How to Read the Old Testament as a Christian

The Problem Most Christians Have with the Old Testament

Ask most Christians which part of the Bible they find most difficult, and the Old Testament wins consistently. It is not the length — though that intimidates. It is the foreignness. Strange laws about fabrics and infectious mould. Commands to destroy entire nations. A God who sometimes seems like a different character than the one revealed in the Gospels.

The result is that many Christians functionally treat the Old Testament as an extended prologue — useful for the occasional story, but mostly bypassed in favour of the New. This is a mistake that impoverishes faith and misreads Scripture.

Jesus himself said: "Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me" (John 5:39). The Old Testament, rightly read, is the most extended portrait of Jesus in existence.

The Key: Read It as a Story With an Ending

The Old Testament is not a collection of moral tales or ancient wisdom. It is an unfinished story — a story that knows it is heading somewhere, filled with promises that point forward, patterns that demand a resolution, and questions that only Christ answers.

When you read Exodus, you are reading about a deliverer named Moses who leads people from slavery through water into a covenant and toward a promised land. When you read that story asking "Where does this end?" — the answer is Jesus, the greater Moses who leads his people from the slavery of sin through the waters of baptism into a new covenant and toward the new creation.

Every major narrative in the Old Testament is like this. Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah. Joseph sold by his brothers. The Passover lamb. The Day of Atonement. The Tabernacle. David's throne. All of them contain a built-in incompleteness that finds its completion in Christ.

Three Tools for Reading the Old Testament Christianly

1. Typology

A "type" is a person, institution, or event in the Old Testament that prefigures its "antitype" in the New. Adam is a type of Christ (Romans 5:14). The Passover lamb is a type of Christ (1 Corinthians 5:7). The high priest entering the holy of holies once a year is a type of Christ entering heaven with his own blood (Hebrews 9:11-12).

When you read the Old Testament looking for types, you begin to see that the entire Mosaic system was designed as a shadow — a preview — of the substance that is Christ (Colossians 2:17).

2. Promise-Fulfilment

The Old Testament contains hundreds of promises that find their yes in Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20). Learn to read the prophets with the New Testament in hand. Isaiah 53 is not just historical poetry — it is the most precise portrait of the crucifixion written seven centuries before it happened.

3. Canonical Narrative

Read the Bible as one story with five acts: creation, fall, Israel, Jesus, and church (awaiting consummation). Every passage finds its meaning within the larger narrative. Knowing which act you are in changes how you read every scene.

The Old Testament Builds the New Testament's Vocabulary

Without the Old Testament, the New Testament is incomprehensible. "Lamb of God" means nothing without Exodus 12. "High priest" means nothing without Leviticus. "Son of David" means nothing without 2 Samuel 7. "New covenant" means nothing without Jeremiah 31.

Far from being the Bible's difficult appendix, the Old Testament is its foundation. Read it slowly. Read it Christianly. And expect to find Christ on every page — because he said you would.