Hebrews 1:1 notes that God revealed himself “at many times and in many ways” in the past. Adam received a bit of God’s truth, and so did Noah; God spoke more fully to Abraham, unveiling more of himself and his purposes. He revealed himself supremely in the Old Testament through Moses. Progressive revelation is a movement from truth to more truth and so to full truth.

Progressive Revelation

Instead of Columbus “discovering America,” suppose the American Indians had journeyed east to tell us about themselves and about the marvelous land to the west where they lived.

The Old Testament is like that: it is not the account of a human voyage of discovery, searching for God, but of God coming to tell us about himself.

Of course, now that we have the Old Testament (and the rest of the Bible), we can go on a voyage of discovery ourselves to find out more about what God has revealed and (always, as the main purpose of the book) to know God and Jesus Christ whom he sent (John 17:3), to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18).

The Old Testament is the beginning of God’s progressive revelation of himself.

Truth and More Truth

Hebrews 1:1 notes that God revealed himself “at many times and in many ways” in the past. Adam received a bit of God’s truth, and so did Noah; God spoke more fully to Abraham, unveiling more of himself and his purposes. He revealed himself supremely in the Old Testament through Moses. Progressive revelation is a movement from truth to more truth and so to full truth.

Some things were for their own time only, later to be set aside. This happened, for example, in the case of the restrictive food laws (e.g., Deut. 14:1–21), which were repealed by the Lord Jesus (Mark 7:19); the same happened too with many of the laws designed to regulate the life of the people of God when, in the Old Testament, they were a political state with their own government. A radical change took place when the earthly kingdom of the Lord’s people was replaced by the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ under him as King (John 18:36).

Yet even when laws are openly or implicitly set aside, they still bear testimony to the truth. Take the food laws as an example. They were part of the way the Lord insisted that his people live a distinct life, separate from other peoples on earth. This is still a divine requirement (2 Cor. 6:14–7:1) and still applicable to the realm of appetite and indulgence. In the same way, although we are no longer constituted as an earthly kingdom, we are still concerned for equity, for the integrity of the courts, for exactness and effectiveness of criminal law, for social righteousness, and for all the other things the old laws were designed to express and safeguard in the kingdom of the first David.

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