Is the God of the Old Testament Different from Jesus? Understanding the Full Story of Scripture

This article has been taken from content of the same information at Whiskey and the Writings. For that video, click here.

We’re having this conversation about the God of the Old Testament—that potentially vengeful, judgment-heavy, war-declaring God—and we’re comparing him to Jesus, who seems to be all about love and grace and goodness. One of the first things we have to say about that comparison is: slow down. Neither of those extreme views—Old Testament God as only wrath and New Testament Jesus as only love—is telling the whole story. And if we cling too tightly to either caricature, we miss what’s actually going on in the Bible.

Jesus Isn’t a Nicer Version of God

Yes, there are some hard, even horrifying passages in the Old Testament. No one’s denying that. But let’s not forget—this same Old Testament is where we see God providing for the foreigner, liberating the oppressed, giving power away in creation, showing mercy over and over again to people who don’t deserve it. At the same time, let’s not pretend Jesus was just handing out hugs and daisies. He was controversial, provocative, even confrontational. He told people the hard truth. He flipped tables. He called religious leaders whitewashed tombs. So we can’t flatten either one of them into a single personality type—wrathful God versus gentle Jesus—and call it theology.

Jesus Is the Lens for Understanding the Old Testament

The better question isn’t, “Why are they so different?” The better question is, “What are we missing when we read them as separate?” Because here’s the thing—Jesus is the very image of the God we meet in the Hebrew Bible. Hebrews 1 puts it plainly: “In the past, God spoke through prophets… but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son… The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” So if you want to know what God is like, look at Jesus. If you’re confused by how God shows up in some Old Testament passage, the place to start is not by throwing out that version of God—it’s by seeing how Jesus reveals who God has always been.

That means the God who walks with Abraham, rescues slaves from Egypt, and wrestles with prophets is the same God who touches lepers, eats with sinners, and dies on a cross. Same God. Different moments in the story.

This Is Ancient Literature, Not a Modern Ethics Manual

Here’s where we often trip up: we read ancient stories through modern assumptions. When we read Scripture and think, “How could God allow this?” we need to pause and remind ourselves—this is ancient literature. It wasn’t written to us. It was written for us, yes—but it was written to a very different audience, in a very different time, with different assumptions, values, and worldview. And if we forget that, we’ll completely miss the point.

So when we bump into difficult Old Testament stories—violence, patriarchy, slavery—we’ve got to pause. Not reject. Not excuse. Just pause and ask: what’s really going on here?

Prescriptive or Descriptive? That Matters.

Are we reading this as prescriptive (God commanding something) when it might just be descriptive (the storyteller showing what happened)? That’s a huge difference. Not everything that shows up in Scripture is something God approved of. Some things God allowed because of the hardness of human hearts. Just like Jesus explained in Matthew 19 when asked about divorce. He says Moses permitted divorce not because it was the ideal but because of their hard hearts.

That tells us something about how God works—he’s not afraid to enter into broken systems in order to slowly transform them from the inside out.

This Is a Story With a Direction

And maybe that’s what’s happening in those hard Old Testament moments. Maybe what looks like divine endorsement is actually divine patience. Maybe God was working in real time with real people whose cultural norms were far from ideal—and God was gently, persistently moving the story forward.

From Genesis to Revelation, the story of Scripture is one of progression. Not in the sense that God evolves, but in how people come to understand and respond to God. It begins with creation—God calling it “very good”—and ends with new creation, a restoration of that original design.

If we forget that the Bible is a story—one that’s moving somewhere—we’ll miss the way God is shaping history toward a specific end: new creation, justice, wholeness, a people renewed in his image.

But Why Didn’t God Just…?

Some stuff still feels wrong to us today. Slavery is a big one. Why didn’t God just abolish it? Why not speak clearly and decisively from the very beginning?

I wrestled with that too. But then I heard an analogy from N.T. Wright that helped me reframe it. He said imagine someone today trying to abolish all automobiles because of the environmental damage they cause. We know cars pollute. The evidence is clear. But imagine trying to get everyone to stop driving tomorrow. It’d be impossible, not because pollution isn’t real, but because the world is so deeply structured around it.

Apply that same framework to ancient slavery. It was built into the economy. It was the framework for survival. If Paul or Jesus had stood up and said “abolish all slavery now,” no one would have taken them seriously. So instead, they planted seeds. They called slaves “brothers.” They challenged owners to treat them with honor. And over time, those seeds bloomed into movements for justice. That’s God working the long game—not absent, not indifferent, just relentlessly patient and deeply involved.

Same God. Different Angles.

So here’s my invitation: before you throw out the God of the Old Testament, take another look. Through Jesus. Through context. Through humility. Don’t flatten God into extremes. Don’t mistake your discomfort for God’s cruelty. And don’t stop asking questions.

Bring them. Drop your hardest ones in the comments. Let’s explore them together. Because I believe—deep in my bones—that the God of the Old Testament and Jesus of the New Testament are the same. And when we begin to see that clearly, a whole new way of reading the Bible opens up.

I’m just saying.