Typical? When our old testament heroes prove flawed

The other day I wrote responding to an article arguing that Abraham didn’t really lie when he passed  Sarah off as just his sister.  The reality is that when we read through the lives of people in Scripture we discover lots of things that would leave us deeply uncomfortable, horrified even about their behaviour.  Our temptation is to excuse or minimise what they did. 

For example, we tend to struggle with the seriousness of David’s sin against Bathsheba.  Another example, I’ve seen is where commentators attempt to neatly divide Solomon’s life into the good half when he was following God’s wisdom and the bad half after he had been led astray into idolatry. Yet, the Biblical accounts show that there were warning signs about Solomon right from the start.

As well as our attempts to airbrush the history of Biblical characters, to remove the warts, we have a tendency too to sanitise stories. I picked up on this recently when reading through Esther.  The innocent story of a girl who wins a beauty contest told in Sunday school is very different to what is in reality an example of trafficking. 

So, I wanted to make a plea for warts and all, honest retelling of those Old Testament narratives.  Why?  Well, for three reasons. First, these characters offer us examples to look to. Those examples show us both how to live and how not to live as God’s people.  There are ways in which we should be like Abraham and ways in which we should not. 

Secondly, a big aim of those accounts is to point us back to God and his grace. We get to see how God loves Abraham and blesses him, despite, not because of his actions.  Abraham has to learn what it really means to trust God.  We are encouraged that God loves and forgives us, like Abraham we are justified by faith not by works.

Thirdly, these Old testament characters act as types pointing us to Christ. We see that Abraham and David are a bit like Christ in certain respects but also very much unlike him.  When Scripture shows up the flaws of ordinary human beings, it emphasises the perfect, sinless, flawlessness of Christ.  Jesus is the true and better Abraham, the true and better David, the true and better Solomon.

So, don’t shy away from or minimise those accounts that leave you disturbed and uncomfortable. Lean into them in order to see what God is saying to us through flawed, failing, sinful people.