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 2. The relationship between type and antitype

As the principle of promise and fulfilment (in Christ) develops, we see how the rest of redemptive history functions as a kind of footnote to Genesis 3:15 in the same sense that western philosophy is sometimes said to be a footnote to Plato and Aristotle.

However, we also discover that the promise itself is developed both progressively and cumulatively; its implications become clearer as redemptive history unfolds. At particular stages in history God gives hints of what is to come (as a great artist’s sketches point towards the final work will be). So embedded into redemptive history are illustrations of the pattern of working which God will employ in his masterwork—types that will be fulfilled in work of Christ the antitype. Paul views the relation between Adam and Christ as the supreme illustration of this patterning; Adam, viewed as a real historical figure, is the tupos of the coming one (Rom. 5:14, albeit the analogy is both positive and negative, Rom. 5:12-21).

The Mosaic ceremonial and sacrificial system functions similarly, a prominent theme in the theology of the author of Hebrews. There is a real priesthood, real sacrifice and real blood. But these, while real, also signify a greater reality that accomplishes what they can only portray. Hebrews suggests that a genuine Old Testament believer, with the stench of the sacrificial blood clogging his nostrils, could deduce from the fact that the priests ministered in this way day after day that these could not be the sacrifices that bring forgiveness. He must look beyond this (and was able to), to that of which these sacrifices were a type—namely to God’s covenant promises yet to be fulfilled, and  therefore (as Hebrews makes so clear), to Jesus Christ himself.

But this principle of type and antitype operates in another, less technical sense, in what we could call the divine patterning of redemptive history. When we put ‘the Christ event’ under the microscope we see that there are basic patterns expressed which are first seen in the Old Testament.  In the light of that discovery, when we re-read the Old Testament wearing the lenses of the New, we see these Christ-patterns more opaquely.  The divine footprints are already visible.

An interesting illustration of this is the use of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:15: ‘Out of Egypt I have called my son’. These words, Matthew says, are fulfilled in Christ. But isn’t this either an esoteric or naïve approach to reading the Bible?  Hosea is talking about the historic event of the people of God coming out of Egypt in the Exodus, not about Jesus going to and returning from Egypt in his infancy. So what is going on in Matthew’s mind? Is he saying Hosea 11:1 is fulfilled in Jesus just as Isaiah 53 is? Yes. But not in the same sense. Rather Matthew, writing in the light of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, recognises that the divine pattern in the Exodus (delivered from Egypt, led through the wilderness, given the covenant bond and kingdom-code) constitutes a pattern to be used in the experience of the true Israelite, Jesus Christ. In doing this Matthew provides us with a key to reading and expounding the entire Exodus narrative in a Christo-centric way, and indeed his own narrative against a background that enriches our understanding of Jesus’ identity and ministry.

Another example of this kind of pattern-repetition in redemptive history is that of Elisha healing the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:8ff.). The miracles worked through Elisha demonstrate God’s intimate care for ordinary people—the  humble poor, the widow and the barren woman.   The healing of the Shunammite’s son echoes later in the town of Nain, where Jesus too healed a widow’s son (Luke 7:11ff.). Luke surely means his readers to empathise with the mindset of the people in Nain who knew well that it was in their little community that the miracle had been accomplished through Elisha (who followed Elijah, the one whose return was promised, Mal. 4:5 and fulfilled in John the Baptist,  Matt. 11:14). Nain was near the site of Old Testament Shunem. Even the reaction of the people of Nain to Jesus echoes with allusions to this distant event: ‘A great prophet has arisen among us! God has visited his people’. It is as if they are saying ‘something like this happened here before; and ever since Elisha, we have been looking forward to something even better still to come—the prophet himself. Could this be he?’

So we are meant to see pattern repetition, which comes to its fullness in the person of Jesus Christ, the great prophet who heals not merely through delegated authority from God, but on his own authority, without rituals or prayers, but with a simple word of power. Here is the great God and Saviour of Israel in the flesh, whose person is both the origin and consummation of all the patterns and echoes which have prophesied this grace to his people all down the long ages of their history. Yes, God has visited his people, at last, in the person of his Son.  But clearly this sheds light backwards on the function of Elisha. Now we see the significance of his healing within both the micro-reality of his personal context, and also within the macro-reality of his significance in the patterns of redemptive history.

As we work intimately with the two Testaments we will increasingly recognise the echoes of the Old Testament. And as we become sensitive to these patterns and allusions, lines from the Old Testament to Christ will become clearer to us and easier to draw.