How the Old Testament points to Jesus

On the afternoon of the first Easter, two disciples walked to Emmaus confused and grieving. A stranger joined them and, Luke says, "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). Later that evening Jesus said the same to the eleven: "everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled" (Luke 24:44).

Those three headings — Law, Prophets, Psalms — were the whole Jewish Bible. Jesus was not claiming that a handful of verses predicted him. He was claiming that the entire collection was going somewhere, and that he was where it was going.

The early church took this as its reading method. Augustine summed it up in a line that has been repeated ever since: the New is hidden in the Old, and the Old is made plain in the New.

Four ways the Old Testament points forward

It helps to separate the ways the Old Testament anticipates Christ. Lumping them together produces confusion; distinguishing them produces confidence.

The first promise

The thread begins at the worst moment in the story. Immediately after the first sin, God speaks to the serpent: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Genesis 3:15).

Christians have called this the protoevangelium — the first gospel. On its own the verse is compressed and could be read simply as the ongoing hostility between humans and snakes. But the rest of Genesis keeps tracking one "offspring" (literally "seed"): through Seth, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah. By the time God promises Abraham that "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:3), the story is clearly about one line through which God will undo the curse. Paul reads it that way explicitly (Galatians 3:8, Galatians 3:16).

The covenants

The Old Testament is organised around covenants — solemn, binding commitments between God and his people. Each one adds something, and each leaves something unfinished.

• Abraham (Genesis 12, 15, 17): a people, a land, and blessing for the nations through them.
• Moses (Exodus 19-24): the law, the tabernacle, the priesthood and the sacrifices — how a holy God can live among a sinful people.
• David (2 Samuel 7:12-16): a son of David whose throne God will establish "forever".
• The new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31-34): a law written on the heart, and sins remembered no more.

By the end of the Old Testament, none of these is complete. The nations are not blessed, the people keep breaking the law, David's line has lost the throne, and the new covenant is still a promise. Then at the Last Supper Jesus takes a cup and says, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:20). Paul's summary is exact: "all the promises of God find their Yes in him" (2 Corinthians 1:20).

Types: patterns God repeats

The New Testament uses the Greek word typos — a pattern or impression — for Old Testament realities that foreshadow Christ. Paul calls Adam "a type of the one who was to come" (Romans 5:14). Hebrews calls the law "a shadow of the good things to come" (Hebrews 10:1). A shadow is real, but it is not the thing that casts it.

The Passover lamb

In Exodus 12 a lamb without blemish dies in place of the firstborn, its blood marks the door, and judgement passes over. Not one of its bones is to be broken (Exodus 12:46). John the Baptist introduces Jesus as "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Jesus dies at Passover. John notes that the soldiers did not break his legs, and cites the Passover rule (John 19:36). Paul says it flatly: "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7).

The temple

The tabernacle and then the temple were where God lived among his people. John writes that the Word "became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14) — the verb is literally "pitched his tent". Jesus speaks of his own body as the temple that will be destroyed and raised in three days (John 2:19-21). The meeting place between God and humanity is no longer a building in Jerusalem; it is a person.

The priesthood

Israel's priests stood between God and the people, offered sacrifices, and died and were replaced. Hebrews argues at length that Jesus is the priest those priests anticipated: he holds his priesthood permanently, and he offered one sacrifice, himself, "once for all" (Hebrews 7:23-27).

The Davidic king

David was the shepherd-king who defeated Israel's enemies, and God promised him an eternal heir. Every later king was measured against him and fell short. Matthew's Gospel opens with the words "Jesus Christ, the son of David" (Matthew 1:1), and the crowd at the triumphal entry shouts "Hosanna to the Son of David" (Matthew 21:9). Christ is the Greek for Messiah — the anointed one, the king.

Prophecy: direct prediction

Alongside patterns there are prophecies that speak plainly of a coming figure.

Isaiah 52:13-53:12 describes a servant who is "despised and rejected", who is "pierced for our transgressions" and "crushed for our iniquities", who is silent like a lamb led to slaughter, is "numbered with the transgressors", is buried with the rich, and then — after death — sees his offspring and prolongs his days. Written centuries before Jesus, and preserved in a complete Isaiah scroll among the Dead Sea Scrolls dated to around the second century BC, it reads like a commentary on Good Friday and Easter. When the Ethiopian official asks Philip whom the prophet is speaking about, "beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus" (Acts 8:35).

Psalm 22 begins with the words Jesus cried from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34). It goes on to describe mocking crowds, thirst, the dividing of garments by lot, and ends in praise as "all the families of the nations" turn to the Lord. One honest note: verse 16 ("they have pierced my hands and feet") involves a genuine textual question. The standard Hebrew text reads "like a lion"; the ancient Greek translation and some Hebrew evidence from the Dead Sea region support a verb meaning "dig" or "pierce". The fulfilment of the psalm does not rest on that one word — the whole shape of it does.

Micah 5:2 names Bethlehem, David's town, as the birthplace of a ruler "whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days". Jewish leaders in Herod's court treated this as a messianic prophecy without hesitation (Matthew 2:4-6).

What "fulfil" means

Not every "fulfilment" in the New Testament is a prediction coming true. Matthew 2:15 says Jesus' return from Egypt fulfils Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I called my son". In Hosea, that verse is plainly about Israel's exodus, not a prediction at all.

Matthew is not misreading. The Greek word plēroō means to fill full. Matthew's point is that Jesus relives Israel's story — out of Egypt, through the waters, into the wilderness for forty days of testing — and succeeds where Israel failed. He is the true Israel, filling the old story with its intended meaning. Once you see that, many puzzling citations open up.

Reading Christ in the Old Testament responsibly

The church has not always done this well. Early on, 1 Clement read Rahab's scarlet cord (Joshua 2:18) as a sign of redemption through Christ's blood. Augustine read the Good Samaritan as an allegory in which the inn is the church and the innkeeper is Paul. Today some preachers find the cross in every piece of wood and the Holy Spirit in every drop of oil.

The trouble with allegory is not that it reaches Jesus. It is that it reaches him by ignoring what the text actually says, so that anything can mean anything. It also teaches people that the Bible is a code only clever preachers can crack.

Why it matters here

In much of Nigerian church life the Old Testament is very present: altars, anointing oil, the blood of covenant, prophets, priestly garments, sacrifices of thanksgiving, first-fruits. Some of this is healthy love for the whole Bible. But sometimes the shadows are brought back as though Christ had not come — a pastor presented as a priest who mediates access to God, "altars" that must be fed, or blood-covenant rituals that echo traditional religion more than Calvary.

Reading the Old Testament towards Christ is the corrective. The temple, the priesthood and the sacrifices were real and God-given, and they were always pointing beyond themselves. "These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ" (Colossians 2:17). Once the substance has arrived, you do not go back to the shadow.

It also works the other way. Christians who ignore the Old Testament end up with a Jesus who comes from nowhere. The Messiah is unintelligible without the promise to Abraham, the throne of David and the lamb of Passover. Read the whole Bible, and read it as Jesus read it: as one long story arriving at him.

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me.— Jesus, John 5:39