For The Church

Our last post noted that the New Testament authors recognize that the Old Testament is Christian Scripture and that the Old Testament authors themselves knew full understanding of their words would come only in the messianic era. This post shows that the Old Testament itself affirms these views.

The seers, sages, and songwriters who gave us the Old Testament testify that they were speaking and writing not merely for old-covenant saints but also for new-covenant believers—those who would enjoy a relationship with God in the days of the Messiah and the new creation after Israel’s exile. This post demonstrates this through four examples: Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel. At the conclusion, we’ll consider some implications of this fact for Christians approaching the Old Testament today.

Moses Anticipates an Age When Those Yahweh Restores Will Heed Moses’s Law

Moses’s three most frequently used words to characterize Israel were “stubborn” (Deut 9:6, 13; 10:16; 31:27), “unbelieving” (1:32; 9:23), and “rebellious” (9:7, 24; 31:27). His immediate audience was wicked (9:4–6, 27), and he affirmed that “even today while I am yet alive with you, you have been rebellious against the LORD. How much more after my death!” (31:27). Thus, Yahweh promised that the people’s defiance would result in his pouring out his curses upon them (31:16–17).

Deuteronomy 29 tells the ultimate reason why Moses’s immediate audience would not heed his words: Israel was spiritually ignorant of God’s ways, blind to his glories, and deaf to his word (vv. 2, 4). They had been rebellious from the day Moses first met them (9:24), and their stubbornness was still present and would continue into the future (9:6; 31:27, 29). In Moses’s day, Yahweh had not overcome the resistance of the majority’s hearts, and in alignment with his sovereign purposes for salvation history, he created the old covenant to bear a “ministry of death” and “condemnation” so that through Christ a superior new covenant might bear a “ministry of righteousness” (2 Cor 3:7, 9).

Yahweh determined that he would not overcome Israel’s crookedness and twistedness (Deut 32:5; Acts 2:40; Phil 2:15) until the prophet like Moses would rise (Deut 18:15; 30:8; cf. Matt 17:5). In the age of restoration, Yahweh would change the remnant’s hearts and enable their love (Deut 30:6). In this end-times period, the age we now identify with the new covenant and the church (cf. Rom 2:29; 2 Cor 3:6), Moses’s message would finally be heeded (Deut 30:8). Moses believed that his instruction would serve those in the age of heart circumcision far more than the rebels of his day.

Isaiah Anticipates a Day When Those Once Spiritually Deaf Will Hear His Words

Israel’s threefold spiritual disability (heart, eyes, ears) continued in the days of Isaiah, whom Yahweh called to “make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes” (Isa 6:10). This would be the prophet’s judgment cry until his land was laid waste, his people were destroyed, and all that remained was a “stump” or “holy seed” (6:11–13). Yahweh purposed that Israel’s history would be characterized by “deep sleep” and the inability to “read” the Word. It was as if the Scriptures were sealed for the bulk of Isaiah’s contemporaries (Isa 29:9–11).

Nevertheless, God promised that one day there would be a broad acceptance of the prophet’s message (52:6; 54:13). Yahweh’s law would go forth in “the latter days,” and its recipients would include many from the “nations/peoples” (2:3; 51:4–5). That is, God would one day disclose himself to many who never sought him (Isa 65:1; Rom 10:20), and kings from many nations would see “that which had not been told them” (Isa 52:15; Rom 15:21). Isaiah associates the proclamation of this end-times instruction with the royal Servant (Isa 42:1, 4).

Jesus indicated that through his own teaching God was fulfilling these promises by drawing a multiethnic people to himself (John 6:44–45; cf. Isa 52:13). Christ’s sheep would include some not from the Jewish fold (John 10:16; 11:51–52), yet all his sheep would “believe,” “hear,” and follow (10:27). To these awakened and responsive believers, the Lord would supply “the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything [would be] in parables, so that ‘they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven’” (Mark 4:11–12; citing Isa 6:9–10). Isaiah himself saw that his writings would benefit a future generation more than they would the spiritually disabled of his day.

