Use of the Term “Old Testament”

The law becomes an “Old Testament” only for those who want to understand it in a fleshly way; and for them it has necessarily become old and aged, because it cannot maintain its strength. But for us, who understand and explain it spiritually and according to the gospel-meaning, it is always new. Indeed, both are “New Testaments” for us, not by the age of time but by the newness of understanding. Or does not the apostle John perceive this very thing in his epistle when he says: “Little children, I give you a new commandment, that you love one another”? For he surely knew that the commandment of love was long ago given in the law. But because “love never fails,” and the commandment of love never grows old, he pronounces what never grows old to be ever new; for the commandment of love continually renews in the Spirit those who observe and keep it. But for the sinner and for the one who does not preserve the covenant of love, even the Gospels grow old. Nor can it be a “New Testament” for the one who does not “lay aside the old man and put on the new man and the one created according to God.”

Translated by Thomas Scheck.