We need to be careful how we describe the Old Covenant. Today, it is becoming increasingly popular to portray the Old Covenant in a negative light. Both the Old and New Covenants were administrated by the same God, the God of Mercy.

I want to say something upfront to avoid a Scriptural deep dive that would require more than the few paragraphs I am about to write. The Old Covenant was a covenant of mercy. Everything God does is motivated by the merciful goal of redemption.

It was human disobedience that brought about the implementation of the law. Having people live under the weight of the law was not God’s original intent. The Lord wanted us to live by faith. The law and all its dictates were put in place to frustrate us with our self-effort thinking we know better than the merciful God of Heaven. Paul wrote, “For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law” (Galatians 2:16)

The law was used to lead us somewhere. “So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24). The word “guardian” has been translated as escort, tutor, schoolmaster, guide, and instructor. 

Living under that law was like having a tutor who taught us the futility of trying to keep all the commandments by human strength and willpower alone. Only Jesus, the perfect One, could accomplish such a feat. The law was used to lead us to a place where we were willing to give up the futile effort of salvation by works to embrace salvation of faith, a faith that accepts the once-and-for-all-time sacrifice of Jesus.

The merciful Old Covenant is obsolete because of Jesus. “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete, and aging will soon disappear” (Hebrews 8:13). Obsolete does not mean it lacked mercy. It just means, its time has come to an end. It became obsolete because a new and more perfect way appeared.   “For what the law couldn’t do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:30).

We serve the God of infinite mercy in all its expressions. To speak of anything He implemented as lacking mercy is short-sighted and ignorant of that reality.