The Cure Has Come -- And You Know It.
Let me speak plainly to something I hear constantly from people who want a reason not to believe.
"The Bible endorses rape."
"The Bible endorses genocide."
"The God of the Old Testament is a monster."
I want to address this honestly, because it deserves a real answer, not a dodge.
First, the facts.
The Bible does not endorse rape.
It records it -- and condemns it.
The violation of Dinah in Genesis 34 ends in devastating consequences for the perpetrators.
The rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13 is treated as an abomination.
Scripture is filled with the brutal reality of human sin precisely because it is an honest book.
Recording evil is not the same as approving it. If a history book describes the Holocaust, it is not endorsing it.
But here is what I really want you to see.
Many people say, "If it were just the New Testament, I could believe."
Let me be direct with you: that is not true. We have the New Testament. It is right there. Jesus is in it. His resurrection is in it.
His love, His sacrifice, His grace, all of it is right there. And most who make that argument still do not believe.
So the Old Testament objection is not the real issue.
It is a place to stand while keeping God at arm's length.
Here is the truth about why the Old Testament looks the way it does and it is not complicated once you see it.
Imagine a disease. It is deadly.
It is spreading up a person's arm toward their heart.
There is no cure. In that moment, the merciful thing, the only thing that saves the patient's life, is to remove the arm.
It is severe. It looks brutal to someone who does not understand what is happening. But the alternative is death.
That is the Old Testament.
Sin is that disease. It is lethal. It spreads.
It destroys families, nations, generations. And in the Old Testament era, there was no cure. The blood of bulls and goats could not remove it. It could only be covered, temporarily, year after year.
So what you see in the Old Testament is something severe: laws, regulations, judgments, consequences, because you are watching a Holy God govern a fallen, unredeemed people with no cure available.
The strictness was not cruelty.
It was containment.
It was mercy in the only form that was possible.
Then the cure came.
The blood of Jesus Christ did what the law never could. It does not cover sin -- it removes it. It does not manage the fallen nature -- it replaces it with a new one.
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17)
This is the change.
This is why the New Testament feels different.
Not because God changed.
Not because He decided the rules no longer mattered.
But because the cure arrived.
Now, instead of governing fallen people with law from the outside, God can transform people from the inside.
Now we can be born again. Now we can become children of God.
The Old Testament was always pointing here. Every sacrifice, every law, every consequence was the finger of God pointing forward to the Lamb who would take away the sin of the world.
So no, the Old Testament does not embarrass me. It makes me grateful.
It shows me how serious sin is, how costly the cure was, and how extravagant the love of God is that He pursued us anyway.
The cure has come.
The question is not whether you have enough objections.
The question is whether you want to be healed.
Robbie Patterson
#thetruthinlove
Christ Is King -- Live Like It.
#ChristIsKingLiveLikeIt #CiKMThe Cure Has Come -- And You Know It.
Let me speak plainly to something I hear constantly from people who want a reason not to believe.
"The Bible endorses rape."
"The Bible endorses genocide."
"The God of the Old Testament is a monster."
I want to address this honestly, because it deserves a real answer, not a dodge.
First, the facts.
The Bible does not endorse rape.
It records it -- and condemns it.
The violation of Dinah in Genesis 34 ends in devastating consequences for the perpetrators.
The rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13 is treated as an abomination.
Scripture is filled with the brutal reality of human sin precisely because it is an honest book.
Recording evil is not the same as approving it. If a history book describes the Holocaust, it is not endorsing it.
But here is what I really want you to see.
Many people say, "If it were just the New Testament, I could believe."
Let me be direct with you: that is not true. We have the New Testament. It is right there. Jesus is in it. His resurrection is in it.
His love, His sacrifice, His grace, all of it is right there. And most who make that argument still do not believe.
➡️ So the Old Testament objection is not the real issue.
It is a place to stand while keeping God at arm's length.
Here is the truth about why the Old Testament looks the way it does and it is not complicated once you see it.
Imagine a disease. It is deadly.
It is spreading up a person's arm toward their heart.
There is no cure. In that moment, the merciful thing, the only thing that saves the patient's life, is to remove the arm.
It is severe. It looks brutal to someone who does not understand what is happening. But the alternative is death.
⚠️That is the Old Testament.
Sin is that disease. It is lethal. It spreads.
It destroys families, nations, generations. And in the Old Testament era, there was no cure. The blood of bulls and goats could not remove it. It could only be covered, temporarily, year after year.
So what you see in the Old Testament is something severe: laws, regulations, judgments, consequences, because you are watching a Holy God govern a fallen, unredeemed people with no cure available.
The strictness was not cruelty.
It was containment.
It was mercy in the only form that was possible.
⚠️Then the cure came.
The blood of Jesus Christ did what the law never could. It does not cover sin -- it removes it. It does not manage the fallen nature -- it replaces it with a new one.
"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17)
This is the change.
This is why the New Testament feels different.
Not because God changed.
Not because He decided the rules no longer mattered.
But because the cure arrived.
Now, instead of governing fallen people with law from the outside, God can transform people from the inside.
Now we can be born again. Now we can become children of God.
The Old Testament was always pointing here. Every sacrifice, every law, every consequence was the finger of God pointing forward to the Lamb who would take away the sin of the world.
So no, the Old Testament does not embarrass me. It makes me grateful.
It shows me how serious sin is, how costly the cure was, and how extravagant the love of God is that He pursued us anyway.
The cure has come.
The question is not whether you have enough objections.
The question is whether you want to be healed.
Robbie Patterson ❤️
#thetruthinlove
Christ Is King -- Live Like It.
#ChristIsKingLiveLikeIt #CiKM
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