The Scriptures that point to Christ

The Bible opened on the Emmaus road

On the day Jesus rose, two disciples walked to Emmaus, their hope buried at the cross. Jesus came alongside, rebuked them, and opened the Scriptures.

Then Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and then to enter His glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was written in all the Scriptures about Himself.

Luke 24:25-27

Observe first. ‘All’ comes three times: all that the prophets have spoken, all the Prophets, all the Scriptures; the Greek has the same word three times. And what those Scriptures say is that the Christ must suffer and then enter his glory.

That evening he said it again: "Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms" (Luke 24:44), the three parts of the Hebrew Scriptures. What is written is that the Christ will suffer and rise on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed in his name to all nations (Luke 24:46-47). Between the two comes this: "Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24:45). Bede, a monk in England in the eighth century, writes that "He next opened their understanding that they should understand what was read" Bede. It is what Philip asked about in the chariot.

So reading Christ in the Old Testament is not hunting for a code in every verse. It is seeing the whole story gather to Christ's suffering and glory and to the gospel that goes to every nation. Augustine, bishop of Hippo, writing on Exodus around 419, said that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old is made plain in the New Augustine, Questions on the Heptateuch 2.73.

Promises and shadows

The Old Testament points to Christ in more than one way. One is promise and fulfilment: the woman's offspring who will crush the serpent's head (Genesis 3:15); Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12:3); David's throne established forever (2 Samuel 7:16); the servant "pierced for our transgressions" (Isaiah 53:5). These promises drive the story on to Christ. The first lesson of the Bible Overview course traces that arc.

Another is types and shadows. Hebrews calls the place where the priests serve "a copy and shadow of what is in heaven" (Hebrews 8:5), and says of the whole law:

For the law is only a shadow of the good things to come, not the realities themselves. It can never, by the same sacrifices offered year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship.

Hebrews 10:1

Paul says the same of the feasts and Sabbaths: "These are a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ" (Colossians 2:17). A shadow is there because a body is, and it shows the body's shape before it arrives. Wesley notes: "Which are but a lifeless shadow; but the body, the substance, is of Christ" Wesley, Colossians 2:17.

The Passover is a clear example. The night of Exodus 12 really happened. Israel killed a lamb without blemish and put its blood on the doorposts, and God promised, "when I see the blood, I will pass over you" (Exodus 12:13). The New Testament joins that lamb to Christ. The rule that none of its bones be broken was fulfilled at the cross, "Not one of His bones will be broken" (John 19:36), and Paul says, "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7). Though redemption was accomplished only after Christ's incarnation, the Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches says that

the virtue, efficacy, and benefits thereof were communicated unto the elect, in all ages successively from the beginning of the world, in and by those promises, types, and sacrifices, wherein he was revealed, and signified to be the seed of the woman which should bruise the serpent's head, and the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world

Westminster Confession, ch. 8.6

The first promise and the Passover lamb point to one person, and believers of old looked through them to the One who was coming.

Typology and allegory

When real persons, events and institutions in history show Christ in advance, we call it typology. Typology is rooted in history. The Passover was first a night of rescue that Israel was to keep as a memorial (Exodus 12:14), and points to Christ through that first meaning, not instead of it. And the fulfilment is greater than the shadow: the lamb whose blood guarded a house for one night foreshadowed "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).

Allegory of the kind to beware of is different: unanchored in the text, it gives its details a meaning the writer did not intend. How the Fathers gave the Good Samaritan's two denarii different meanings is told in the theology course's How the Fathers read Scripture. Once every tent peg and curtain thread must stand for something in Christ, the reader's imagination rules the text. The Westminster Confession, too, says the true sense of a scripture ‘is not manifold, but one’ ch. 1.9. Christ is the centre of the story, not a code hidden in every word.

Other traditions read Christ in the Old Testament too. The Catholic Church teaches a literal and a spiritual sense of Scripture, the spiritual being allegorical, moral and anagogical, all resting on the literal; its example of the allegorical sense is the crossing of the Red Sea as a sign of Christ's victory and of baptism Catechism of the Catholic Church 115–119. The Orthodox church of the East sings the Old Testament types in its hymns. Christians differ on how far typology reaches: some keep to the types the New Testament names, others follow its way of reading more widely.

The threads on the map under the Jesus tab help you follow the story. Gospel, Who is he?, Covenant, Temple, Exodus and Lamb run from the Old Testament into the New, and whichever you follow passes through the cross band in the middle. The last step of the Jesus guide also offers to follow the ‘Who is he?’ thread on the map.

Try it

Open Exodus 12 on the map. In the map under the Jesus tab, open Exodus and tap chapter 12: it has a ‘One-line summary’ and ‘Notes’, and below them ‘Threads through this chapter’ shows Gospel and Lamb. ‘Read Exodus 12’ opens the text.

Read it first as Israel heard it that night. Read verses 1 to 14 and verse 46, and note how the lamb is chosen, where the blood goes and how the day is to be remembered: ‘v. 13: he sees the blood and passes over’.

Then follow the Lamb thread. Tap Lamb and the thread lights up from Genesis 22 to Revelation 5. Tap verse 46 in the reader, find John 19 in Cross-refs, and note ‘v. 46: no bone broken, John 19:36’. Then write a one-line summary that holds both what that night meant and how it points to Christ.

Practice