Yesterday we looked at the biblical presuppositions we need to hold if we are to understand and profit from Christ’s Old Testament appearances. Today, we will highlight four lessons that these appearances teach us.
1. The appearances reveal constant activity
As the Angel of the Lord, Christ was continually at work throughout the Old Testament – revealing (Ex. 3), redeeming (1 Kings 19:35), covenanting (Gen. 15:8-21), interceding (Zech. 12:1-13), protecting (Ps. 34:7), comforting (Gen. 16:7-13), commissioning (Judg. 6:11-23), judging (1 Chron. 21:1, 14-15), etc. John Walvoord sums it up.
The combined testimony of these passages portrays the Son of God as exceedingly active in the Old Testament, dealing with sin, providing for those in need, guiding in the path of the will of God, protecting His people from their enemies and, in general, executing the providence of God. The references make plain that this ministry is not occasional or exceptional but rather the common and continual ministry of God to His people. The revelation of the person of the Son of God thus afforded is in complete harmony with the New Testament revelation.[1]
According to Anthony Hanson, the New Testament writers central affirmation “is that the preexistent Jesus was present in much of Old Testament history, and that therefore it is not a question of tracing types in the Old Testament for New Testament events, but rather of tracing the activity of the same Jesus in the old and new dispensations.”[2] Hanson argues that wherever the Septuagint reads kurios, Paul reads Christ, and he criticizes the following statement by C. H. Dodd as both too sweeping and too tame. Dodd said:
Wherever the term kurios, Lord, is applied to Jehovah in the OT. Paul seems to hold that it points forward to the coming revelation of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.[3]
This statement is too sweeping because Paul does not always follow this rule (Rom. 9:28). It is too tame, says Hanson, because, for Paul, kurios does not only point forward to Christ, but actually claims Christ present as Lord in the Old Testament. Irenaeus, one of the early Church fathers wrote of the Son’s constant Old Testament activity:
The Scripture is full of the Son of God’s appearing: sometimes to talk and eat with Abraham, at other times to instruct Noah about the measures of the ark; at another time to seek Adam; at another time to bring down judgment upon Sodom; then again, to direct Jacob in the way; and again, to converse with Moses out of the bush.[4]
2. The appearances diminish as the Word increases
The appearances of the Son are especially prominent in the early part of redemptive history, and then gradually diminish with the passage of time. Why? Partly because as revelations of the written Word increased, revelations of the pre-incarnate Word were less necessary. But the rarer and rarer appearances also created a growing longing in God’s people for a fuller and longer-lasting revelation of the Son on earth. And that brings us to our third reason.
3. The appearances prepare the Church for Christ
Alec Motyer wrote that “the anthropomorphic stresses of the Old Testament climax in the supreme anthropomorphism, the incarnation.”[5] This is referring to the frequent figurative references to God having eyes, ears, mouth, etc. Whether or not that is true, it is certainly true that by these repeated appearances of the Son of God in human form, the church of Christ was prepared for His arrival in human flesh. Michael Barrett argues that these appearances “helped to generate the theological mindset that expected and anticipated the visible manifestation of God.”[6]
Charles Drew graphically illustrates how these appearances of the Son aroused love and longing in His people’s hearts:
Lovers cannot bear to be apart. Phone calls and long letters do not satisfy the longing to be together; they only intensify it. The Old Testament appearances of the eternal Son are like those phone calls and letters. They are temporary, incomplete, and distant, designed to awaken in us a longing for God’s permanent, intimate, full, and gracious appearing in the Incarnation.[7]
4. The appearances prepared Christ for his saving work
As well as preparing the Church and giving believers a foretaste of the Messiah’s mission, the Christophanies also prepared Christ and gave Him a foretaste, an appetizer of His own messianic mission. He had a foretaste of His prophetic ministry by delivering God’s messages to needy humanity (Gen. 16:10). What delight He had in delivering these messages of hope and assurance and in seeing the response of the recipients. He had a foretaste of His priestly ministry by His glorious presence in the Tabernacle and by His ascending to heaven in the flames of Manoah’s sacrifice (Judg. 13:19-20). He had a foretaste of His kingly ministry by judging the heathen (Gen. 19), and by leading and ruling His people (Ex. 23:20-23). So, in the Old Testament, we see Christ longing to fully take up His roles of prophet, priest, and king. Arthur Pink said:
He graciously adopted such methods to indicate how much he longed for the fullness of time when he should put away their sins and bring in an everlasting righteousness for them.[8]
The pre-incarnate appearances of Christ have been portrayed as expressions of holy impatience. They give an insight into the earnest desire of Christ to be involved with the sons of men. As the old Christians in the Scottish Highlands used to say to me, “Christ was enjoying trying on the clothes of his incarnation.”
For further study, see the DVD and Study Guide series on the Angel of the Lord from HeadHeartHand Media.
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[1] John F. Walvoord, Jesus Christ Our Lord (Chicago: Moody Press, 1969), p. 53.
[2] Anthony T. Hanson, Jesus Christ in the Old Testament (London SPCK, 1965), 172.
[3] Charles H. Dodd, Romans (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1942).
[4] Irenaeus, quoted in Richard Watson, Evidences, Doctrines, Morals and Institutions of Christianity, (New York: T. Mason and G. Lane, 1836), 1:501
[5] Alec Motyer, Look to the Rock (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1996), 78.
[6] Michael Barrett, Beginning at Moses, 154.
[7] Charles D. Drew, The Ancient Love Song (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2000), 28.
[8] Arthur W. Pink, Gleanings in Joshua, (Moody Press), 143.
