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 4. Proleptic participation and subsequent realisation

Despite the continuing influence within evangelicalism of various brands of dispensationalism, it lies on the surface of the apostolic writings that the majority of illustrations of salvation in the new covenant era are actually drawn from the old!  Of course the apostles recognise the substantial discontinuity between old and new.  Pentecost is indeed a quantum leap forward. But that notwithstanding, when Paul wants to illustrate how the gospel works, he goes back to the Old Testament figures of Abraham and David and says ‘This is how the gospel works’. A seismic shift took place after Pentecost so that the least in the kingdom is greater than the greatest of the prophets (John the Baptist, Matt.11:11). Men and women of faith do not come to perfection apart from new covenant believers who experience better things (Heb. 11:40). Nevertheless Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets are examples of faith (Heb.11). We receive salvation ‘better’, but not a better salvation.  If you want to know what the Christian life looks like, then there is much to be learned from the Old Testament!  What right-thinking Christian has not aspired to experience the whole-souled faith and worship of the Psalms?

But how could Old Testament believers experience grace and the fruit of the Spirit? They experienced  proleptic participation in what would be consummated in Jesus Christ and then subsequently realised in its fulness in post-Pentecost Christian believers.

Orthodox evangelical Christians employ the principle of proleptic participation with respect to justification. Were Old Testament saints justified by grace, and if so, how? Yes, of course—by faith in the promise of the Saviour. We who are as far removed in time as Abraham was from Christ are justified because we believe in the once-promised Christ now come. But through the promise of God, Abraham experienced in proleptic fashion what we now experience in the light of the actuality of the incarnation.

But exactly the same principle operates in the area of sanctification—both definitive (the once-for-all separation from the dominion of sin which takes place in regeneration) and progressive (the ongoing overcoming of the presence and influence of sin which takes place throughout the Christian life). For justification and sanctification, while distinguishable, are not separable in either old or new covenant realities.  Saints in the Old Testament were justified in the light of what Christ would do; they were sanctified in the same way: their lives were shaped and formed in the light of what Christ would do. An example of that is seen in Hebrews 10:39: ‘We are not those who would shrink back and be destroyed. We are those who believe and who are saved’. But from what source does the author illustrate this principle of the grace of perseverance? From the Old Testament!  Old Testament saints were commended for their faith, yet none of them had received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us and only together with us would they be made perfect. What they experienced then, was a proleptic, anticipatory, form of the reality we better experience in its fullness, namely the working out of union and communion with Jesus Christ.

It is the perspective of the New Testament that from the moment an individual becomes a believer, his or her life is shaped providentially by God and pressed into a mould which takes its form from the dying and rising of Jesus, and is shaped by his crucifixion and resurrection, his death bringing new life. In sanctification God transforms us into the likeness of his Son, so that reminiscences of Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected appear in us, and the pattern of death and resurrection shapes our lives—these are the genuine biblical stigmata in which all believers share.

But this pattern is also present in the lives of Old Testament saints. Admittedly the fascination with typology in some evangelical groupings has been unfortunate and without controls; but nevertheless a Christ-shape and a Christ-pattern appears clearly in a variety of Old Testament saints, and must ultimately be analysed as a shadow in their lives created by the backwards projection into history of the work of Christ.

There are so many illustrations of this that one might almost say that there is not an Old Testament historical-biographical account of any length that does not involve dying and rising, humiliation and exaltation, being brought down and being raised up, experiencing opposition and then deliverance, suffering want and then experiencing extraordinary provision. This is not merely the form of good story-telling. It is the embodiment of the gospel pattern.

Joseph is a classic case: the story of his life is shaped unmistakably by the pattern of death and resurrection. A pattern is written large in him: humiliation (rejected and stripped of his glory-robe, becoming a slave, being made of no reputation)à exaltation (being highly exalted at Pharaoh’s right hand)à provision (for the needs of the whole world)àthe ingathering of his people.  This, at the end of the day, is the Christ-pattern in sketch-like form. The pattern of meant-for-evilàproducing good, the salvation of many (Gen. 50:20) is fulfilled in the One crucified by the hands of wicked men—yet according to the plan of the God who raised him from the dead for the salvation of the nations (Acts 2:23).  That same pattern, while written large in Joseph, appears throughout the Old Testament. It connects the Old Testament saints to Christ, and underlines that we do not fully understand their experience apart from this template.