Jeremiah Anticipates Days When His Book Will Guide Those Who Know Yahweh

As with Isaiah, Yahweh told Jeremiah that his writing was intended for a post-exilic, restored community of God (Jer 30:2–3). While some of Jeremiah’s contemporaries would repent (36:2–3), most would not, for they retained the same stubbornness that characterized previous generations (7:23–28). Moreover, Jeremiah noted that only in the latter days would full understanding of his writings come. “The fierce anger of the LORD will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intentions of his mind. In the latter days you will understand this” (30:24–31:1). The “you” in this passage is plural, referring to the members of the new-covenant community.

Jeremiah’s “latter days” of “understanding” are connected to (a) Israel/Judah’s restoration from exile and reconciliation with God (30:10–11, 17–22; 31:1–40), (b) God’s punishment of enemy nations (30:11, 16), (c) the rise of a ruler from the people’s midst (30:21), and (d) the incorporation of foreigners into the one people of God (30:8–9). Christ and his church are now fulfilling Jeremiah’s new-covenant hopes (Luke 22:20; 2 Cor 3:6; Heb 8:13; 9:15), which include every covenant member enjoying new knowledge and forgiveness of sins (31:34; cf. Heb 10:12–18; 1 John 2:20–21). This new knowledge aligns with the earlier promise of “understanding” (Jer 30:24) and recalls Isaiah’s promise that, following the work of the Servant, “all your children shall be taught by the LORD” (Isa 54:13). God has “taught” all who have come to Christ, so that every Christian “knows” God in a personal way (John 6:45; cf. Matt 11:27).

Daniel Anticipates the Time of the End When the Wise Will Understand His Prophecies

The book of Daniel is filled with symbolic dreams, visions, and declarations—“mysteries” (Dan 2:18–19, 27–30, 47; 4:9) that God partially reveals to Daniel, so that “he understood the word and had understanding of the vision” (10:1; cf. 10:11–14). Indeed, Daniel grasped something of both the person and time of the Messiah’s ministry (9:24–25; cf. 1 Pet 1:10–11). Nevertheless, there are elaborations on these latter-day prophecies such that Daniel asserts, “I heard, but I did not understand” (Dan 12:8) and that the Lord tells his prophet to “shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end” (12:4). The “end” is God’s appointed period in salvation history when he would fully disclose his purposes to the wise.

Daniel envisioned that only at “the time of the end” would some people grasp the full meaning of his revelations. That is, the hiddenness of the Old Testament’s meaning would be temporary for the remnant but permanent for the rebels. From a New Testament perspective, the first coming of Christ has inaugurated the promised days of realization, when the wise can both hear and understand God’s words in this book. We see this in Matthew’s Gospel, where, after speaking of “the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel” (Matt 24:15; cf. 11:31; 12:11), an intrusive parenthetical comment appears: “Let the reader understand” (24:15). Matthew believes his readers can grasp the mysteries of Daniel.

Conclusion

The texts above from Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel all suggest that Yahweh’s prophets knew “that they were serving not themselves” but us (1 Pet 1:12), believers upon whom the end of the ages has come (1 Cor 10:11). The various passages indicate that God withheld the full meaning of his messages in at least two ways.

First, the prophets were convinced that the unbelieving majority could not (due to God’s punishment) and would not (due to their sinfulness) heed any of their words. Nevertheless, they also envisioned a day when Yahweh would overcome spiritual disability, thus enabling a life-changing encounter with him. At the rise of the child-king (Isa 9:6–7), “the people who walked in darkness” would see “a great light” (9:2; cf. Matt 4:15–16). “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see” (Isa 29:18).

Second, Yahweh’s prophets themselves did not always fully grasp the meaning of their predictions and declarations. Accordingly, Daniel could “understand” some visions (Dan 10:1) while not “understanding” others (12:8). The faithful remnant would only fully comprehend God’s intended meaning in “the latter days” (Jer 30:24), “the time of the end” (Dan 12:4, 9–10). Thus, Jesus could say, “Many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it” (Luke 10:24). A supernatural healing and revelation would be required to create fresh responsiveness to the Lord, thus awakening the heart to God’s intended meaning of the Scriptures.

