I first read Wuthering Heights in high school and to this day it remains my favorite book. For those not familiar with it, it’s the story of a man who loses the woman he loves. Blaming their respective families, he spends his life seeking revenge. At some point in the novel he passes away, leaving two families drowning in bitterness. In the end, a young man and woman from each family are able to overcome their judgments, fall in love, and restore harmony.

Imagine you had only read a portion of this novel. You would either come away feeling that this was a very hopeless tale, or you wouldn’t understand and appreciate the redemptive union in the end. When an author writes down their story, it is with the assumption that the entire piece will be read.

The Bible is God’s story, and I spent the first twelve years of my life as a Christian having read only the New Testament. The Old Testament felt complicated and inaccessible to me. I saw it as history that might be helpful, but wasn’t convinced it was relevant in light of Christ’s death and resurrection. In over a decade I had studied only half of a story.

The problem for me was that I didn’t realize the Bible was a story, and it came alive to me when I saw its continuity. It wasn’t made up of two separate halves, the latter canceling out the former, but was one grand narrative about our God, his love for us, and his plan to rescue us.

In the Jesus Storybook Bible, Sally Lloyd-Jones writes that it takes the whole Bible to tell this story. That Christ is the missing piece of a puzzle. Without it, the picture is incomplete, but once found everything fits together. The Old Testament represents those surrounding pieces. It tells me of a people in waiting. A people not always waiting well, living under a law that is impossible for them to reach. We see repeatedly how their strength and works and sacrifices are not enough to grant them life. Paul refers to it as the ministry of death.

If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness! For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was transitory came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts! 2 Corinthians 3:9-11

Christ came to fulfill the law, not abolish or replace it. In the absence of Old Testament knowledge it would be easy to make the mistake that we no longer need to concern ourselves with the law. But God holds us to its standard. We are still under its obligations, the difference being that for those in Christ its requirements have been satisfied.

Paul goes on to say that those of us who have turned to the Lord live with unveiled faces and can now behold his glory. John 1:18 states that Christ has made God known, and if we want to know God, we need only look at his son. And if our goal is to know Christ fully, we must look for him on every page.

No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good.  C. S. Lewis

How can I understand life unless I understand death? The Old Testament is the framework for what Christ accomplished on the cross, for the finished work of salvation. Christ has set us free for freedom, our slavery to sin broken. We have been rescued, and the two halves form the whole that is the perfect picture of faithfulness and redemption.

Sarah Van Beveren is a thirty something mom to three little girls with boundless energy, wife to a suit-wearing husband who keeps the coffee brewing, and the best kind of legalist – one in recovery and rocked by grace. She’s a reader, researcher, and introvert who hails from the Great White North. She loves to play with words when she can find the time. She blogs at sarahvanbeveren.com, or you can follow her on Twitter here. I’m happy that she has joined our team.