You raise a good point about the OT. There is ongoing debate about how precisely to relate the OT to the NT. It’s a debate Christians have been having since Marcion first suggested that the OT creator god was not the God of Jesus Christ. I don’t think, however, that it’s just the theological left who talks about the OT. Premillennial Dispensationalism is a pretty conservative way of reading the Bible and Dispensationalists have always claimed that God’s plan for the Jews in the OT is not the same as God’s plan for the church in the NT. This perspective has been attacked considerably by Reformed advocates of a covenantal approach to the Bible, which sees an organic connection between all of the covenants from covenant with Adam and Eve to the final covenant with Jesus. There are numerous debates within evangelicalism that surround these two basic positions (and to be clear I don’t have a dog in these hunts, as it were) as for example the Lordship Salvation debate. On one side was Zane Hodges and Charles Ryrie who claimed that salvation was an completely free gift of grace, which meant that you did not have to do anything else. To require anything else of the believer than faith was to fail into a law-based form of Christianity. On the other side were folks like RC Sproul who said that while salvation was a free gift, Christ must be Lord of one’s life, which meant that the believer had to follow his commandments.

I am saying all of this to let you know that the debate on how to connect OT to NT is alive and well in conservative evangelical circles.

For instance a person trapped in homosexuality will simply walk away in disgust if you preach fire and brimstone at them and tell them that the OT law commanded the death penalty for their behavior. A more profitable approach would be to have them examine their brokenness and need for a savior. However, if we dismiss the OT law completely and limit NT admonitions as being context specific as is currently in fashion, then we have basically given away our primary means for illumination and guidance in these areas. Then issues such as homosexuality, inclusivism, egalitarianism etc are all up for debate as the clear scriptural admonitions have been thrown out the window. This seems to be the primary tactic of superimposing our modern philosophical systems on scripture. I am not sure if the people who argue in such a manner actually know that they are doing this or not? I do know that if you have to start eliminating large sections of scripture in order to hold to a position you need to reevaluate why you are really choosing to hold to that position.

Your brother in Christ,

Chris