Is the God of the Old Testament Different from the God of the New Testament? (And Why Did He Want So Many People Dead?)

At some point, nearly every Christian runs into this question:

Why does the God of the Old Testament seem so different from Jesus in the New Testament?

One moment, we’re reading about fire and brimstone, cities being wiped out, and God commanding judgment on entire nations. The next, we’re in the New Testament where Jesus is healing the sick, forgiving sinners, and telling us to love our enemies and turn the other cheek.

It almost feels like a personality shift, like God had an Old Testament “angry phase” and then mellowed out by the time Jesus showed up.

For a lot of people, this isn’t just a theological debate—it’s a dealbreaker.

Some have walked away from their faith entirely because they don’t know how to reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God they hear about on Sunday mornings. And, if we’re being honest, some Old Testament passages are difficult to read. There are stories that don’t sit well with us, commands that feel foreign, and judgment that feels… very, very harsh. Personally, I read some passages and think, “How can that even be right?” Yet, there is so much that I have failed to consider and understand as I read the Old Testament that it is ignorant of me to pass judgment before truly understanding context. 

Let me go even one step further: what if I told you that the God of the Old Testament isn’t different from the God of the New Testament at all? That the same love, mercy, and justice we see in Jesus was there all along? That if we actually take the time to understand what’s happening, we’ll see that God has never changed—our understanding of Him has just deepened?

So, let’s talk about it.

Because if you’ve ever wrestled with this question, welcome to thoughtful Christianity. And I believe the answers that you will find are far more beautiful than you might expect.

Understanding the Context: The Ancient Near East Was Not 21st-Century America

One of the biggest mistakes we make when reading the Old Testament is assuming that ancient cultures thought like us. We have a very specific worldview that is based upon our Western culture.

Right now, that worldview is shaped by a hyper-modern, individualistic society that places a high value on human rights, personal autonomy, and justice as fairness. In our world, every life is assumed to have intrinsic worth (even if we don’t always live that out consistently), and justice is often framed in terms of rehabilitation, fairness, and equity. The idea that a nation or people group could be judged as a whole feels foreign—even offensive—to us.

But in the Ancient Near East, human life had very little inherent value. Outside of Israel, most cultures saw people—especially women, children, the poor, and enslaved individuals—as disposable. War was constant, and justice was not about fairness but survival. Kings and rulers could kill on a whim, and entire cities were often wiped out simply as a show of power.

One of the most horrific realities of that time was the widespread practice of human and child sacrifice to pagan gods. Many of the cultures surrounding Israel, particularly the Canaanites, engaged in ritual child sacrifice, burning infants alive as offerings to gods like Molech (Leviticus 18:21, Jeremiah 19:5). This wasn’t an occasional atrocity—it was a regular part of their religious practice. And it wasn’t just tolerated—it was expected.

This is why the Old Testament can feel so jarring. We read it with modern Western assumptions about justice and human dignity, but in its time, the laws and commands given by God were radically different from the gods and people in the surrounding cultures of that day.

This same God of Israel that ordered judgment on wicked nations is the same God who, unlike any other deity of the time, declared that human life was valuable—even in the womb (Psalm 139:13-16, Jeremiah 1:5). While the surrounding nations sacrificed their children to lifeless idols, the God of Israel forbade such evil and called it an abomination.

If we want to understand what’s happening in these stories, we have to step outside of our own cultural framework and see the world as it was—not as we assume it should have been or as ours is now. 

This was a time when:

• War was constant. Every nation was fighting for survival. If you lost, you weren’t just defeated—you were taken off somewhere to work as a slave or wiped out.
• Justice was harsh. Legal systems were brutal, and power determined survival.
• Religious practices were horrifying. The Canaanites, for example, practiced child sacrifice, ritual prostitution, and extreme oppression.

So, when we see God bringing judgments in the Old Testament, it’s not random rage. It’s not unjustified violence. It’s dealing with civilizations that had been committing horrific evils for generations.

Let’s continue with the Canaanites as an example. For 400 years (Genesis 15:16), God gave them time to turn from their horrifying practices. They didn’t. Then, when judgment came, it wasn’t as a first response but as a last resort. God wasn’t commanding senseless genocide—He was bringing justice to evil that had gone unchecked for centuries. 

