03: Christ as Light and Lens for Reading the Old Testament Well

“God’s Mystery, which is Christ” (Col 2:2)

While the Old Testament prophets appear to have understood most of what they declared, God did not allow the majority of those in the old covenant to understand the prophets’ words (e.g., Isa 6:9–10). And as a judgment, the people’s blindness continued into the days of Christ (Matt 13:13–15)1. Nevertheless, fulfilling Old Testament predictions (e.g., Deut 30:8), Jesus’s teaching and work began disclosing to his disciples truths that remained distant from the crowds: “To you has been given the secret [Greek mystērion] of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables” (Mark 4:11–12).

The New Testament’s “mystery” language appears to come from the book of Daniel, where the Greek translation uses the term mystērion (“mystery”) to render the Aramaic rāz (2:18–19, 27–30, 47). King Nebuchadnezzar has a troubling dream and then looks to Daniel for the full interpretive revelation. The “mystery” that God revealed to Daniel (v. 19) included both the initial dream and its interpretation, as the God in heaven “who reveals mysteries … made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days” (v. 28). When Jesus alludes to this text by speaking about the “secret of the kingdom” (Mark 4:11–12), he indicates that the Old Testament’s message would remain permanently hidden for some but temporarily hidden for others.

Mystery in the New Testament

The New Testament employs the Greek word mystērion twenty-eight times, all as a technical term for an end-time reality largely hidden in the Old Testament but now disclosed more fully through Christ. All the New Testament occurrences deal with the end-times and are in some way linked to the Old Testament.

What was this “mystery”? In the Synoptic Gospels, the “mystery” relates to the unexpected, gradual, already-but-not-yet fulfillment of God’s end-time reign (e.g., Mark 4:11). In Paul’s epistles, which comprise twenty-one of the term’s New Testament occurrences, the revealed “mystery” or “mysteries” refer to insight into God’s end-times purposes (e.g., 1 Cor 4:1) most directly associated with more fully understanding Christ and the gospel (e.g., Rom 16:25). In Revelation, “mystery” relates to the nature of the church (Rev 1:20) and the self-destructive nature of Babylon (17:5, 7).

What Mystery Implies for Interpreting the Old Testament

Jesus, Paul, and John speak of God revealing a “mystery” to communicate how, in Christ, we gain full disclosure of things that God significantly hid from most in the old-covenant era. Strikingly, as Romans 16:25–27 teaches, the very “mystery” that is now revealed in and through Christ is also now made known to all nations through the Old Testament itself. In the coming of Christ, an era of understanding replaces an era of ignorance as light overcomes darkness and as God grants a fresh perspective on old truths (cf. Eph 3:4–5).

Still, G. K. Beale and Benjamin Gladd rightly affirm that “full or ‘complete’ meaning is actually ‘there’ in the Old Testament text; it is simply partially ‘hidden’ or latent, awaiting a later revelation, whereby the complete meaning of the text is revealed to the interpreter.”2 These parallel truths bear at least three implications for interpreting the Old Testament as the Christian Scripture it is: (a) Only those with spiritual sight can interpret the Old Testament correctly. (b) Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection provide a necessary lens for fully understanding the Old Testament’s meaning. (c) There is an organic relationship between the Old Testament’s testimony and the meaning the New Testament authors attribute to it.

A Relationship with Christ Is Necessary to Understand the Old Testament Rightly

Regarding many of his Jewish contemporaries, Paul declared, “For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away” (2 Cor 3:14). Those who understand “God’s mystery, which is Christ” (Col 2:2), are those to whom God has given “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). Indeed, Christ is “the radiance of the glory of God” (Heb 1:3), and by his Spirit, he enlightens the eyes to see what the Old Testament revealed all along (Eph 1:17–18).

To have the “mystery” of God’s kingdom purposes revealed means, in part, that one’s spiritual eyes have been opened to properly understand the Old Testament. Through rebirth, we become spiritual people who can spiritually discern and rightly understand spiritual truths (1 Cor 2:13–14). True Christians are the only ones who can rightly grasp all that God intends to communicate through the Old Testament.

Christ’s Person and Work Clarify More Fully the Old Testament’s Meaning

The Old Testament is filled with declarations, characters, events, and institutions that bear meaning in themselves but also find that meaning enhanced and clarified in Christ’s person and work. For example, the meaning of events like the exodus or of objects like the sacrificial lamb are amplified when the New Testament treats Christ’s saving work as an “exodus” (Luke 9:31) and calls him “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Jesus’s triumph validated him as the ultimate object of all Old Testament hopes, and this, in turn, transformed the apostles’ reading of the Old Testament (John 2:22; 12:16).

Once Paul met the resurrected Christ, he, too, never read the Old Testament the same way. Indeed, as an Old Testament preacher, he “decided to know nothing … except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). At no stage in interpreting the Old Testament should Christians act as if Jesus has not come. Reading from the beginning through Scripture gets us to Christ, but once we find him, we must interpret all the Old Testament through him.

