Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
Image 1 of 1
hardcover, 18 chapters, 210 pages, discussion guide
Somewhere along the way, “the old covenant doesn’t govern us” quietly became “the Old Testament doesn’t matter.” Michael Whitworth has spent twenty years listening to that mistake—the preacher apologizing before he reads from Leviticus, the elder explaining that the Old Testament was “nailed to the cross.” Each time, three-quarters of the Bible gets treated like a rough draft God later cleaned up.
This book offers a careful correction. The covenant changed; God did not. The God who spoke at Sinai is the God who spoke through Jesus, and you cannot understand what God did in Christ without first knowing who God already was. The God Before the Gospel walks through eighteen chapters of the Old Testament’s testimony—the name revealed at the burning bush, the great creed of Exodus 34, the holiness that both draws near and holds at a distance, creation as sacred space, the image of God in every human being, covenant, lament, sacrifice, justice, and the hope that death will one day be swallowed up—and shows how each one is fulfilled, not erased, in the New Testament.
Whitworth writes for the person in the pew as much as the one in the pulpit. Every chapter closes with “For the Congregation,” turning theology into something a church can actually live: how to pray the Psalms, make room for grief, welcome the stranger, practice justice, and hold grace and obedience together in the right order. The result is a fuller portrait of God where many of us have settled for a sketch.
The covenant changed. God didn’t. It’s time the church read like it believes that.
hardcover, 18 chapters, 210 pages, discussion guide
Somewhere along the way, “the old covenant doesn’t govern us” quietly became “the Old Testament doesn’t matter.” Michael Whitworth has spent twenty years listening to that mistake—the preacher apologizing before he reads from Leviticus, the elder explaining that the Old Testament was “nailed to the cross.” Each time, three-quarters of the Bible gets treated like a rough draft God later cleaned up.
This book offers a careful correction. The covenant changed; God did not. The God who spoke at Sinai is the God who spoke through Jesus, and you cannot understand what God did in Christ without first knowing who God already was. The God Before the Gospel walks through eighteen chapters of the Old Testament’s testimony—the name revealed at the burning bush, the great creed of Exodus 34, the holiness that both draws near and holds at a distance, creation as sacred space, the image of God in every human being, covenant, lament, sacrifice, justice, and the hope that death will one day be swallowed up—and shows how each one is fulfilled, not erased, in the New Testament.
Whitworth writes for the person in the pew as much as the one in the pulpit. Every chapter closes with “For the Congregation,” turning theology into something a church can actually live: how to pray the Psalms, make room for grief, welcome the stranger, practice justice, and hold grace and obedience together in the right order. The result is a fuller portrait of God where many of us have settled for a sketch.
The covenant changed. God didn’t. It’s time the church read like it believes that.