The Old Testament Witness to Christ and His Kingdom, Mentor's Guide, MG09

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T H E O L D T E S T A M E N T W I T N E S S T O C H R I S T A N D H I S K I N G D O M

come alive in his group without alienating and confusing some of the “weaker brethren” complaining about it?

The relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament can be effectively understood through the idea of progressive revelation , which affirms that God has revealed himself progressively and definitively throughout the history of his people, and finally through Jesus Christ. God in diverse manners and at different times made himself known to the nation of Israel in limited ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us through his Son. Jesus of Nazareth is God’s final and full revelation of himself, now testified of in Scripture. As Augustine suggests: “In the OT the NT lies hidden; in the NT the OT stands revealed.” The Testaments have a complementary relationship, the OT providing the introduction to the NT’s conclusion about Christ, the OT as anticipation to the NT’s climax about God’s salvation story in Christ. Furthermore, the OT prefigures Christ’s person and work fully embodied in the NT. While the OT is the ineffective former revelation of God’s salvation, the NT can be seen as the consummated latter and universalized call of which the OT is particularized to the nation of Israel. The connection of the testaments can be seen in the promise and fulfillment motif, especially in the way the NT affirms how the OT’s work is to provide compelling and definitive witness to the person of Messiah fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ in the history of the patriarchs, the nation of Israel, the Messianic prophecies, and the moral standards of the Law. The major motif that links all biblical revelation in Scripture is the promise and fulfillment motif. This theme affirms the unity of the Scriptures; God intends to reveal himself and redeem his people through the seed, the one promised to Abraham and his descendants. This seed is fulfilled in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The seminal text in Scripture outlining the promise is the protoevangelium , the first telling of the Gospel in Genesis 3.15. Here God promises the certainty of hostility between the serpent and the woman and their respective “seeds,” the bruising of the heel of the woman’s seed, and the crushing of the serpent’s head by the seed. In the NT, Jesus of Nazareth is revealed to be this divine seed commissioned to destroy the devil’s work and to redeem humankind to God. Yahweh’s covenant promise with Abraham serves as progressive continuation of God’s divine promise for a Savior. In his covenant with Abraham, God promised to supply him a “seed” who would bring redemption and restoration to Abraham’s descendants and all the nations of the earth. In the NT, Jesus of Nazareth is declared to be the seed of Abraham, the restorer and redeemer of creation and the world.

Restatement of the Lesson’s Thesis

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