you’re an advanced student of the Bible and you want to understand the Ancient Near Eastern background of the Old Testament, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament by John Walton is an excellent read.
- https://www.bartehrman.com/marcion/ ↩︎
- Phyllis Trible, Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1984). ↩︎
- James H. Cone, A Black Theology of Liberation (New York: Lippincott, 1970), 130. ↩︎
- Rufus Burrow Jr., “The Love, Justice, and Wrath of God,” Encounter 59, no. 3 (December 31, 1998): 379–407, https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=3441ec89-4445-353f-b19b-1a94af908f74. ↩︎
- Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel (Interpretation; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990), 257. ↩︎
- Brueggemann suggests (and I would agree) that Uzzah wasn’t the only one at fault here. David was the one who decided to have the ark carried in a cart by oxen. He was more concerned with bringing the ark back to Jerusalem (likely for political reasons) than he was about making sure that God’s holiness was treated in the correct way.
↩︎ - In my Holy Week devotional, I mention how New Testament Scholar Amy-Jill Levine adds much-needed insight to the significance of the phrase “den of robbers.” Check it out here. ↩︎
- Some scholars suggest that the Israelites believed that the calf they made was a representation of Yahweh. ↩︎
- This is the same passage that I mentioned earlier (Exodus 34:5-6).
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