Preaching Christ in All of Scripture (eBook)

1: CHRIST IN ALL OF SCRIPTURE

PREACHING CHRIST FROM the Old Testament means that we preach, not synagogue sermons, but sermons that take account of the full drama of redemption, and its realization in Christ. To see the text in relation to Christ is to see it in its larger context, the context of God’s purpose in revelation. We do not ignore the specific message of the text, nor will it do to write an all-purpose Christocentric sermon finale and tag it for weekly use.

You must preach Christ as the text presents him. If you are tempted to think that most Old Testament texts do not present Christ, reflect on both the unity of Scripture and the fullness of Jesus Christ. Christ is present in the Bible as the Lord and as the Servant.

CHRIST THE LORD OF THE COVENANT

The New Testament applies the title kurios (Lord) to Christ (e.g., Heb. 1:10; 1 Pet. 3:15). That Greek term, used in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament to translate “Yahweh,” became the short designation of the Lord Jesus Christ. Both the Old Testament and the New also use the term “Lord” to designate “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as in Peter’s quotation of Psalm 2 in Acts 4:26 (NKJV):

The kings of the earth took their stand,
And the rulers were gathered together
Against the LORD and against His Christ.

Most of the designations of God in the Old Testament refer to the living God with no distinction of the persons of the Trinity. But the Second Person of the Trinity appears as the “Lord” in many passages. John’s Gospel shows that this is the case when John quotes Isaiah 6:10 and adds, “These things said Isaiah, because he saw his glory; and he spake of him” (John 12:41, ASV). Since the quotation is from Isaiah’s vision of God’s glory in the temple, it is clear that John views that glory of the Lord enthroned as the glory of Christ, the Logos.

Paul does the same in Ephesians 4:8 when he quotes from Psalm 68:18 (NKJV), applying to Christ’s ascension words spoken of the Lord’s exaltation:

When He ascended on high,
He led captivity captive,
And gave gifts to men.

The living God revealed in the Old Testament is the triune God. To be sure, the Incarnation brought to light Old Testament teaching that had still been in shadow. Yet the Angel of the Lord’s presence did reveal the mystery of the One who could be both distinguished from God and identified with him. When the Commander of the Army of the Lord confronted Joshua in front of Jericho with a drawn sword, he told him to take off his sandals, because he was on holy ground. The Commander revealed himself to Joshua as the Lord himself (Josh. 5:13–6:5). The Lord God had given that same warning when he called to Moses from the flaming bush. The Angel of the Lord spoke to Moses from the bush, but identified himself as I AM, the God of the fathers. This is a well-established pattern in the theophanies of the Old Testament. The Angel was, in fact, God the Son, the Lord. He is the Angel of God’s presence who spoke with Abraham (Gen. 18:1-2, 22, 33), who wrestled with Jacob (Genesis 32), who went before Israel (Ex. 23:20), whom Moses desired to know (Ex. 33:12-13), and who appeared to Manoah to announce the birth of Samson (Judges 13). The Angel speaks as Lord, bears the name of God, and reveals the glory of God (Ex. 23:21). Glimpsing his face in the early dawn, Jacob says he has seen the face of God (Gen. 32:30).

Anthony T. Hanson has argued that “the central affirmation [of the New Testament writers] is that the preexistent Jesus was present in much of Old Testament history, and that therefore it is not a question of tracing types in the Old Testament for New Testament events, but rather of tracing the activity of the same Jesus in the old and new dispensations.”1

To support his thesis, Hanson examines Pauline references, the book of Hebrews, Stephen’s speech in Acts, the Fourth Gospel, and the Catholic Epistles. He examines Paul’s account in 1 Corinthians 10:1-11 of the experiences of Israel under Moses. Hanson then appeals to the Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, to note the use of kurios in Exodus 14. Kurios or ho kurios is used throughout the chapter, while theos (God) appears in verses 19 and 31. Hanson finds that such verses support Paul’s distinguishing God from Christ the Lord in this chapter. He holds that Paul read “Christ” wherever kurios appears in the Septuagint passage. Christ was the Lord who delivered Israel from Egypt. As the Angel of God in the pillar of cloud, the Lord guided and guarded the Israelites in the Exodus. He led them from ahead, then went behind them to remain there through the night. There he screened them from the pursuing Egyptians (Ex. 14:19):

And Israel saw the mighty hand, the things that kurios did to the Egyptians; and the people feared kurios, and they believed God and Moses his servant (Ex. 14:31, literal translation).

