Consider setting aside the wrongful attitudes moderns bring against the Bible of Jesus. A place to start is taking on the attitude of Jesus toward his Bible. We should own it. Study it. Be humbled by it. Teach it. Tell others what it says about Yahweh’s mercy. I invite you to read it for yourself. There’s no wrong place to begin. Jesus stopped the tempter with three teachings in Deuteronomy 6‒11. This section tells the people to love Yahweh who loved them first. This is one place we can start to see the Bible of Jesus resurrected to its rightful place in our lives.

“It’s embarrassing.”

That is how I answered a question in a recent podcast interview about the Bible of Jesus—what we call the Old Testament.

They had asked: “In all of your experience in teaching at the university level, what would you say students find most difficult when it comes to engaging with the Old Testament?”

I answered the podcast hosts that students are embarrassed because of uninformed prejudice against the Old Testament in the different spheres of students’ lives. Their friends think it’s boring. Churches minimize and correct it. And especially modern culture ridicules it.1

These things are not new. They are not in doubt. These things should be troubling. They should alarm us. That many Christians have accepted the embarrassment of the Old Testament is part of the problem.

Unpacking the embarrassment about the Bible of Jesus is personal. I say this as a Christian and as a professor of Old Testament.

Jesus is not embarrassed about his Bible. He owns it. He studies it. He teaches it. He taunts his enemies with it. He claims it teaches us all we need to know about redemption (Luke 16:31). If this tells us anything, it says we are wrong for being ashamed of his Bible. This means it is not enough to shake our heads and sigh about what has become of the Old Testament in our day. We need to resurrect the Bible of Jesus to its proper place in our lives.

Embarrassment About the Old Testament Among Christians

Churches tend to love the New Testament and Jesus. The Old Testament, not so much. On any given Sunday many churchgoers are bound to hear the contrast between the Old and the New. Christian teachers and preachers speak about the New Testament Christ of love who is unlike the Old Testament God of wrath. The message also can be read in books by church-going scholars or evangelical ministers.

In 2023 a seasoned Old Testament scholar named James W. Watts crossed out all the so-called “immoral” verses in his commentary on Leviticus 11‒20. He goes on to call upon all scholars and Bible publishers to cross out all the “immoral” verses in the entire Bible—the vast majority are in Torah. He lists all of them. Watts’ list includes all commands about killing Canaanites, slavery, patriarchy, capital punishment, and more, as well as some sexual purity standards. He tells laity not to wait for Bible publishers but to cross out the immoral teachings in their own Bibles.2

The pastor of a large church in Georgia named Andy Stanley thinks that the Old Testament is ruining the gospel message. He is troubled by the sharp contrast between the wrathful God of Israel and the Christ of love.3 He tells his readers not to obey the Ten Commandments.4

This is incredibly bad advice. It is also directly opposed to the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament.

Again and again, Christians express their relief at not needing to bother with Old Testament teachings. Congregants shake their heads at what they see as God’s legalistic treatment of ancient Israel. They sometimes even comment on how much different Jesus is. Different than God? That’s not a Christian view. It’s also mistaken.

There are only 613 laws in the Torah. This only seems like a lot until we realize that there are more than 800 commands in the New Testament.5 People worry about the oddness of the laws of Torah. True, but commands in the New Testament are odd, too. Kiss one another (1 Cor 16:20). Women, cover your heads (11:5‒6). Be kind to strangers in case they are angelic beings in disguise (Heb 13:2). And many more.

Christians complain about the difficulty of obeying the laws of Torah. These Christians need to reread the commands of Christ placed at a much more demanding level. Torah says do not murder or commit adultery (Exod 20:13‒14). Jesus says do not act in anger or look with lust (Matt 5:21‒22, 27‒28).

Remember, we are saved by grace alone and nothing of ourselves in order to serve God by good works (Eph 2:8‒10).

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