“OT offered insight into our sinful reality. Jesus is the example of our desired morality.”

Quote Source – Jarrod Scott

Something clicks when you read those two sentences back to back. The Old Testament doesn’t flatter us. Genesis gives us murder in the first family. Judges gives us a nation where “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25), and it never ends well. The law given at Sinai was never a ladder toward God — it was a mirror. Paul says it plainly: “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). Read the Old Testament honestly and you come away sobered, not proud of yourself.

Then Jesus walks onto the page, and something shifts. He doesn’t just teach a better morality — He lives one, perfectly, under real pressure, with real people watching. Peter, who followed Him for three years, put it plainly: Christ “suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). So yes, Jesus is our example. That’s true, and worth saying loudly in a culture that treats character as optional.

The Law Was a Diagnosis, Not a Cure

Here’s the part easy to miss. The Old Testament wasn’t handed down so Israel could grade itself into righteousness. It exposed a condition nobody could fix from the inside. Paul makes this explicit in Galatians, calling the law a guardian meant “to lead us to Christ” (Galatians 3:24) — not a finish line, a signpost. Every failed king, every broken covenant, every sacrifice offered again next year because the last one didn’t finally settle anything — all of it points past itself. The Old Testament tells the truth about us. It just can’t fix what it names.

Jesus Is More Than a Model

This is where the quote needs a little care. If Jesus is only our example — a better teacher with cleaner hands — then Christianity collapses into self-improvement with a cross on the wall. Try harder, follow His steps, and hope it’s enough. But that’s not the good news the New Testament actually proclaims. Jesus didn’t come merely to show us morality; He came to fulfill the law and bear what it condemned. He said so Himself:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. [Matthew 5:17]

Fulfillment is bigger than imitation. On the cross, Christ absorbed the verdict the law rightly pronounced over sinners — that’s substitution, not demonstration. Then He rose, and sent His Spirit to live in those who trust Him, so the “desired morality” isn’t just admired from a distance anymore. It’s worked in us. That’s the difference between a hero and a Savior.

So hold both halves of the quote, but hold them rightly. The Old Testament still diagnoses us honestly — go read it and let it. Jesus still models the life we were made for — follow His steps. But don’t stop at admiration. He didn’t come just to show you the way; He came to be the way, dying for the sin the law exposed and rising to give you the righteousness you could never reach on your own.