The cloud of which Paul speaks (1 Cor. 10:1) is the cloud of Exodus 14, but it is worthy of note that in the Septuagint of Exodus 13:21 it is God (theos) who “led them, in the day by the pillar of cloud, to show them the way, and in the night by a pillar of fire.”2 (In Hebrew, the name of God is “Yahweh” in this passage.)

Pressing the point that Paul thought “Christ” where he read kurios in the account of the Exodus, Hanson so interprets 1 Corinthians 10:9, “Nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents” (NKJV). Paul, he holds, simply identified the Lord who led Israel through the wilderness as the Lord Christ.

In 1 Corinthians 10:9 the reading Christon (with the weight of the Chester Beatty papyrus) may be preferred to kurion (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus). On either reading, Hanson appears to be correct in claiming that Paul is thinking of Christ as the Lord who delivered Israel from Egypt, leading them through his presence manifested in the Angel.

Hanson refers to an important comment by C. H. Dodd on Romans 10:12-13: “Wherever the term Kyrios, Lord, is applied to Jehovah in the OT, Paul seems to hold that it points forward to the coming revelation of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.”3 Hanson holds that this statement is “at once too sweeping and too tame.” Too sweeping, because Paul does not always refer kurios in the Greek Old Testament to Christ (e.g., Rom. 9:28; 11:3).4 Too tame, because in Paul’s view kurios does not simply point forward to Christ, but names Christ, present as Lord.

We may not be convinced of all the intricate exegetical reasoning that Hanson mounts to demonstrate his thesis. We may conclude that at times he stresses an identification of the Lord with Christ in Paul’s thinking that is too dependent on Septuagint use, or too superficial for Paul’s profound theology. Orthodox trinitarian theology took centuries seeking to unpack the distinction of persons and the unity of being (or “substance”) that are implied in the way Paul worshiped the one God of his fathers in the full revelation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It was easier for Paul to pass from the Father to the Son, or from the Son to the Spirit, than it is for scholars who have tried to formulate the mystery.

Where Hanson has traced out the strong recognition of Christ as the kurios in Paul or Hebrews, other studies could balance the picture by demonstrating how strongly Paul’s theology is centered on the Father, or by discovering Paul again as the theologian of the Holy Spirit. Yet Hanson rightly alerts us to a more New Testament understanding of the centrality of Christ in the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is one with the Lord. It was the Spirit of Christ who spoke through the prophets (1 Pet. 1:10-12). Interpreting a Septuagint passage that says to fear nothing but the name of the Lord of Hosts himself, Peter substitutes “the Christ” for “himself ” (1 Pet. 3:15; Isa. 8:12-13).

Hanson, however, uses the clear presence of Christ as Lord in the Old Testament to minimize typology. He takes it to be evident that we cannot have in any particular passage both the actual presence of Christ as Lord and also a type of Christ. This may seem evident, but it ignores the richness of Old Testament revelation. A text to the point is one that Hanson discusses without taking account of the symbolism at its heart—the passage where Moses strikes the Rock at God’s command (Ex. 17:1-7). There the Lord is present, standing on the rock, but the Rock itself becomes a symbol, associated with the name of God, and therefore with God the Rock in symbol (Deut. 32:4). Symbolically, the Rock represented the incarnate Christ, as Paul says (1 Cor. 10:4).

John’s Gospel emphasizes the full deity of Jesus Christ as the Logos, the Word who is not only with God but is God (John 1:1). Jesus says, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58, NKJV). John, therefore, speaks of the glory that Isaiah saw in his vision of the Lord enthroned in the temple as the glory of Christ: “Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus’ glory and spoke about him” (John 12:41, NIV).

Paul affirms the deity of Christ when he writes, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form” (Col. 2:9, NIV). The Son of God possesses all the attributes of God. He is “a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth” (Westminster Shorter...