A Cradle for the Cross

by William Mundt

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”  |  Luke 24:27

The man on the edge of a crowd cannot always fully grasp what a speaker is saying (think of Monty Python’s “blessed are the cheesemakers” comedic sketch). But not hearing isn’t just a source of humour; it can be serious. The young person tuned in to loud music on his earbuds does not hear the screeching tires of the car coming up behind him. The sound sleeper does not hear the smoke alarm warning of the kitchen fire. Not hearing can be dangerous.

More dangerous though is spiritual deafness—not hearing clearly what Christ says. We hear that God is love, for example, and incorrectly conclude that He isn’t really worried about sin. Of course, ours is not the first generation with such hearing problems. On more than one occasion, Jesus chided the people crowded around Him: “Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember?” (Mark 8:18); and “He who has ears, let him hear…. Hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matthew 13:9, 13). In this second example, He is quoting the Old Testament prophecy of Isaiah: “‘You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.’ For this people’s heart has grown dull, and with their ears they can barely hear” (Matthew 13:14-15; cf. Isaiah 6:9-10).

    So what did Jesus say? And why did people have so much trouble hearing what He said?

When Jesus talked about His impending suffering and death, the disciples did not want to hear it. We read: “Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, ‘Far be it from You, Lord!’” (Matthew 16:21-22). After it was over and He had risen from the dead, they remained confused—hence the conversation on the road to Emmaus: “And He said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:27).

For Luther, the Old Testament is the cradle for the cross.

Not only the followers but especially the foes of Christ refused to believe what they knew from Scripture. Jesus reminded them: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about Me, yet you refuse to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). It was not that the Old Testament was confusing and lacked clarity but, on account of sin, neither prophecy nor proclamation was understood.

The idea that Christ is found and proclaimed in the Old Testament is not a recent invention either. Some may have been deaf to what God said to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but there were others who heard and understood. Peter explains: “The prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you” (1 Peter 1:10-12).

Like Jesus, Martin Luther is often misquoted or misremembered. Luther desired to know nothing but Christ crucified (“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” – 1 Corinthians 2:2). It is said that Luther insisted Christ could be found on every page of Scripture and thus when reading any portion of the Bible one should ask: Was treibt Christum? (“What drives Christ/what brings us to Christ?”). The words may not actually have been Luther’s, but he certainly found Christ in every book.

Luther stressed that it is the historical sense which supplies true and sound doctrine. The Old Testament is full of real people and events that prefigure and foreshadow Christ. This is why Luther can write that “the true, the only sense of the Psalms is the Christ-sense.” For Luther, every part of the Bible proclaimed Christ in a way communicated by the literal sense. “I do not know anything in Scripture except Christ crucified,” he says. When we look in the Bible, we “see the sufferings and cross of Christ depicted everywhere, so that we are able to say with St. Paul that we know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Not every page may shout Christ; but, as others have noted, there is always at least a whisper about Him.

For Luther, the Old Testament is the cradle for the cross. In his “Introduction to the Old Testament,” Luther writes:

There are some who have a small opinion of the Old Testament, thinking of it as a book that was given to the Jewish people only, and is now out of date, containing only stories of past times. They think that they have enough in the New Testament and pretend to seek in the Old Testament only a spiritual sense…. But Christ says, “Search in the Scriptures, for they give testimony of Me.”…. And what is the New Testament except an open preaching and proclamation of Christ, appointed by the sayings of the Old Testament and fulfilled by Christ?…. Therefore, let your own thoughts and feelings go, and think of the Scriptures as the loftiest and noblest of holy things, as the richest of mines, which can never be worked out, so that you may find the wisdom of God that He lays before you in such foolish and simple guise, in order that He may quench all pride. Here you will find the swaddling-clothes and the manger in which Christ lies, and to which the angel points the shepherds. Simple and little are the swaddling-clothes, but dear is the treasure, Christ that lies in them.

Throughout this introduction, Luther gives examples of some of the cradle prophecies and passages in the Old Testament, beginning with the first promise of a Saviour given to Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God (Genesis 3:15). Laws are given, and worship, priesthood, and a tabernacle are established so that God’s people will always be reminded of God’s presence and of the promise that the Messiah would come as deliverer from the misery of sin and death.

