The Breakthrough That Helped Me Perceive the Previous Testomony
Previous Testomony Interpretation
I’ve typically had an uneasy relationship with the Previous Testomony. I’ve beloved it for its wild poetry and complex narrative. I’ve striven to see it because it got here to Israel and was acquired in unfolding splendor. And so, all through a lot of my Christian life to this point, whereas I’ve been in a position to see the Previous Testomony as God’s phrase to Israel and as a densely woven set of storylines and actions that discover decision within the New, I’ve had issue transferring again from the New Testomony to the Previous.
Once I noticed the New Testomony’s use of Previous Testomony passages, I grew to become confused. I held the apostles’ interpretations at arm’s size as a result of it appeared that they had been seeing what was not there. I knew the apostles couldn’t be incorrect of their impressed writing, so for years I attributed this seemingly artistic strand of interpretation to their position as prophets. Matthew was proper to say that Jesus’s flight to Egypt and return as a toddler fulfilled the phrases of Hosea (Matt. 2:15, Hos. 11:1), however there’s no means we might have identified that. God allow them to see what we in any other case couldn’t. We must always not go one letter past what they mentioned and noticed anew. How might we?
I had thought my drawback was strictly with the New Testomony and its methods of studying. In reality, I didn’t but perceive the Previous Testomony for what it actually was. I had not but discovered to learn the books of the previous covenant as Christian Scripture.
As I studied the e-book of Hebrews for my doctorate, I used to be confronted repeatedly with the writer’s means of deciphering the Previous Testomony Scriptures. Maybe greater than some other e-book within the New Testomony, Hebrews represents a protracted and cautious engagement with the phrases of the Previous Testomony. Each declare about Jesus, each argument in regards to the tasks of the viewers, and each assertion in regards to the new actuality that has come after Jesus’s life, demise, resurrection, and ascension is grounded in what God mentioned within the Previous Testomony. Nothing is introduced as an innovation, however somewhat the writer repeatedly claims to be deciphering God’s phrase.
Songs of the Son examines 9 psalms highlighted in Hebrews to disclose the preincarnate glory of Christ within the Previous Testomony.
He may even see issues that others had not seen earlier than, however he’s not studying them into the passages. Additional, he expects his viewers (and God expects us) to agree not simply together with his conclusions, however together with his interpretations. Meaning in Psalm 2, we’ve the Father talking to the Son (Heb. 1:5). In Psalm 45 and Psalm 102, we’ve what God says in regards to the Son (Heb. 1:8-12). In Psalm 22, we’ve Jesus’s personal phrases (Heb. 2:12). This isn’t a declare to prophetic new data, however somewhat, underneath the steerage of the Holy Spirit, the writer of the Hebrews is studying the Previous Testomony and seeing what is absolutely there. And the extra we take note of how and what he does, the extra we see that he’s paying shut and cautious consideration to the precise phrases of the passage. He’s deciphering and displaying us interpret.
That’s, he reveals to us each learn the Previous Testomony and what the Previous Testomony actually is: God’s phrase, written for us. The one God who spoke to the fathers by means of the prophets has spoken to us in his Son (Heb. 1:1-2). However we see that speech to us within the very phrases of Scripture, each Previous and New.
And as soon as I noticed this in Hebrews, I noticed it in every single place.
God’s Phrase for Us
Paul tells us that the occasions of the Exodus came about “as examples for us” (1 Cor. 10:6), and that they “had been written down” by Moses, so a few years in the past, “for our instruction, on whom the tip of the ages had come” (1 Cor. 10:11).
Did you catch that? Why did God have Moses write the Pentateuch? One reply, and one which is most related for us, is that Moses wrote the Pentateuch to instruct Christians, we who stay on the finish of the ages between the primary and second comings of Christ. This, Paul says, is what these items had been written down for.
God spoke within the Previous Testomony, sure, and in that historic speech, God nonetheless speaks.
Equally, in a widely known passage, on the street to Emmaus, Jesus speaks to the 2 disciples on the street and “starting with Moses and all of the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all of the Scriptures the issues regarding himself” (Luke 24:27). Now, whereas this doesn’t say that each verse of each passage is about Jesus, it does say that “in all of the Scriptures”, that’s, in each e-book, there are issues about Jesus for us to search out. This stuff are already there, and if we interpret because the resurrected Jesus taught his disciples to interpret, we’ll see them there.
In his earthly ministry, Jesus additionally taught and assumed {that a} proper studying of the Previous Testomony would lead one not solely to a imprecise understanding that Jesus would come however somewhat to an correct data of him. When confronting some Jewish leaders, he boldly instructed them, “You search the Scriptures since you assume that in them you might have everlasting life, and it’s they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39). Or once more, when talking of his nearing betrayal, demise, and resurrection, he requested in Jerusalem, “Have you ever not learn this Scripture: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has turn into the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it’s marvelous in our eyes’?” (Mark 12:10–11).
Discover once more the exact wording: “Have you ever not learn this Scripture?” He assumes that they need to find out about him, about his rejection by males however approval by God, from having learn Psalm 118.
It isn’t simply that the Previous Testomony traditionally led to the New Testomony as a form of prelude, however somewhat that the one God who speaks in each Testaments supposed them to belong without end to the church as a single physique of Scripture. That’s, whereas it is vital—vital even—to learn the Previous Testomony as that which went earlier than the approaching of Christ and his gospel in all its historic rootedness as God interacted with Israel, it’s simply as essential to learn it alongside the New Testomony as God’s current phrase to the church. God spoke within the Previous Testomony, sure, and in that historic speech, God nonetheless speaks.
That’s basically what the New Testomony authors knew; and that’s the key to seeing, as they did, the many-splendored revelation of God in Christ that reverberates by means of each web page of Scripture, Previous and New.
The entire Bible is the phrase of God for us. All of it speaks of Christ. All of it speaks to us as a result of in it God has spoken to us.
Daniel Stevens is the writer of Songs of the Son: Studying the Psalms with the Creator of Hebrews.
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