HOW TO APPLY OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT VERSES WHERE BOTH ARE IN CONFLICT
Exodus 22:18 says "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."
Whereas Matthew 5:44 says But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
Based on these two scriptures, if you see a witch being an enemy, what should you do? Kill the witch or love the witch?
The answer is however easy only if you can realise that the Old Covenant will not fit into the mold of the New Covenant because they are not the same and just like operating a New Constitution and the Old Constitution at the same time, it's going to keep causing confusion. This was exactly what Jesus addressed in Mark 2:18-22.
Mark tells us;
The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting. Then they came and said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?” And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days. No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins”.
Now; to rightly understand this passage, we need to understand something about the ‘covenants’ that God has made with His people. A ‘covenant’ is simply another way of saying ‘an agreement’. A biblical ‘covenant’ is an agreement that God initiates with His people that dictates the conditions of His relationship with them. If they faithfully fulfill their part of the agreement, He will faithfully fulfill His part of the agreement. There have been several such agreements that God entered into with His people throughout the history of His relationship with mankind. But one of such agreements is the one that God entered into with the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. I like to refer to it simply as ‘the Old Covenant’. In this Covenant, God gave them the Ten Commandments; and then, He expanded those commandments through various case laws—showing how those commandments were to be kept in specific situations of life.
And as you also find as you read on in the Bible, they failed to keep this agreement. But our sovereign God knew all along that this would happen. And so, He had it in His plan—at the right time in history—to establish a New Covenant with His people. You will find God giving the terms of this future New Covenant in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah—some seven centuries or so before the Lord Jesus came into this world.
The demands of the Old Covenant were fulfilled and set aside in this New Covenant.
Eph 2:15 He abolished the Jewish Law with its commandments and rules, in order to create out of the two races one new people in union with himself, in this way making peace.
In other words, what is now operational is the New Covenant. This should always guide your decisions and always be your first reference point.
Please note that the New Covenant realities of grace in Jesus cannot be made to fit into the Old Covenant patterns of law. It’s not even appropriate to try to make them do so. Let’s look again at our passage in Mark’s Gospel; and I believe you’ll be able to see this clearly.
Mark tells us what happened while Jesus was ministering in the regions of Galilee—perhaps while He was still having a meal with Levi the former tax collector, and with his friends. In Mark 2:18, he writes, “The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting.”
And these regular ‘fasters’ had a real controversy with Jesus. Perhaps they saw Him eating a feast with a whole lot of sinners; and that prompted them to ask Him a question. Mark tells us, “Then they came and said to Him, ‘Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?’” (v. 18b).
And Jesus goes on to answer their question. He does so with three truly fascinating illustrations—all taken from common, everyday matters of life. Let’s consider them briefly.
The first is an illustration of groomsmen at a wedding. In verse 19, we read, “And Jesus said to them, ‘Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them?".
The second illustration that Jesus gives is of a new patch of cloth on an old garment. In verse 21, Jesus said; “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse” (v. 21).
And this illustrates to us that you can’t take the new spiritual realities of the New Covenant and try to patch the Old Covenant over with it. That may be what some people thought the grace of God through Jesus could be—just a ‘patch job’ to fix up what was lacking in the Old Covenant. But that won’t work. The realities of the New Covenant are too great and too dynamic—too utterly different—to be kept in place in an Old Covenant context. You can’t experience the liberty we enjoy in Christ while trying to live in under the burden of the letter of the law.
And the third illustration that Jesus gives us shows something of the same thing. He said, “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined” (v. 22a).
As Jesus said, “But new wine must be put into new wineskins.” And in saying this, He was illustrating that the new, glorious, dynamic realities of the New Covenant relationship people have with God through Him cannot be contained in the Old Covenant context. The rules and rituals and regulations and ceremonies of the Old Covenant cannot hold the new life in Christ. In fact, it actually ruins things if you try it!
The apostle Paul once wrote to a group of Christians who were trying to make that happen; and in his letter to the Galatians, he told them;
Galatians 4:9-11 But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I am afraid for you, lest I have labored for you in vain.
Galatians 5:1 He urged them, “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage”.
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