Sophie Lindquist

Dr. A
BITH 211
8 December 2020
Personal Reflection

I had many takeaways from this class, but I was greatly intrigued by the major covenants

that God gave to Abraham and Moses. Before taking this class, I was aware of the fact that the

Abrahamic and Sinaic Covenants were crucial elements in God’s unfolding plan for redemption

and that they were fulfilled by the life of Jesus, but I was unaware of many aspects of their

nature. For example, I had never thought that the covenants were conditional and unconditional.

God had consequences for His people when they disobeyed the laws that He laid out for them,

but it was unconditional in the way that God does not give up on them. This truth changes

everything because Jesus was the ultimate proof that God would not forget His promises or give

up on people. He proved this by going to the cross.

I have been told stories from the Old Testament ever since I can remember. However,

during my personal devotional time growing up, I would rarely make time to read the Old

Testament, and would tend to gravitate towards the New Testament that spoke explicitly about

Jesus and in my opinion, was less complicated. However, as I have grown in my faith and

through what I have learned by taking this class, reading the Old Testament is now fascinating

and causes me to reflect on the nature of God more than ever before. In the very beginning of

class, we talked about the foundational dispositions and beliefs. I especially loved the reminder

that we should approach scripture with childlike behaviour and with the request that God would

purify our hearts and speak to us. It is so easy to start to approach scripture as a task instead of as

a means of spending time and being in relationship with the Lord of the universe. In addition,

reading the Old Testament makes me realize that God’s plan of salvation did not have to include
me. I did not have to be a part of His chosen people, but because He is faithful and gracious and

uses broken people to accomplish His plan of redemption as we see throughout all of the Old

Testament, I was adopted into the Kingdom of God.

Ideally, I want to be a Bible teacher and a soccer coach at a high school. This has made

my decision for a major difficult, but I am studying Communications and BITH as of now, and

the Old Testament shapes both of these academic focuses greatly. For communications, I am able

to see many different communication styles and concepts being played out throughout the stories

of scripture. Not only that, but I have noticed that the way people communicated back then is

still consistent to now. People sin against God and each other every day, and this proves that the

sinful nature of mankind has not changed. It is fairly obvious that the Old Testament matters for

the BITH major. If I want to teach the Bible some day, I need to know the Bible. Not only that, I

need to know how to defend it and be able to communicate the important role that the Old

Testament plays within the story of the Gospel.