Summer series . Some years ago, we asked Sinclair Ferguson to write a brief paper for us on preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Over the next week or so, we’re going to publish an edited version online as part of our summer series. It’s worth some time.

Principle 3. The relationship between the covenant and Christ

In the New Testament Jesus himself embodies all that the covenant signified in the Old Testament. His is the blood of the new covenant (Lk.22: 20). He fulfils all the covenant promises of God. ‘No matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ’ (2 Cor. 1:20).

The covenant promises of God form the scaffolding that God was putting in place as he directed redemptive history towards the coming of Jesus Christ. The scaffolding in the Old Testament is therefore built around the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ and shaped by him. We can see this in two ways.

[1]          First, there is the principle that in the covenant relationship the imperatives of God (his laws and commands) are always rooted in the indicatives of his grace. That is how the covenant works: ‘I will be your God; you will be my people.’  This is scaffolding shaped around Christ and the gospel. For this is how the gospel works: ‘I will die for you; therefore trust in and obey me.’  The dynamic of the Old Testament covenant was shaped with a view to the coming of Jesus Christ.

We can go further to say this: that which was promised by God in the Covenant at Sinai, and demanded by God in terms of its imperatives, did not have a sufficiently strong foundation to effect what it commanded. Geographical relocation is not an adequate support to provide the dynamic for Decalogue-style moral holiness (cf. Rom. 8:3-4). A geographical resettlement may motivate, but it cannot cancel the guilt of sin or empower morally. Thus the Sinai covenant—in its weakness—was always prophetic of a greater and fuller deliverance through God’s redeeming grace. ‘I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt. You shall not have any other gods before me’ (Ex. 20:2-3) was always a statement that looked forwards as well as backwards. Written into the way in which the old covenant works is an implied expectation, even necessity, that the indicatives of God’s grace will find a better consummation and the imperatives a better foundation—in Jesus Christ.

[2]          Second, the shape of Christ’s work is expressed in the covenant principle of blessing and cursing.

Today our appreciation of much of the Bible’s language has become very threadbare. There is a tendency to think that the words ‘blessing’ and ‘cursing’ function in a relatively trivial manner, equivalent to a kind of divine ‘boo-hurrah’ approach to morality. When someone sneezes, we say ‘Bless you!’  Few people set this within the historical context of the pre-modern world when sneezing was a symptom of the plague. It was therefore seen potentially as a sign of the displeasure of God. One prayed that the person sneezing would receive the blessing of God and therefore not perish. That is much nearer the Bible’s understanding of blessing and cursing than our usage is.

Blessing is not ‘have a nice day!’ nor is cursing  ‘you are a bit of a pain in the neck.’ Rather, here is God’s covenant; when we respond to it in faith he showers upon us the blessing he promised when he made it with us. And when we respond in unbelief he showers upon us curses (cf. Deut. 27-30). The gospel is that Christ took the curse of the covenant in order that the blessings of the covenant (promised to Abraham) might come to us (Gal. 3:13). Paul’s thinking here is both redemptive-historical and biblical-theological.  He recognises that all of this covenantal outworking of blessing and cursing in the Old Testament is inextricably tied to the fulfilment of God’s covenant purpose and promise in Jesus Christ.

This principle of Christ as the heart of the covenants of God, with respect to their blessing and cursing, helps us expound and apply the Old Testament as a covenant-focussed message in the light of the fulfilment of both blessing and cursing in Christ. The consequences bound up in the covenant blessing and cursing point us forwards inexorably, if typologically, to the eternal consequences of acceptance or rejection of the gospel. The contents of biblical history and wisdom literature, prophecy and the psalms all reveal this covenant dynamic. Insofar as this is true we are able to relate them to the ultimate fulfilment of that dynamic in Christ and the gospel.