The Way God Discloses the Mystery of Christ Signals Organic Connections between the Old and New

Passages such as Roman 16:25–26, 1 Peter 1:10–11, and 2 Peter 1:20–21 imply that the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament is natural and unforced, aligning with the Old Testament’s own innate meaning, contours, structures, language, and flow. The New Testament authors are making organic connections with the whole of Scripture on its own terms, in alignment with God’s original intentions.

Other passages, such as Colossians 2:16–17, testify that the prophets often envisioned the very form we now enjoy, not only seeing the shadow but also embracing the substance that is Christ, though perhaps more like an acorn or sapling anticipates a great oak. Even if the Old Testament authors were not fully aware of all God was speaking through them, they would have affirmed retrospectively the trajectories that later biblical authors identify.

Christ as Light and Lens

Scripture calls us to see both an organic unity and a progressive development between the Old and New Testaments. There is a natural connection between what the Old Testament human authors intended and what the New Testament human authors saw fulfilled in Jesus, but the Old Testament meaning is now often fuller, expanded, or deepened because through Christ God reveals the mystery. Jesus’s saving work supplies the spiritual light that enables one’s spiritual senses to see and savor rightly, and his person and work provide the interpretive lens for properly understanding and applying the Old Testament itself in a way that most completely magnifies God in Christ. Figure 1 unpacks what is happening with respect to Scripture’s progressive revealing of Old Testament meaning, and figure 2 elucidates further the way Christ operates as a lens, supplying us a developed understanding of the Old Testament’s meaning.



Figure 1. The Progressive Revelation of Old Testament Mystery

 



Figure 2. Interpreting the Old Testament through the Lens of Christ

 
 
 

Conclusion

The Old Testament is Christian Scripture, and God intends that we interpret it as such, not as if Christ has not come. We must read the Scripture forward, backward, and forward again. The Old Testament prophets knew they were writing for new-covenant saints living in the days of the Christ. Bound up in the gospel of Jesus Christ is the revelation of a “mystery that was kept secret for long ages but … through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations” (Rom 16:25–26).

A relationship with Jesus is essential for rightly interpreting the Old Testament, for through him God enables understanding. By turning to Christ, “the veil is removed” (2 Cor 3:16). The light of Christ supplies us the needed spiritual sight for understanding the things of God, and the lens of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection provides the needed perspective for fully grasping the Old Testament’s meaning. God wrote the Old Testament for Christians, and he enables believing interpreters to grasp more fully than others both the meaning and the intended effect of the initial three-fourths of the Christian Scriptures.

1: See G. K. Beale and Benjamin L. Gladd, Hidden but Now Revealed: A Biblical Theology of Mystery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 29–46.
2: Beale and Gladd, Hidden but Now Revealed, 330.

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.



Episode 226: Friendship with the Friend of Sinners

Reunited and it feels so goooood! On this episode of the FTC Podcast, former co-host Ronni Kurtz returns as a guest to talk with Jared about Jared’s new book Friendship with the Friend of Sinners and the remarkable possibility of closeness with Jesus.



What is Divine Aseity?

Editor’s Note: The Theology in the Everyday series seeks to introduce and explain theological concepts in 500 words or less, with a 200-word section helping explain the doctrine to kids. At For The Church, we believe that theology should not be designated to the academy alone but lived out by faith in everyday life. We hope this series will present theology in such a way as to make it enjoyable, connecting theological ideas to everyday experience and encouraging believers to study theology for the glory of God and the good of the Church. This week, divine aseity.


You and I live in a world full of contingency and dependence. We require food for sustenance, water for hydration, rest for productivity, and the list goes on. To be human is to have needs, to be dependent is the lot of mankind, and we will never attain the independence and self-sufficiency we so often desire. If we did, we would no longer be human. The glories of independence and self-sufficiency are reserved for only one Being – namely, God. In Him all of our needs and dependencies find their rest, their true home and fulfillment in the only One who is self-existent, self-sufficient, free from all need or want, the source and plentitude of all life.

All of these are ways in which we can describe the aseity of God, a word that simply means that God is life in and of Himself. The term aseity comes from the Latin phrase “a se,” which means “from oneself.” When theologians speak of God being a se, they are trying to put words to the glorious reality that God does not derive His being or existence from anything outside of Himself. He is self-existent, meaning that He just simply is in the truest sense of the word.

In Psalm 36, David confesses that God is “the fountain of life,” the ever full and overflowing well of being from which we derive our life and breath (Psalm 36:9). All creation finds its true source and final end in the God who is uncreated, giving life and being to the world because He is life and being itself. This is why Augustine, in Confessions, speaks of God as “being in a supreme degree.” For God, it is “not one thing to be and another to live,” for in Him “the supreme degree of being and the supreme degree of life are one and the same thing.”[1]

Even God’s covenant name is a testimony to the reality of His self-existence. In Exodus 3 when God meets Moses in the burning bush to reveal His plan of salvation for the enslaved nation of Israel, He instructs Moses to tell Israel that “I AM” has sent him and will deliver Israel from their slavery (Exodus 3:14). And so He does. The God who hears Israel’s cry and delivers her from her bondage does so out of an immeasurable well of grace that finds its source in I AM, the God who simply is, just as His name declares.

