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

Warfare Not a Politically Correct Image

The images of warfare in the OT many agree provide us with keen insight into the witness of the Messiah as God’s warrior, the divine seed who will crush the head of the serpent and bring in God’s Kingdom in power and glory at the end of time. In a world torn by violence, civil strife, war, genocide, and unbelievable cruelty, many thoughtful Christians find any appeal to images of war as unhelpful and unclear. In the current era of international strife and armed conflict, these believers reason that any focus on images of war and violence only obscure the heart of the Christian message—the unfailing love of God in Christ. Those who believe that images of spiritual warfare are both integral and necessary to understand this role of the Messiah in the OT argue just the opposite. They claim that the Bible is full of strategic military metaphors applied to God’s people, and the reality of evil and satanic deception and interference make it unavoidable to ignore them. Given the fact that much of the OT history is understood through the lens of warfare, Yahweh against his enemies and those of his people, and the prophecies of the Messiah as God’s warrior to come, how are we to rightly interpret the images of warfare as they apply to the OT witness to the Christ? The images of the priesthood and their ministry are dominant and everywhere present in the OT. The fact that the Messiah would be a priest after Melchizedek is a central argument in the NT book of Hebrew’s understanding of the OT. Furthermore, the people of God in the NT are perceived as a royal priesthood, each member being given the unique and gracious role of an intercessor and advocate for others before the Lord as servants and care givers (cf. 1 Pet. 2.9-10). While many see this language of the priesthood as illustrative only, others believe that the images of the OT applied to Christ and believers today are invitations to a new kind of persona and identity. In other words, rather than a small group of clergy seeing themselves as priests, this view would hold that all believers have been made priests of the Most High God, as members of his people. For them, this is not mere figurative language but the concrete expression of our true identity in Christ. As Jesus is literally our High Priest before God and our Father, so we are members of a royal priesthood and ought to act, minister, and pray accordingly. To what extent are the types of Christ (and their extensions to his people as in this example of the priesthood) to be taken literally, and to serve as the basis of our true identity and walk in Christ? Are they mere object lessons, or true expressions of spiritual reality? Living as Priests . . . Literally!

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