A Biblical Vision, Part I: Mastering the Old Testament Witness to Christ

Session 3: The History of Israel as Type and Analogy in the Old Testament’s Witness to Christ 39

B. Type refers to two distinct aspects of biblical truth

1. Aspect one: correspondence between two different historical situations or two distinct figures

a. Two historical situations, e.g., the Flood and baptism, 1 Pet. 3.18-21 – For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, [19] in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, [20] because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. [21] Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. b. Two distinct figures, e.g., Adam and Christ, Rom. 5.14 – Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the trans gression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

2. Aspect two: correspondence between the heavenly pattern and its earthly image

a. The divine blueprint revealed in the earthly tent/tabernacle

(1) Acts 7.44 – Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it, according to the pattern that he had seen.

(2) Heb. 8.5 – They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to