08/07/2026
Never apologize for reading the Old Testament as a book about Christ. Never back away from that conviction. And never pretend that we're somehow “reading Jesus into” the Old Testament.
To say that is to contradict Jesus and the teaching of his apostles.
Jesus taught that the Scriptures testify about him: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39).
After his resurrection, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Later that same day he said that “everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (24:44).
The apostles preached the same message, as we read today in Bible in One Year. Standing before King Agrippa, Paul declared that he was saying “nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would come to pass: that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:22-23).
The Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings each proclaim, in their own distinctive ways, this central message of Scripture. Some books do so more explicitly than others, but all bear witness to God's saving work in the Messiah who suffers, dies, rises again, and brings salvation to the world.
So whether you’re reading Genesis or Proverbs, Hosea or the Psalms, let your primary question always be: How is God using this narrative, this psalm, this proverb, or this prophecy to teach me about the salvation in Jesus the Messiah?
That is not imposing Christ upon the Old Testament.
That is reading the Old Testament the way Jesus taught us to read it.
_______
For more on this topic, see my book, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament, https://a.co/d/0aSzqBSn
