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Reading the Bible in 3D

Luke suggested this in his gospel when he rehearsed Jesus’ encounter with two disciples on the road to Emmaus:

“Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.”

Note the words “all the Scriptures.” This includes the First Testament—Genesis through Malachi. They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?”

Luke went on to say that Jesus opened the Scriptures to His disciples: “Now He said to them,

‘These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”

In this passage, Jesus unveils Himself through the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: (1) the law of Moses (the Torah); (2) the Prophets (the Nevi’im); and (3) the Psalms, which represent the Writings (the Ketuvim).

These three sections make up the Tanakh—the rabbinic name for the Hebrew Bible. The way the Second Testament authors quoted the First Testament forms a pattern—a shared hermeneutic for understanding the First Testament.

It is easy to see, then, that the source of this common hermeneutic was Jesus Himself. Jesus taught His disciples how to understand the Hebrew Scriptures, and this is reflected throughout the Second Testament.

Jesus’ use of the First Testament text was revolutionary for His time. As R. T. France points out, Jesus “applied the Old Testament in a way that was quite unparalleled. The essence of his new application was that he saw the fulfillment of the predictions and foreshadowings of the Old Testament in himself and his work.”

The early Christian church “was founded on this distinctive and revolutionary use of the Old Testament”—a usage that was handed down to the apostles by Jesus Himself. Jesus clearly said that He was the fulfillment of the entire Hebrew Bible (represented by the Torah, the Writings, and the Prophets).

If you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.

Consider this question with these texts in mind: If you were to ask Jesus what the Scriptures were about, what would His answer be?

R. T. France comments, “Jesus saw his mission as the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures; not just of those which predicted a coming redeemer, but of the whole sweep of Old Testament ideas.”

In this regard, Jesus not only completes the First Testament story; He fulfills it. But fulfilling doesn’t happen only in view of the accomplishment of its promises. As you will discover in this book, Jesus actually embodies the First Testament. He “fills full” the ancient Text.