This blog series summarizes Jason S. DeRouchie’s forthcoming book, Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and for Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024). You can pre-order your copy here.

According to the New Testament authors, the Old Testament authors knew that they were speaking and writing for new-covenant believers, and they also had some level of conscious awareness about who the Christ would be and when he would rise. With Christ’s coming, anticipation gives rise to fulfillment, and types find their antitype, which means that new-covenant members can comprehend the fullness of the Old Testament’s meaning better than the old-covenant rebel and remnant.

The Old Testament’s Audience

Romans 4:23–24, 15:4, and 1 Corinthians 10:11 stress that the Old Testament author wrote his text for the benefit of believers living this side of the cross. For Paul, the Old Testament is Christian Scripture and fully applicable to believers when read through Christ.

The apostle said this much to Timothy as well. Speaking about the Jewish Scriptures, he wrote that the “sacred writings … are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:15). Thus, Paul asserts, “All Scripture is … profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (3:16–17).

Based on this fact, New Testament authors frequently cite Old Testament instructions, assuming their relevance for believers today. For example, Paul reaches into the Ten Commandments when addressing children (Eph 6:2–3; Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16) and draws on execution texts from Deuteronomy when speaking about excommunication (1 Cor 5:13; Deut 22:21, 22, 24). Peter also recalls the refrain from Leviticus when he writes, “Be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy’” (1 Pet 1:15–16; Lev 11:44–45; 19:2; 20:26). Because we are now part of the new covenant and not the old, there are natural questions that rise regarding how exactly the Christian should relate to specific old-covenant laws or promises (see future posts on this topic!). Nevertheless, the point stands that God gave the Old Testament for Christian instruction.

Paul was not explicit as to whether it was only God’s intent, as the ultimate author, to write the Old Testament for our instruction, or whether this was also the human authors’ intent. Peter, however, made this clear when he wrote that “it was revealed to [the Old Testament prophets] that they were serving not themselves but you” (1 Pet 1:12). He emphasized that the human authors themselves knew that their Old Testament words were principally not for themselves but for those living after the arrival of the Christ. Therefore, the Old Testament is actually more relevant for Christians today than it was for the majority in the old-covenant era.

The Old Testament Prophets’ Understanding of Christ’s Person and Time

In John 8:56, Jesus declared that Abraham eagerly expected the coming of the Messiah. Similarly, Peter believed that David himself anticipated Christ’s coming in Psalm 16 (Acts 2:30–31), and David’s last words affirm that he was hoping in a just ruler who would overcome the curse and initiate a new creation (2 Sam 23:3–7). Likewise, the writer of Hebrews stressed, “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar” (Heb 11:13). The Old Testament remnant enjoyed some light; they themselves wrote of the Christ and hoped in him.

On the other hand, Jesus also declared that “many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it” (Luke 10:24). It seems that we should understand Yahweh’s prophets of old as truly seeing God’s beauty and purposes and the hope that awaited them, while also affirming that they did not experience and, therefore, comprehend all that we do in Christ. For them, full disclosure awaited a later day.

First Peter 1:10–12 captures both sides of this interpretive framework. According to Peter, the prophets were themselves studiers of earlier revelation. And under the Spirit’s guidance (2 Pet 1:21), they “searched and inquired carefully” to know who the Messiah would be and when he would appear. While they may not have known Jesus’s name, they had a general sense of the type of person he would be and of when he would come, and they often learned this from studying the Scriptures (e.g., Ps 119:2; Dan 9:2). Revelation did indeed progress from the Old to New Testaments, but the development was often from conscious prediction to realized fulfillment, not simply prediction of which only God was originally aware but which we now recognize retrospectively.

As in the case of Daniel (Dan 12:8–10), the full meaning of some Old Testament texts transcends the human authors’ understanding. Nevertheless, the New Testament testifies that these authors usually understood their end-time visions, truly hoped in the Messiah, and knew something of when he would come. Furthermore, interpreters should expect that the biblical authors’ use of antecedent Scripture organically grows out of the earlier materials, never contradicting them, because all Scripture comes from God (2 Tim 3:16) and the prophets “searched and inquired carefully” (1 Pet 1:10) and made Spirit-led interpretations (2 Pet 1:20–21).

