How the Early Church Viewed the Old Testament

In this brief clip from his teaching series A Survey of Church History, W. Robert Godfrey explains that early church was profoundly connected to the Old Testament. Watch this entire message for free today.

Transcript

We know from our study of the New Testament that the question of exactly how the church would relate to the Jewish past was a major issue in the beginning. How much of Jewish religious life would be imposed upon Gentiles? And that became a central part of the ministry of the Apostle Paul, to help the church understand that, and help the church come to terms with both its freedom in Christ, its newness in Christ on the one hand, and its continuing connection to its Jewish past. The church did have a profound sense of connection to its Jewish past, and sometimes we have taken it so much for granted we don’t even notice it. But think of how much our understanding of Jesus and His work is built on the Old Testament. When we say, “Jesus is King,” “Jesus is Priest,” “Jesus is Prophet,” “Jesus is Sacrifice,” “Jesus is Messiah or Christ,” all of those things would be almost unintelligible to us if we didn’t have the Old Testament.