Introduction

In this short reflection paper, I will discuss two merits and two cautions of the statement, “Christ is in every passage of the Old Testament.” I will approach the merits and cautions from the perspective of a preacher. Merits are the goodness towards the church when a preacher takes the view that Christ is in every passage of the OT. And the cautions are what the preacher should be mindful of when practicing this view in his preaching ministry. I will begin with the definition of the statement “Christ is in every passage of the Old Testament.”

The definition of “Christ is in every passage of the Old Testament”

The view that Christ is present in every passage of the Old Testament is the idea that every passage in the Old Testament has a connection to Christ. The proponents of this view usually do not mean Christ is in every sentence or passage in the OT, but that all passages point to Christ in many ways. Chapell wrote, “Christ-centered preaching rightly understood does not seek to discover where Christ is mentioned in every text but to disclose where every text stands in relation to Christ.”^[1] In this view, until this relationship is discovered, the hermeneutic process is not complete for Christian preachers.

Two Merits

First, preaching Christ from the OT prevents the sermons from being mere moralistic challenges to be a better person without Christ. If a preacher does not preach Christ when preaching through the OT, not only would the sermons become moralistic, but the congregation would also become moralistic over time. This is particularly true if the preacher intends to preach through large books in the OT, because one could take weeks and months to preach through a large OT book.

This is true even if a preacher followed a historical, grammatical, and theological hermeneutics. If he does not connect OT passages to Christ, his preaching would not be much different from the teaching of a Jewish rabbi. Chapell rightly wrote, “by neglecting the grace of God that makes obedience possible and acceptable (1 Cor. 15:10; Eph. 2:8-9), such messages subvert the essence of the Christian gospel.”^[2]

The gospel is not only for justification, but also for sanctification. Therefore, preaching Christ and Him crucified not only benefits non-believers, but it will also benefit believers. Therefore, it is important to preach Christ when preaching OT passages for the sanctification of the saints.

Second, preaching Christ from the OT helps the church to see the unity of the Scripture. The OT is over 75% over the entire Canon. If the preacher does not preach Christ to connect the dots from Genesis to Malachi for the church, the church may not see how each book fits into God’s grand plan of redemption. When the Lord said all the OT Scripture points to him (Luke 24:27), He did not mean every sentence and word is about Him. But he meant that the entire OT Scripture points to Him. It is the preacher’s responsibility to teach the church how to do that.

Preaching Christ has the effect of teaching the congregation how to read the OT as Christians. If the preachers do not preach Christ, the church is not fed with the richness of Christ. Many Christians do not read the Old Testament because they do not see its relevance to them. Believers who sit under a faithful expositor who preaches Christ would develop a sense to connect OT passages to Christ using legitimate methods. He or she may not be able to articulate the methods like their pastor, but they would learn over time the legitimate ways to connect OT passages to Christ.

When believers see how an OT passage relates to Christ, it is easier for them to relate the OT passage to themselves. When they see that OT is relevant to them through Christ, they would be motivated to read the OT for themselves. Preaching Christ from the Old Testament helps the church see that the Old and New Testaments form one unified story of God’s redemption plan, culminating in Jesus Christ.

Two Cautions

First, preachers need to be careful not to allegorize OT passages. Allegory is a way to interpret a biblical passage that was not intended by either the human or divine authors. Allegorizing a text is problematic because it allows the preacher to make claims without providing legitimate methods for listeners to validate them.

Preachers need to work hard to discover typology in the passage, but always be cautious of not falling into allegory. Typology is a valid method to preach Christ in the OT, and allegory is not. To avoid allegorizing a text, the preacher must be able to make the connection to Christ using the redemptive history as revealed in the Scripture. That is what separates allegory from topology. Greidanus wrote, “Typology, by contrast, is limited to discovering specific analogies along the axis of God’s acts in redemptive history as revealed in Scripture.”^[3]

Some scholars have a narrower view of type than others. For example, Zuck advocates that only if the object is designated as a type in the NT can it be considered a type. Greidanus, however, disagrees. He taught that there are more types than those that are explicitly designated by the NT. However, these two views may not look very different in practice, especially to the congregation. That is because Zuck allows a separate category that a preacher can use to preach Christ from the OT. He called it illustrations.

For example, Zuck did not think Joseph was a type of Christ. But he did not mean preachers should not preach Christ when preaching the Joseph narrative. He categorizes Joseph as an illustration of Christ because, in his view, Joseph was not explicitly designated as a type in the NT, but has so many similarities with the life of Christ that it is a divine design to use Joseph as an illustration of Christ.^[4]

How is allegory different from type and illustration? Zuck helps point out that allegory seeks the hidden meaning behind the text, often at the expense of ignoring the literal meaning of the text.^[5] Allegory is a result of the preacher’s own imagination, instead of a careful analysis of the preaching passage and its relationship with further revelation in the Scripture.

