Good mystery stories maintain suspense until the big reveal. On a second reading, however, all the clues needed to deduce the big reveal should be obvious. The Apostles discovered this once Christ rose from the grave when they reread the Old Testament and found that Christ Himself is the shadow across the whole of God’s written old covenant revelation. For example, Jude addressed a church infected by false, godless teachers by reminding them of Christ’s role during the exodus of Israel and the nation’s time in the wilderness: “Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe” (Jude 5). Jude’s striking claim is that Jesus saved Israel out of Egypt. Obviously, the book of Exodus never mentions Jesus’ name explicitly as it records how God rescued His people from slavery. Still, Jude recognized that Israel was saved not merely by God, nor merely by God the Son, but by God the Son as the mediator of the covenant of grace. In other words, Jesus Christ has always been active as the Savior of God’s people.

…Notice that before Christ had executed His priestly work in time of living, dying, and rising for His people’s salvation, “the virtue, efficacy, and benefits” of that work was applied to believers in the Old Testament.” So, even before God’s eternal Son walked the earth according to His human nature, believers received the saving effects of His mission as they trusted in the coming Messiah. The two questions that rise from this are (1) how does this work? and (2) how does this help us see Christ in Scripture?

…Astonishingly, Paul wrote to a gentile church that the exodus generation was ourfathers, underscoring how believers of every era are connected as God’s one people. God’s old covenant people in the wilderness ate the same spiritual food that new covenant Christians eat today, showing how God’s one people are unified in one Savior. After all, “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Tim. 2:5–6). The rock that provided for the Old Testament Israelites was Christ. It did not simply point ahead to Christ but was Christ, who was always received by faith in every age since the fall.

…Christ’s role as the Savior throughout redemptive history helps us see Him in all Scripture because, as the Westminster Confession says, the promises, types, and ordinances communicated the virtue and efficacy of His work to Old Testament believers. In other words, the means of grace that God provided in the Old Testament distributed Christ to those who would receive them with faith. The means of grace are God’s appointed instruments for conveying and applying Christ and his benefits to his people, creating or building up faith in them.

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Harrison Perkins | “Why Should Christians Read the Old Testament?” | February 2024

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Post authored by:

• Harrison Perkins

  

  Harrison Perkins (PhD, Queen’s University Belfast; MDiv, Westminster Seminary California) is pastor of Oakland Hills Community Church (OPC), a member of the of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, a Senior Research Fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards, online faculty in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary, a visiting lecturer in systematic theology at Edinburgh Theological Seminary, and author of Reformed Covenant Theology: A Systematic Introduction.

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