“Many have come to the right understanding that the Old Testament is about Christ, but have perhaps not yet come to see that the Old Testament was written to Jesus–as the Old Covenant mediator, second Adam and Covenant-keeping, representative Israelite.”

In my last TCC post, I sought to introduce a subject that I realized would be entirely new to some. Knowing this, I thought that it might be beneficial to give a few more examples of how Jesus would have read the Old Testament as the Covenant revelation of God written to Him. Many have come to the right understanding that the Old Testament is about Christ, but have perhaps not yet come to see that the Old Testament was written to Jesus–as the Old Covenant mediator, second Adam and Covenant-keeping, representative Israelite. In addition to the ten categories mentioned in the former post, here are five more to help us come to a fuller understanding of this subject:

1. Jesus understood that God the Father spoke to Him in the Old Testament about His eternal and Divine nature, work and reward. Some might object, at this point, that Jesus wouldn’t have needed such a revelation since He was the eternal God in His Divine nature. However, the Father said to the Son at His baptism, “You Are My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). No one would dream of suggesting that Jesus, in His human nature, didn’t need this word from His Father in the days of His flesh. He certainly needed it to help carry Him through the fierce temptations of the devil in the wilderness. When Satan came with the threefold, “If You are the Son of God…” we must conclude that he was tempting Jesus on the basis of the declaration that Jesus received from the Father at His baptism. It was only as Jesus held fast to the word of His Father about His Person–and to what God had said in Deuternomy to the typological Son of God (Israel – Ex. 4:22) in the wilderness–that He was able to overcome the attacks of the evil one.

In the same way, we find the Father speaking to the Son about His Divine nature in the Old Testament. Hebrews 1:4-14 makes this point explicitely and abundantly clear. There, the writer of Hebrews pulls four examples from the Old Testament in which the Father tells the Son, “You are My Son…(Ps. 2:7);” “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever…(Ps 45:6-7);” “You, LORD, in the beginning laid the foundations of the world…(Ps 102:25-27);” and “Sit at My right hand…(Ps 110:1).” These are words written from the Father to the Son in the Old Testament. While we can be confident that the Father spoke these words to the Son as to His divine nature in the counsels of eternity, we can be equally confident that Jesus read these at declarations from His Father to Him about His Divine nature in order to carry Him on in His Messianic work.

2. Jesus understood that He needed His Father to teach him His will so that He might be the perfect counsellor/teacher of His people. We find this taught in Isaiah 50:4-5 where the Spirit of Christ, speaking through Isaiah, spoke of His need to be woken every morning to hear from His Father. We must conclude that the “learning” Servant, is one and the same with the suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. Here, the Son of God, foretold the experience He would have in the days of HIs incarantion. This would be a further development of the idea that Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with both God and man” (Luke 2:41 and 50).

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