The Rebels’ Inability to Understand the Old Testament

The New Testament is clear that the blindness associated with the old-covenant unbelieving majority continued into Christ’s day. We see this incapacity, for example, in the religious leaders whom Jesus confronted numerous times (e.g., Matt 12:3–7; Luke 16:31; John 5:39–40). The Jewish leaders were spiritually blind, unable to see how the Old Testament itself pointed to Christ.

The Gospels indicate the roots of such blindness. In brief, they speak of an innate wickedness that stands hostile to God, of hard hearts, of desires that are aligned with the devil, and of a passion for man’s praise over God’s glory (Matt 16:3–4; 23:6; Mark 3:5; Luke 11:43; 20:46; John 8:42–44). The result was that they could not hear God’s voice or savor God’s beauty and purposes in the Scriptures. And where the leaders went, the rest of the nation went also (John 12:37–41).

Likewise, other New Testament passages teach that the old-covenant age was one of ignorance and hardness (Acts 17:30; Eph 4:18; 1 Pet 1:14), with the devil keeping most of the world blind to God’s glories culminating in Christ (2 Cor 4:3–4). But in Jesus, new creation dawns, with gospel light breaking over the horizon and dispersing darkness and shadow (4:6).

Why would God extend such a season of hardness, ignorance, and blindness? If Romans 9:22–24 is any indication, Paul believes God purposed to move those receiving his mercy to marvel more at his manifold glory in Christ. The Lord made the darkness so deep and the night so long, that we upon whom the light has dawned may be able to savor even more the warmth, brilliance, and merciful glory of God bound up in his gift of Christ.

Some of the Remnant’s Delayed Understanding of the Old Testament

The New Testament is clear that some, such as Simeon, were anticipating Christ’s coming and rightly grasped his person and work, including his mission of suffering (Luke 2:25–35). Nevertheless, many of the disciples closest to Jesus failed to recognize fully who he was and all that their Scriptures anticipated about him (see, e.g., Mark 4:13; 8:31–33).

Luke especially emphasized the disciples’ lack of knowledge of the Old Testament. After his resurrection, Jesus challenged the two on the road to Emmaus for failing to “believe all that the prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25). Nevertheless, he made them wise to the Old Testament’s meaning (v. 27), thus fulfilling what Isaiah and Daniel said would come to pass (Isa 29:18; Dan 12:10). Likewise, Christ later appeared to his remaining followers and “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:45). The resurrected Christ now allows his followers to see things in the Bible that were there all along but ungraspable without the correct light and lens (see Rom 16:25–26; 2 Cor 3:14). In Christ, God “enlightens” the eyes of our hearts (Eph 1:18).

John’s Gospel in particular highlights how Christ’s resurrection and glorification mark a turning point in the disciples’ understanding of Scripture. In John 2:20–22, for example, Jesus’s resurrection moved the disciples to embrace in a fresh way both “the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” And as John 12:13–16 makes clear, only when the Father glorified his Son did Christ’s followers connect how the Old Testament Scriptures testified to Christ’s triumphal entry.

Conclusion

The New Testament authors affirm that the Old Testament was written for Christians and that the prophets knew they were writing for our benefit. The prophets also knew something about Christ and the time of his coming, but the full meaning of their texts at times transcended their understanding.

Fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah (Isa 6:10; 53:1), the innate wickedness and hard-heartedness of most of the Jewish populace rendered them spiritually disabled. In judgment, God hardened them, so that they were unable to understand his Word or see his purposes culminating in Jesus (Rom 11:7–8). Only “through Christ” is their blindness removed (2 Cor 3:14).

As early as Jesus’s birth, some like Simeon properly understood that the Christ’s triumph would only come through tribulation. However, full understanding of Scripture’s testimony about Jesus’s death, resurrection, and global mission came to most of his disciples only after his resurrection.

This blog series summarizes Jason S. DeRouchie’s forthcoming book, Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and for Christ (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024). You can pre-order your copy here.