What the Old Testament Means to Us. . . No. 20

WHAT THE OLD TESTAMENT MEANT TO JESUS

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life .. and these are they which testify of me.—Jn. 5:39

We may presume that Jesus was not all that different from other Jewish boys raised in a devout, orthodox home. This in spite of apocryphal stories that have him performing miracles at play, such as his clay pigeons taking on life and flying away, and raising a playmate from the dead. He would have attended synagogue school and memorized large portions of holy Scripture, which would of course be our Old Testament plus what we call the Apocrypha.

What would these Scriptures have meant to him? They would have meant what he eventually came to call them, the holy Scriptures. Not necessarily the word of God, though he would of course have believed that God speaks in and through holy Scripture. But the word of God would have meant more to Jesus than simply the Scriptures, for the word of God antedated Scripture, for “It was by the word of God that the heavens were made,” as Scripture testifies, long before there was a Bible. Eventually the NT Scriptures would refer to Jesus himself as the Word of God (Rev. 19:13), but it is not likely that Jesus thought of himself as such. He did, however, finally think of himself as fulfilling the Scriptures.

Luke tells us that “the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him” (Lk. 2:40). This would surely include growing in knowledge of holy Scripture. Luke goes on to tell the story of how Jesus was “lost” for three days in Jerusalem, listening to and asking questions of the teachers of the law in the temple. Did he “camp out” in the temple area those three days, pressing the teachers for any information he could get? Luke tells us that the rabbis were astonished at Jesus’ understanding and answers. His answers? He must have been answering questions as well as asking them, and this at age 12. But this does not necessarily imply that he had supernatural knowledge as a boy. It may only mean that he was so bright and his devotion to Scripture so great that it was astonishing even to the learned.

We should use our imagination in this context. We can hear Jesus ask an aged rabbi why it is that the prophets declare that the temple is to be for all peoples and yet the Gentiles are excluded. The rabbi must have said, at least to himself, “What an unusual question for a Jewish boy!” We do know that his mother Mary interrupted his adventure into higher education, reprimanding him once she found him: “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have sought You anxiously” (Lk. 2:48). Jesus’ reply, which was not an apology, was startling: “Why is it that you sought Me? Did you not know I must be about my Father’s business?”

This must have shocked Mary and the rabbis. Did Jesus mean that he did not expect his parents to be looking for him after three days on the loose? Did he expect them to know that he would be at the temple “doing theology”? We can only guess what was going on in the mind of this 12-year old boy. It is evident that he was already a religious genius (Is that the word?), and that in the temple amidst the rabbis he was a spectacle of wisdom and spirituality.

It was surely an experience the rabbis could not forget, and they must have discussed among themselves who this boy might be and what would be the meaning of his extended visit among them. We may conclude that while yet a boy Jesus was absorbed in the holy Scriptures, confounding even the learned with his knowledge and insight. Might he have frightened the rabbis? I recall the reputation of a professor at Harvard of bygone days who knew so much it frightened the students. Imagine a rabbi of ordinary intelligence and resources encountering this boy genius who seemed to know more than he, and a lot more insightful.

It was at last the Scriptures that motivated Jesus to act, now an old man at 30 in comparison to a 12-year old. All those years he waited, but all those years he was a consummate student of holy Scripture. When he heard of the preaching of John the Baptist, he knew it was time, for he found John’s work foretold in Scripture.

Jesus went to be baptized of John and join his community, little realizing that on that occasion he would hear the voice of God himself (for the first time?), declaring him the Father’s own son. That changed everything. He didn’t go with John, after all, but into the wilderness, led by the Spirit, to confront Satan and begin his work as the Son of God.

Jesus may have been surprised that Satan too quotes Scripture, but he found his strength against the Evil One to be in the Scriptures themselves. To each temptation Jesus responded with a quotation from the Bible.

At some point during these years (It may have been gradual) our Lord became convinced that the Scriptures spoke of him, and that it was his mission to fulfill the things said of him in Scripture.

And so we have that impressive statement in Jn. 5:38. The Jews searched the Scriptures diligently, supposing that in their meticulous conformity to its demands they would have salvation. “You think that in them you have eternal life,” Jesus said to them. Then he said, “These testify of me.” What a responsibility Jesus must have felt from this, that it was in his hands to fulfill the law and the prophets that he had studied all his life. What a jolting realization it must have been when he held the scrolls of holy Scripture and said, This is about me!

It was clear to him that he was to fulfill what the Scriptures said of him. Over and over again he explained his action by saying “that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.” When they came to arrest him in the garden, he reminded them that he had taught daily in the temple but they had not bothered him. So why do so now?, he was asking them. He found his own answer in: “But the Scriptures must be fulfilled” (Mk. 14:49). He began his ministry in his home town of Nazareth by reading a portion of Isaiah in the synagogue. He startled the congregation by saying of the Messianic prophecy he had read: “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk.4:21).

It was this mandate that served Jesus to the end. On the Cross he not only quoted Scripture, but at last said “It is finished.” He was not finished but “it” was finished, the work he had come to do in fulfilling what was written of him. Those riveting three words, It is finished. reveal what the OT meant to Jesus. It was at the center of his life and work, as if it were his manual for action. Without the OT there could be no place in history for Jesus Christ. It was the reason he came into the world; to satisfy its demands was his consuming passion. It figures that in his last breath he could be satisfied that the expectation of Scripture had been realized.

Even the resurrected Christ was ever conscious of the Scriptures. To the two disciples that he met on the way to Emmaus who had difficulty believing he said, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” (Lk. 24:25-26) This shows that Jesus believed that the OT clearly prophesied not only the passion of the Messiah but his glorification as well. He went on to teach these men from the Scriptures, all by memory of course: “Beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”

That is what the OT meant to Jesus. It is a great lesson for us. We too in expounding the Scriptures must not neglect that part that was the only Bible Jesus knew. If it was pregnant with meaning to him, it ought to be to us, and for the same reasons. When we see that all the Bible is about Christ, part of it pointing toward him, the other part pointing back to him, it gives us the rule of interpretation. We are to see the whole of the Bible in reference to Christ and interpret it in the light of his spirit.—the Editor

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Ignorance of the Old Testament has serious consequences. If we in the church do not know the Old Testament and do not teach and preach from it to our people, we leave them with no means for properly understanding and appropriating the Christian faith. When our forebears in the faith finally decided on at least the basic shape of the canon, they prefaced the New Testament with the Old as an essential part of the gospel. The last third of the Bible cannot be understood, they implied, without those first two thirds in the Old Testament.--Elizabeth Achtemeier, Preaching From The Old Testament, p. 21.