Is the Old Testament Still Relevant for Christians?

Very relevant—it is fully the Word of God, and it was the only Bible Jesus and the apostles had. Paul’s statement that “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable” (2 Timothy 3:16) referred first of all to the Old Testament. Far from being obsolete, it is where we learn creation, the fall, the covenant promises, the Psalms that shaped Jesus’ own prayers, and the prophecies he fulfilled. Jesus said the whole of it was written about him (Luke 24:27). Cut out the Old Testament and the New Testament loses its roots and half its meaning.

The real question hiding in this one is about the laws—why Christians eat bacon, wear mixed fabrics, and don’t offer sacrifices, if those are commanded there. The historic answer distinguishes the different kinds of law God gave Israel. The ceremonial laws (sacrifices, priesthood, feasts, clean and unclean foods) were pictures and shadows pointing forward to Christ; now that the reality has come, the shadows have served their purpose. Paul says exactly this: such things “are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:17). The civil laws governed Israel as a particular nation-state that no longer exists as such. But the moral law—supremely the Ten Commandments, God’s abiding will for human life—remains binding, because it flows from God’s own unchanging character.

So Christians do not “pick and choose” arbitrarily. We read the whole Old Testament as God’s Word, honor the moral law it reveals, and recognize the ceremonial and civil law as fulfilled and transformed in Christ. Jesus himself framed it this way: “I have not come to abolish [the Law and the Prophets] but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). The Old Testament is not a discarded rulebook. It is the first and larger half of one unfolding story, and its every page finally points to Jesus.