Open most Bibles and you will find sixty-six books — thirty-nine of them written before Jesus was born. Many readers, faced with that volume of unfamiliar material, default to the New Testament and stay there. The Gospels feel safer. The letters feel applicable. The Old Testament feels like a long preamble we can mostly skip.
We think this is a mistake — not because the Old Testament is also important alongside the New, but because Jesus and the apostles plainly believed it was the Bible. The “scriptures” Jesus referred to were the Old Testament. When Paul wrote that “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16, NIV), the Scripture he had in mind was the Old Testament. You cannot read the New Testament well — or read Jesus well — without reading what he read.
Three reasons to take it seriously.
1. Jesus saw himself in it
On the road to Emmaus, after his resurrection, Jesus walks with two disciples who do not yet recognise him. They are bewildered by his crucifixion. Luke records what he does next:
And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:27, NIV)
He did not start with his own teaching. He started with Genesis. He read the Old Testament as a story that pointed to him — and he expected his disciples to do the same. If we want to know how Jesus understood his own life and death, the Old Testament is one of the places he tells us.
2. It gives the New Testament its meaning
The New Testament is dense with quotations and echoes — over three hundred direct citations and many more allusions. Phrases like “Lamb of God,” “Son of Man,” “kingdom of God,” and even “covenant” mean what they mean because of where they come from. When John the Baptist points at Jesus and says, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29, NIV), the word lamb is doing centuries of work — Passover, sacrifice, Isaiah 53. Read in isolation, the line is moving. Read in context, it is staggering.
You can read the New Testament without the Old. You will simply read it less deeply.
3. It teaches us what God is like
The God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament. The character revealed in Exodus, in the Psalms, in Hosea — patient, just, wounded by his people’s faithlessness, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love — is the same God Jesus calls Father. We do not meet a different God in the gospels. We meet the same God, now in flesh.
Reading the Old Testament keeps us from inventing a softer or harder God than the one who is actually there.
A practical entry point
If the Old Testament feels like an undifferentiated wall, try a short, structured entry:
- Genesis 1–3 — creation, the fall, the first promise.
- Exodus 1–20 — slavery, the exodus, Sinai.
- The Psalms, slowly — one psalm per day, read aloud, no rush.
That’s not a complete reading of the Old Testament. It’s a doorway. From there, the rest is not a wall — it’s a country, and you are no longer a stranger in it.