The “Genocide” Question: What Was Actually Happening?

Let’s tackle the elephant in the room.

Some of the most difficult Old Testament passages involve God’s command to wipe out certain groups. It sounds harsh—until we actually look at what’s happening. First, this wasn’t racial extermination. God wasn’t targeting people based on ethnicity—He was bringing judgment on deeply corrupt cultures that had spent generations steeped in oppression, violence, and idolatry. Many of these passages also use Ancient Near Eastern war rhetoric. In that time, war accounts often used exaggerated language, like “destroy everything,” even when the goal was just military defeat. The Bible itself shows that many of the “wiped out” people were still around afterward (Joshua 10:20, 15:63), proving that this was about stopping an evil system, not erasing an entire people group.

But even with that context, many still ask, How is any of this fair?

The Hardest Question: How Is It Fair That Justice Falls on Everyone?

This is where people struggle the most. Even if the culture was wicked, what about the everyday people? What about the children? How is it fair that justice fell on entire nations? It’s a gut-wrenching question. One that modern Christians have been wrestling with for quite some time now.

Here’s the thing—our modern idea of fairness assumes that justice means every person is judged individually. But that’s not how justice works in any civilization, ancient or modern. When a nation declares war, civilians suffer. When corruption runs deep in a system, it affects innocent people. When a culture embraces evil, the consequences don’t just land on the guilty—they land on everyone.

And we actually understand this concept when we look at history. Not every German citizen in World War II was a war criminal, but the entire nation bore the consequences of what its leadership and military did. Bombings, starvation, the destruction of their economy—Germany as a whole faced judgment for what it had allowed. The same thing happened with the fall of Rome. It wasn’t just corrupt politicians who suffered when the empire collapsed—ordinary Roman citizens lost everything as the consequences of a declining, broken system played out. This doesn’t mean every individual was equally guilty. But it does mean that when sin infects an entire society, justice often falls on the entire society.

But what about the children? I thought God loved children more than anything, right? This is the hardest part. It’s also where we have to trust that God is more just, more merciful, and more compassionate than we are.

Throughout the Old Testament, we see God intervening to rescue children from corrupt cultures. Moses was spared from Pharaoh’s mass slaughter of Hebrew babies and later led God’s people to freedom. The Israelites were commanded to protect the vulnerable—widows, orphans, and foreigners—because God saw their suffering (Deuteronomy 10:18). God sent prophets over and over to call for repentance, offering a way out before judgment came.

And here’s something important: Judgment on a nation doesn’t mean individual souls are lost. Many scholars believe that children who died in these judgments went immediately into God’s mercy. Rather than being raised in a violent, corrupt culture, they were brought into eternity, spared from a life of suffering. That’s not an easy answer. It doesn’t erase the difficulty of these passages. But it does remind us that God’s justice is never cold. It is never detached from His mercy.

We also have to remember that God gave these nations a chance to repent—and some did. Rahab was a Canaanite—yet she was spared because she turned to God (Joshua 2). The people of Nineveh were enemies of Israel—yet when they repented, God withheld His judgment (Jonah 3). The Gibeonites were part of the nations marked for judgment, yet when they surrendered, they were allowed to live (Joshua 9).

God’s judgment was never rash or immediate. He gave warnings. He gave time. He offered mercy. Even in the Old Testament, judgment was never the first move. Mercy was always an option.

Jesus Didn’t “Change” God—He Revealed Him

Some people think Jesus showed up to fix the Old Testament God’s reputation. Like He walked onto the scene, sighed, and said, “Alright, let’s rebrand.”

But that’s not what happened at all.

Jesus Himself said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9)

He didn’t come to change God. He came to show us what God has always been like.

From the very beginning, Jesus was there. He wasn’t a new addition to God’s plan—He was the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament pointed toward. He was:

• The protector of Israel in the Old Testament. When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, it was Christ—the second person of the Trinity—who went before them as their Rock and Redeemer (1 Corinthians 10:4).
• The suffering Savior in the New Testament. When He took on flesh, He became the ultimate Passover Lamb, taking the judgment that humanity deserved.
• The victorious King in Revelation. When He returns, it won’t be as the suffering servant—it will be as the conquering King, bringing justice to the world once and for all.

