Testimony of Christ to the Old Testament 209 We are not forgetting that the Lord fully recognizes the imperfect and provisional character of the Mosaic law and of the Old Dispensation. Were the Old faultless, no place would have been found for the New. Had grace and truth come by Moses, the advent of Jesus Christ would have been unnecessary. So when the Pharisees put the question to Christ why Moses commanded to give to a wife who has found no favor with her husband a writing of divorcement and to put her away, He repliedu: "Moses, because of the har-dness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wivesu: but from the beginning it was not so" (Matt. 19 :8). The Mosaic legislation was not in every part absolutely the best that could be given, but it was such as the divine wisdom saw best for the time being and under the special circumstances of the Hebrew people. Not only did the Old Testa ment set forth a typical economy, which must give place to another, but it embodied ethical elements of a provisional kind which must pass away when the incarnate Son had fully revealed the Father. The Old Testament is conscious of its own imperfections, for Jeremiah thus writesu: "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judahu: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt." But in all this there is nothing to modify the proposition which we are illustrating, viz., that our Lord accepts the Old Testament economy and its Scriptures as from God, as stamped with divine authority, and as truly making known the divine mind and will. Marcion and the Gnostics did not receive any part of the Old Testament Scriptures, and the Old Dispensation itself they held to be of evil origin. So decided were they against the Old Testament that they would not admit into their New Testament canon the books which especially bear witness to the Old. But the Christian Church has followed its Master
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker