2nd Day of Christmas - Old and New Testaments

 On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two turtledoves.

The two turtledoves are said to represent the Old and New Testaments.

I grew up thinking that the two testaments were the old and new covenants, and basically, the new covenant (testament) made the old invalid. Because of that thought, I felt that reading the Old Testament was not something I needed to pursue and was just a lot of nice stories to fill in some blanks. Similarly, I had often heard that the God of the Old Testament was an angry God, and the God of the New Testament was a happy God. After much study, I have learned that these concepts were very misguided. The Old Testament is still a valid covenant, and the New Testament is an additional covenant that compliments the Old, and God is the same God in both Testaments. 

The Old Testament gives meaning to the New, and reveals a lot about how intricately God designed his redemption plan. The New Covenant does not make the Old Covenant invalid, the Old still holds, it has just been added to to include Gentiles as well as the Jews.

In order to understand the New Testament writers, we need to have an understanding of the Scriptures they were referencing. So many misunderstandings of New Testament verses can be explained by referencing the Old Testament. Revelation, for instance, references 24 of the 39 books in the Old Testament. Jesus quoted mostly from Deuteronomy and Psalms.

The Old and the New Testaments comprise the entirety of God’s Word, and together they develop a complete narrative that tells us who God is.

References: 

2 Corinthians 3:14 (the veil concealing Messiah is removed, revealing the new covenant)

Romans 10:4 (Messiah is the end goal, arrival, of the law)

Matthew 5:17 (Jesus didn’t abolish the law, but fulfilled it)

Galatians 3:24 (the Law leads us to and teaches us of Jesus)

Malachi 3:6, Hebrews 3:18 (God does not change)