One of the guard rails to avoid falling into allegory is to identify a symbol for the type in the OT. If a person, object, or event does not have a symbolic meaning in the OT, it cannot be a type and therefore is an allegory. For example, the tabernacle is a type of Christ, because it is a symbol of God dwelling with his people in the OT. However, the scarlet cord of Rahab is not a type because it is not a symbol in the OT. ^[6]

Another guard rail to avoid allegorizing the text is by not focusing on the details between the OT passage and the NT. Instead, we should focus on the thrust of the OT passage to find the parallel in the NT. When we focus on the details, we often find imaginative parallels. For example, when a preacher preaches that Isaac carried the wood from Bethsheba as a type of Christ carrying the cross to Golgotha, he has fallen into allegorical interpretation.^[7] We want to honor Christ when we preach Christ, but when we force Christ into a text, we fail to honor Him.^[8]

Second, preachers need to be careful not to obscure the meaning of OT passages. Preaching Christ from the OT has the danger of obscuring the original meaning of the OT passage. Some preachers are so eager to preach Christ that they use the OT passage as a jumping board to Christ. When they preached an OT passage, they explained the OT passage in brief and then jumped to NT passages and spent most of their time expounding on the NT passages. Sometimes, the OT passage is not only not given sufficient time, but they are also taken out of context, and the original meaning is not taught to the church.

Wright gave an example of a preacher who preached on Amos 5:24 “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” The preacher only briefly stayed on the text and then began to preach justification by faith, referencing Romans. Wright wrote, “it was silencing all that Amos actually wrote in that passage about doing justice and ending exploitation, cheating, and oppression.”^[9] Even Keller, a strong advocate of preaching Christ from all Scripture, warned that preachers should watch out for not spending sufficient time in the OT passage itself and leapfrog in Christ too quickly. His sermons on the OT would sound very similar week to week. Furthermore, the sermons would lose the specific theology or theme of the OT passage. When the preacher does not preach the OT passage in its context, Jesus will not be truly the resolution or climax of the particular theological theme in the OT passage.^[10]

The OT covers many topics. The most important is the other two persons of the Trinity, namely God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Other than that, the OT has a lot to say about creation, Satan, humanity, sins, end times, and others. A preacher could be so passionate in preaching Christ at the expense of God the Father or the Spirit in a particular passage. Kuruvilla rightly warned that Christocentric preaching would weaken the personhood unique to individual members of the Trinity.^[11] All these topics in the OT have a relationship to Christ. It is the preacher’s responsibility to show that to the church, but the preacher needs to be careful not to short-circuit the passage to Christ by obscuring the meaning of the OT passage and thus sacrificing many important topics intended by God for the church.

Conclusion

I discussed two merits and two cautions of preaching Christ from the OT. The first merit is preaching Christ prevents moralistic sermons. The second merit is that preaching Christ helps believers see the unity of Scripture and, therefore, helps them relate to it. The first caution is to be careful not to allegorize the OT passage. The second caution is to be careful not to obscure the meaning of the OT passage. A faithful preacher ought to preach Christ from the OT. However, he needs to do it responsibly according to God’s revelation in the entire Canon, not according to his own imagination.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chapell, Bryan. Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon. Third Edition. Baker Academic, 2018.

Davis, Dale Ralph. The Word Became Fresh: How to Preach from Old Testament Narrative Texts. Mentor, Christian Focus Publications Ltd., 2022.

Gibson, Scott M., and Matthew D. Kim, eds. Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views on Preaching Today. Baker Academic, 2018.

Greidanus, Sidney. Preaching Christ from the Old Testament: A Contemporary Hermeneutical Method. WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999.

Keller, Timothy. Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism. Penguin Books, 2016.

Wright, Christopher J. H. How to Preach & Teach the Old Testament for All Its Worth: A Follow-up to How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. Zondervan, 2016.

Zuck, Roy B. Basic Bible Interpretation: A Practical Guide to Discovering Biblical Truth. Victor Books, 1991.

1. Chapell, Christ-Centered Preaching, 279. ↑
2. Gibson and Kim, Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views on Preaching Today, 4. ↑
3. Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 249. ↑
4. Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation, 177. ↑
5. Zuck, Basic Bible Interpretation, 177. ↑
6. Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 257–59. ↑
7. Greidanus, Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, 308. ↑
8. Davis, The Word Became Fresh, 135–38. ↑
9. Wright, How to Preach & Teach the Old Testament for All Its Worth, 54. ↑
10. Keller, Preaching, 66. ↑
11. Gibson and Kim, Homiletics and Hermeneutics: Four Views on Preaching Today, 31. ↑