Josh McDowell, author of the book Evidence that Demands a Verdict, speaks of more than 300 prophecies that find their fulfillment in Christ. Some are general, others are very specific. Eve even believed her firstborn must be the promised Saviour—at his birth she proclaims, “I have gotten the man”—but she was mistaken. Abraham is assured that through his seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 22). Deuteronomy 18:18 speaks of a great prophet (cf. Matthew 21:11). King David hears of one who will always sit on his throne (Jeremiah 23:5; 2 Samuel 7:12-16) and speaks of a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek (Psalm 110:4/Hebrews 5:5-6). 

Isaiah (52:13-53:12) provides vivid details of the crucifixion (as does Psalm 22) long before Christ was born. Isaiah also gives us the (today somewhat contested) passage about the virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14/Matthew 1:22-23) and the Spirit of the Lord resting upon the Messiah (Isaiah 11:2/Matthew 3:16ff). Another prophet promises that Bethlehem will be the Messiah’s place of origin (Micah 5:2), and that wisemen from the East will worship Him (Psalm 72:10, Isaiah 60:6). The forerunner is proclaimed by Isaiah (40:3) and fulfilled by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:1-2). Miracles and parables will be part of His ministry (Isaiah 35:5-6/Matthew 9:35; and Psalm 78:2/Matthew 13:34). His betrayal, arrest, suffering, death, and resurrection are all foretold. Yet He prayed for His persecutors (Luke 23:34), just as Isaiah predicted (53:12). He died despised and deserted (Psalm 109:25/Matthew 27:39; Psalm 38:11/Luke 23:49).

Space does not allow us to detail all of these prophecies. But in the fullness of time, they found their fulfillment in Christ. “When the fullness of time had come,” Paul writes, “God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).

Jesus and the New Testament writers repeatedly appeal to the Old Testament prophecies as proof of His Messiahship. After reading from Isaiah 61, Jesus declared, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). Likewise, He referenced Psalm 110 to challenge those who doubted Him (Luke 20:41-44).

In the same way, Peter declares: “To Him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name” (Acts 10:43). Elsewhere he proclaims Jesus to be the “precious corner stone” (1 Peter 2:5ff) and thus the fulfillment of Old Testament promises. Paul, meanwhile, says that the Gospel was “promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 1:2-4).

In Genesis 3, God goes looking for Adam and Eve after they have disobeyed Him. His question—“Where are you?”—is a classic example of the Gospel. Groups asking, “Have you found Jesus?” have it backwards. It is God who seeks us—continually. He says: “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will hear you. You will seek Me and find Me, when you seek Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord” (Jeremiah 29:11-14).

Christ is present in the entire history of Israel. He is always present as the God who speaks and the Saviour who is prophesied. And He gives Himself to His chosen people whenever and wherever His promises are believed and received. Thus, the grace of God, the reality of faith reckoned as righteousness, stretches from the First Adam until the return of the Second Adam (Hebrews 11).

Because of this, we can see Christ throughout the Old Testament. Even the Exodus out of Egypt and the passage through the sea—arguably the central story in Old Testament thought—can be understood as a shadow of the resurrection from death to life won for us by Christ. For through His resurrection He has rescued us from slavery in “the domain of darkness” and brought us into a new land—“the kingdom of His beloved Son” (Colossians 1:13).

Indeed, Paul tells us Christ was ever present throughout the Exodus story. The water from the rock from which they drank in the desert, for example, is a symbol of His presence; for “the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). Concerning this connection, Luther explains: “In this way [Paul] applies and relates all these figures and signs which have happened to the people of Israel through God’s Word, to Christ. For wherever God’s Word is, there is Christ.”

Luther taught that, wherever faith lives, God is present for His people—just as in the days of Jesus. Just as He still is today. For Luther, every part of the Bible proclaimed Christ, not in a way separate from the literal sense but in a way that was communicated by the literal sense. Luther “desired to know nothing but Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2), and we continue in that legacy when we speak the Christ-filled message of Scripture—that is, the Christ promised, patterned, and present already in the Old Testament, from the beginning of time.

———————

Rev. Dr. William Mundt is professor emeritus of Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Print this article