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62 What Books and Words Make Up the Christian Scriptures?
The apostolic witness to Christ in that first generation was meant by
Jesus to be foundational for all of history. With the authority of Jesus
Christ himself, the writings of this band of apostolic spokesmen would
stand alongside the Hebrew Bible as the true and authoritative instruction
of God for his people throughout the history of the world.
And as Jesus said, this new canon of books—this New Testament—
would not be a contradiction or a correction of the Old Testament, but
a fulfillment: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the
Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matt.
5:17). To be sure, many instructions and rules and religious practices
and rituals from the Old Testament are no longer to be practiced. But
this is not because these practices and rules were wrong, but because
they were temporary and were pointing forward to the day when Jesus
Christ would fulfill them and thus end them. The coming of Christ did
not abolish them, but it did make them obsolete (Heb. 8:13).
The new people of God—the followers of the Messiah, the true
Israel—is not an ethnically, politically, geographically defined people
any longer. Christianity has no geographic center. It has no single ethnic
identity. It is not a political nation-state. It has no system of sacrificing
animals, no tabernacle, no succession of priests, no divinely authorized
feast days, no requirements of circumcision or dietary particulars. All of
these Old Testament patterns were temporary. Jesus has fulfilled them
and ended them.
The New Scriptures
That is what the apostles were authorized by Jesus to make plain: Who
is this Jesus Christ? What did he accomplish in his life, death, resurrection,
and ascension? What is he doing now in his universal reign as
Lord? What will he do when he comes again? And what is the mission
of his church, the way of salvation for the world, and the way his people
should live until he comes? This is what the New Testament teaches.
Thus the New Testament completes the Old Testament without nullifying
its authority or contradicting its truth. It is the word of the risen
Christ, through the Holy Spirit, guiding his people in their understanding
of how the work of God in the world—recorded and celebrated
in the Old Testament—is to be completed in the remainder of history.