For the Kids:

In the book of Genesis, the Bible tells us that God created the world and everything in it. The light you see shining every morning through your bedroom window, the clouds you see sailing through the sky on a sunny day, the stars you see beaming with light on a clear night, and much, much more, all came from God. God even created you, and He loves you and knows everything about you.

However, unlike you, me, and the world all around us, God was not created by anyone or anything. In the book of Psalms, the Bible teaches us that God is “the fountain of life,” which means that God is always alive, and He does not need anyone to create Him or give Him life. This also means that you and I are alive because God gave us life, and every breath we breathe and step we take comes from Him. He is always watching over us and caring for the world He created. Because He is always alive, we can trust Him to give us all that we need.

 

[1] St. Augustine, Confessions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 8.



Episode 225: Rediscovering Your Love for the Bible

Has your Bible reading time grown stagnant? Feel like you’re in a rut or stalled out in some way? In this episode, Jared and Ross talk about some ways to reinvigorate your Bible study time, including a few ways they’ve personally experienced refreshing in their time in God’s word.



02: Old Testament Reflections on Grasping the Old Testament’s Message

“You Will Understand This” (Jer 30:24)

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.



Episode 224: When Church Meetings Go Wild

On this episode of the FTC Podcast, Jared and Ross talk about how and why church business/member meetings sometimes go off the rails and how both leaders and laity can pursue greater unity and more peace in these important events in a church’s community life.



Episode 223: Christian Social Media Pet Peeves

On this episode of the FTC Podcast, the guys discuss the different “annoying” types one finds in Christian social media spheres and then offer some brief words of advice on how to enhance one’s use of the platforms.



01: New Testament Reflections on Grasping the Old Testament’s Message

“Serving Not Themselves” (1 Pet 1:12)

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.



How Jesus Shepherded His Sheep

Editor’s Note: This article is an excerpt from Planting by Pastoring. You can purchase your copy anywhere books are sold.

We know Jesus is a shepherd because he calls himself one. But even if he’d never used the title, we would still see his shepherd’s heart by observing his ministry—how he prayed, how he loved and taught, how he shared authority, and ultimately how he sacrificed himself.

Jesus prayed. I used to think a day of prayer and solitude was time away from the mission. Jesus saw it the other way around. As he went about planting his church and the crowds pressed in, Jesus’s instinct was to pull away frequently in order to pray (Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; 6:12). As he faced the agony of the cross, he steeled himself with an intense session of prayer (Luke 22:39–46). Jesus was planting as a pastor, and pastors pray.

Jesus loved and taught. While lounging at a dinner party with the town elites, Jesus didn’t see the sinful woman who interrupted the meeting as a distraction, but as an opportunity to love and teach. A parable of grace and forgiveness came effortlessly from his lips as the woman wept and the town elites mocked (Luke 7:36–50). He was willing to lose face with the movers and shakers in order to shepherd one single, burdened woman. Jesus was planting as a pastor, and pastors love and teach.

Jesus shared authority. When it came time for Jesus to call his closest followers, he didn’t select the gifted and the powerful, but instead chose twelve fumbling men—a few nondescript fishermen, a despised tax collector, and so on. After a period of discipleship, he then “gave them authority” and sent them out in pairs so that they would “proclaim that people should repent” (Mark 6:7, 12). Notice two things in this passage. First, Jesus took advantage of his popularity to give authority away. Second, he gave authority away in order to see people repent and believe. Jesus was planting as a pastor, and pastors share authority in order that more and more people might proclaim the gospel and be won to that gospel through faith and repentance.

Jesus sacrificed himself. Perhaps most amazing of all, Jesus “remained silent” (Matt. 26:63) as he stood before the unjust Sanhedrin, hearing false charge after false charge leveled against him. It’s tempting to wonder why. After all, Jesus was heaven’s darling! He threw demons into pigs! We want him to speak up for himself, to rebuke these fools and make the truth known. Eventually he does speak up, and in doing so he explains his silence. Blood dripping from his brow, he says, “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John 18:37). Jesus remained silent so that he might sacrifice his life in order to bring his sheep into the way, the truth, and the life. Jesus was planting as a pastor, and pastors sacrifice for the good of their people in order to bear witness to the truth.

Jesus didn’t hastily build the church. He was deliberate and careful. He prioritized relationships over speed. Jesus was a pastor. He planted his church as a pastor. He knew his sheep and his sheep knew him. He drew near to them. He cared for them. He led them, gently. He listened and ministered to individuals. Names, not numbers, concerned him. He looked people in the eye, he touched their wounds, he wept with them, he entered their homes, he shared meals, he washed their feet, he taught them the truth, and he prayed for them.

Churches built on Jesus and his gospel will survive on the last day. If you’re a church planter or pastor, it’s worth asking the question, What lies at the foundation of this thing I’ve spent such a long time building?



Episode 222: FTC Mailbag

In this Mailbag installment of the FTC Podcast, Jared Wilson and Ross Ferguson answer listener-submtted questions on life and ministry. This episode includes topics like the challenge of AI to ministry, how bivo pastors can manage preaching load, what to do with those “unteachable” members, how you shouldn’t discipline your church Eeyores, and more.