"A Salvation Long Ago Foretold" - 1 Peter 1:10-12

This past Sunday I had the privilege of preaching at Christ's Covenant Church in our continuing series on "Living in a Place that's not our Home" from 1 Peter. My text was 1 Peter 1:10-12, and the title of the sermon is "A Salvation Long Ago Foretold." You can find the audio here. At that same link you will find some resources I have provided that may be of assistance in reading the Bible in a gospel-centered, Christ-focused way.

Can one really read EVERY OT passage in light of the NT?

Under a previous post, a reader asked the following question:


"I've a question about connecting the OT to the NT. Although I do agree that the OT is connected to Christ, for instance, the institution of the sacrifices in Israel's worship; is it possible to interpret every single passage in the OT as pointing towards Christ? For example, how is it possible to interpret the deep friendship between Jonathan and David in the light of Christ?"

So, good readers, is it in fact possible to interpret every OT passage as pointing forward to Christ? If so, how? And what about the example of David and Jonathan's friendship?

The Resurrection & Reading the OT

According to Luke, one of the things Jesus stressed to his disciples immediately after his resurrection was how to read the OT:

"Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures." (Luke 24:27)

"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.' 45 Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46 and He said to them, 'Thus it is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses of these things.'" (Luke 24:44-48)

In these two passages, Jesus makes it clear that if his disciples are to read the OT correctly, they must read it with a view to his suffering/resurrection and the proclamation of that message to the ends of the earth. In other words, if we read the OT without attempting to understand how that particular passage in some fashion points forward to Christ and the gospel, we are not reading the OT in the way that Jesus commands us to. I would call this a "gospel-centered hermeneutic." Only in the light of Jesus' death/resurrection and the proclamation of that event do we have the hermeneutical key for reading the OT in all its fullness.