We often separate these aspects of Jesus, imagining that He was all wrath and justice in the Old Testament, all love and gentleness in the New, and all warrior king in Revelation. But Jesus is all of these things at the same time.

One of the biggest misconceptions about Jesus is that He was only about peace, love, and kindness. And make no mistake—He is the embodiment of love. He is the Prince of Peace. He came to save, not to condemn (John 3:17).

But that’s not all He is. Jesus’ love was never divorced from His justice. His mercy never canceled out His holiness. His patience never meant that judgment would never come.

Take the money changers in the temple—a moment that rarely makes it into children’s Bible storybooks.

Jesus didn’t see the corruption in the temple and simply shake His head in disappointment. He didn’t say, “Well, I’ll just preach a sermon about greed and hope they get the message.”

He saw what was happening, left, made a whip WITH HIS OWN HANDS, then came back and drove them out. (John 2:13-16)

Violence wasn’t His first choice—but it was never off the table, either.

This wasn’t a moment of uncontrolled rage. It was calculated. It was intentional. It was righteous judgment. The temple was meant to be a house of prayer, and it had been turned into a corrupt marketplace. Jesus responded with force because justice demanded it.

And yet, in the very next chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks with gentleness to Nicodemus, telling him about the love of God and the gift of salvation.

We tend to separate this Godly justice and mercy as if they are opposites. We imagine Jesus as either a warrior king or a gentle shepherd. But the truth is, He is both.

• He is merciful to the repentant and just to the unrepentant.
• He is gentle with the humble and firm with the hypocrites.
• He is the Lamb who was slain and the Lion who will reign.

And here’s where this really matters: If we reject the God of the Old Testament, we’re rejecting a part of Jesus. If we only see Jesus as kind and not also as King, then we’re missing the fullness of who He is.

He didn’t come to erase justice—He took it upon Himself. He didn’t remove judgment—He bore it on the cross. He didn’t change God—He showed us that God is, and has always been, full of both mercy and truth.

So if you struggle with the God of the Old Testament, don’t pull away—look closer. Because the same Jesus who died for you is the same God who led Israel, fought for the oppressed, called sinners to repentance, and promised to return in justice and victory.

As the writer said, “He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8)

If God Is Just, Then Justice Must Exist

Why do we struggle with the thought of the very specific and determined justice of God? We don’t struggle with the idea of justice when it’s about Hitler, traffickers, or serial killers.

We struggle when we realize that we deserve judgment too.

The real shock of Scripture isn’t that God brought justice in the Old Testament. The real shock is that, through Jesus, God chose mercy when we deserved justice. Look at it this way:

• Every act of judgment in the Old Testament pointed forward to the cross.
• Jesus took the judgment we deserved.
• The same God who poured out justice also poured out grace—at His own expense.

That’s not a contradiction.

That’s the greatest love story ever told.

Look, I get it. Some of these Old Testament passages feel like they belong in an action movie, not a Bible study. And I’m sure if you’ve ever read the Old Testament, you’ve read something and thought, Wait… God did what? I certainly have. 

But here’s the thing—God isn’t afraid of your questions. He’s not wringing His hands, worried that you’ll uncover something He didn’t mean to include. If anything, He invites us to dig deeper, to wrestle, to ask, and to keep showing up.

Because when you do, you start to see things you missed before.

You see a God who never acted in haste. A God who always gave a way out before bringing judgment. A God who never changed His character, but whose mercy became clearer and clearer until, finally, Jesus showed up in the flesh to say, “This is who I’ve been all along.”

So if you’re struggling with these questions, don’t let them push you away—let them pull you in closer. Open your Bible. Read the context. Ask the hard things. Research and study the context.  And trust that on the other side of your wrestling, you’re not going to find a different God.

You’re going to find the same faithful, just, merciful, and loving Father who’s been there since the very first page.

And if you ever feel like throwing your Bible across the room in frustration—well, take a breath, grab some coffee, and come back when you’re ready. God will still be here, waiting, with the same steady love He’s always had.

And that? That’s worth sticking around for.

☕ A little faith, a little courage, and a whole lot of stubborn joy. – Tonya

What’s an Old Testament passage that’s always confused you? Drop a comment—I’d love to walk through it with you!

© 2025 Written by Tonya E. Lee