Introduction: A Code Written in Love
Every system needs a governing code — a set of instructions that defines how it operates, what it values, and what it protects. For the Christian life, that code is the New Testament: from Matthew to Revelation, the record of Christ’s life, the apostolic letters, and the vision of what is to come.
This is not a rejection of everything that came before. The wisdom literature of the Old Testament — Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Psalms — still speaks truth about human nature, patience, and the fear of the Lord. But the ceremonial and legal code of the Old Covenant reached its purpose and its end at the cross. As Jesus declared in His final words, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The author of Hebrews is direct about it: what is “obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13).
The Great Commandment: The Supreme Law
When asked which commandment was greatest, Christ did not point to the ceremonial law. He pointed to love: love God with everything you have, and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:37-40). Every other instruction, He said, hangs on these two. This is the operating principle beneath the entire New Testament code — not rules for their own sake, but love as a binding commitment, a covenant kept in action rather than mere sentiment.
Why the Distinction Still Matters
Mixing covenants — trying to run New Covenant grace on Old Covenant law — creates confusion about what God actually requires. It can produce religion without relationship: outward observance detached from the living commitment Christ described. Scripture calls believers to stay alert to this kind of drift, testing what they’re taught against the whole of the New Testament witness (1 John 4:1).
2033: Why the Timing Matters
Many believers watching world events have their eyes on the year 2033 — roughly two thousand years after the crucifixion and resurrection, by most traditional datings of Christ’s death around 33 A.D. Whether or not that specific year carries prophetic weight, the underlying point stands regardless of the calendar: history has a direction, and Scripture consistently calls believers to live with urgency rather than complacency — awake, discerning, and ready, rather than assuming there is unlimited time to get it right. The point of watching the clock isn’t to predict a date. It’s to take seriously that how we live, what we believe, and how we treat one another is not a matter of indifference.
A Sobering Warning: When Scripture Is Twisted Into Violence
Words matter, and Scripture — rightly called living and active — can be dangerously misused by someone determined to bend it toward their own ends. In 2025, a man named Adam Sheafe murdered a 76-year-old Arizona pastor, William Schonemann, and confessed to planning to kill more religious leaders across the country. By his own account and reporting at the time, Sheafe said he rejected the New Testament and the person of Christ, anchoring his violence instead in a distorted reading of the Old Testament law he claimed to follow alone.
This is not a caution against studying the Old Testament — its wisdom remains valuable, and countless believers read it faithfully without ever turning toward harm. It is a caution against what happens when anyone, using any part of Scripture, discards the New Covenant’s call to love and replaces it with self-justified violence. Scripture describes exactly this kind of reversal in the person of Saul, a zealous persecutor of the early church who believed he was serving God’s law — until his encounter with Christ transformed him into Paul, an apostle of grace. The tragedy of a case like this is a reversal in the other direction: someone moving away from Christ and toward violence, convinced it was righteous.
God’s Word is powerful. In the hands of someone unmoored from love, it can be twisted into something it was never meant to be. That is exactly why the distinction this post is making is not academic — it is a matter of life and death, discernment and delusion, love and its counterfeit.
Closing
God’s perfect code is not complicated: love God, love your neighbor, and let that love be the proof of what you believe. Everything else is commentary.