How to Read the Old Testament Like Jesus

We have seen in a multiple ways how Jesus is the key to unlocking the deeper meaning of Scripture. We looked at many Scriptures of the Old Testament and how Jesus interpreted them. There were many examples given of how Jesus appropriated Scripture in the situation of his day as well as how people today misappropriate the Scriptures, especially understanding the deeper spiritual connections like a wheel, that all converge on Jesus.
As we examined many Scriptures and how Jesus read them, there are several features we should consider as we strive to emulate him.

1. To read the Old Testament like Jesus is to read it with incarnational eyes. The whole Bible is God accommodating himself to people where they live and how they speak. The Bible speaks of God with human form and emotions because this is the only way we can even identify with God who is both holy other and also holy present with us.

          God came to his people in many forms and in many ways. He spoke in the Older Testament through angels and his presence went with his people with an ark, a tent, and a temple. Finally God comes as the promised Messiah as a man. He is the living Word who came and lived among us. I love the way Brad Jersak says this, “The Word of God is infallible, inerrant and totally inspired. And when he was about 18, He grew a beard.”[1]

          Jesus told his disciples it was better for their sake that he go because by his going he would send the ‘Paraclete’ (the Holy Spirit) who would make a multitude of little-Christs be present with his power around the whole earth (Jn.14:15-17). The whole world filled with the glory of Christ in the many nameless faces of people filled with the Spirit of God like they were filled with fire from heaven in the book of Acts (see Acts chapter 2, 4:29-31; 7:54-56; chapter 9 and so forth).

          The whole Christian life is incarnational where Jesus’ presence and power is demonstrated in the lives of God’s people. As God incarnated Himself in Jesus the Messiah which Christians celebrate and especially remember as “Christmas,” so people who take on the name of Christ or Christian are to be temples of the living God demonstrating the love of God before a watching world. The Holy Spirit teaches and guides God’s people in every nation to follow Christ and him crucified by his resurrection power of life, even over death.

2. To read the Old Testament like Jesus is to read it with Jewish eyes. The whole Bible is rooted in Jewish soil. Every writer of sacred Scripture read the Scriptures with Jewish eyes because their faith was grown and shaped from their Jewish heritage. Unless we begin to read the Bible with more awareness of a Jewish perspective, we will miss important parts of the Bible’s story and what it is trying to teach us. 

          The Old Testament was not for the Jewish people and the Newer Testament for Christians. The Old Testament was not for Jews and the Newer Testament for Gentiles. Both testaments testify to the one same God that is fully embodied and seen in Jesus. The Old covenant does not save the Jews and the Newer Testament saves Gentiles. God made one world with one gospel to save all nations and people by one Savior. Where humanity tends to fragment and divide, God comes to unite and make us one.

There is one body and one Spirit---just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call---one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:4-6)

There is one body of Jews and Gentiles together that make up the one true Israel of God (Eph.2:11-22; Rom.11:25-36). The church and Gentiles are grafted into the one olive tree---Israel (Rom.11:11-24). The Scriptures call us all to be one with God, one with ourselves, one with our neighbors, one with all peoples of all other nations. God even wants us to be one with all creation and the whole cosmos (Rom.8:18-25).

          A Jewish perspective is very real, earthy, and this worldly oriented. We need to leave the false dualistic ways of reading the Bible in Greek ways and return to reading the ancient texts like its original Hebrew hearers. Maybe then we will begin to see with new eyes that heaven and earth are closer together than we think and all of life is relational and not split up or compartmentalized into separate areas. Even the curse of death can be a blessing that takes us into different dimensions of reality that we simply have been too afraid to venture in before.

3. To read the Old Testament like Jesus is to read it with Ancient-Near-Eastern eyes. The ancient eastern cultural context of biblical times is vastly different from our modern scientific western world where North Americans reside and live in. There are so many ANE parallels to religions and cultures surrounding Israel, Hebrew parallelism and poetry, ancient science and cosmology. The Bible is full of Ancient Eastern cultural ideas and customs and if we don’t familiarize ourselves with some of the cultural background of the Scriptures, we will make them fit into our modern forms of culture and miss what the ancient forms were trying to tell us in our modern context.

          One of our problems today is we read the Bible with western eyes and not eastern eyes. We think like Greeks and not like Hebrews. Can we try to understand the Scriptures from a middle-eastern perspective rather than simply a North American one? Can we talk to middle-eastern Christians or even Eastern Orthodox people who have absorbed and drunk deeply from both wells of their Jewish history as well as the early church fathers? There are so many new perspectives to learn from people who have been immersed in eastern culture that can teach western Christians some insights they would never see on their own without their help.

4.  To read the Old Testament like Jesus is to read it with Rabbinic eyes. Jesus interpreted the Bible using ancient eastern rabbinic ways of studying the Scriptures. If we don’t know what Pesher or Midrash or allegory looks like or how it functions in interpreting ancient texts, we again will miss some of the deeper and impactful meaning the Scriptures are conveying to contemporary readers. There is a fluidity and beautiful scriptural tapestry of inter-textuality, competing scriptural traditions, and setting forth God’s Word in new situations that demand new interpretations and new meanings to be heard.

          Learning the Talmud whose history developed around the same time as the canon of the Newer Testament will give many insights into the interpretive tradition of Rabbinic Judaism as well as parallels between ancient Judaism and the Newer Testament and make connections never before discovered. There are even Jewish mystical teachings which may connect with insights from the later Christian mystical tradition. The vastness and depths of mining precious treasures from God’s Word is deeper and far greater than one can ever imagine.

5.  To read the Old Testament like Jesus is read it with western and eastern eyes from a global perspective. Jesus read the Bible not just from a Jewish perspective but a global perspective. His vision was one that contained the whole world in the secret that is open for all people every where for those who could hear and believe. Christianity is exploding and growing faster than ever in the global south and it time for western and European Christians to begin listening to where the Spirit of God is blowing the hardest. Nobody has a corner on Jesus and the wind of the Spirit blows wherever it may want to go (Jn.3:8).

          East and West, North and South all can come together, all united by one faith and one Lord, Jesus Christ the Messiah who was God’s missionary to the earth. If God had only one son and he was a missionary, this says something profound to all those who claim his Son’s name and believe they are his disciples and followers. God’s love and mercy and Son are for the person who lives across the ocean as it is to the one living in our neighborhood or alleys.

If Jesus was homeless, what does this say to the many refugees and homeless people who live in our own country? Jesus was God in the flesh and therefore all of life is sacred and holy to God no matter what status or place one finds oneself in society. God is not a respecter of persons and neither should we be (Rom.2:11; James 2:1-9).

6. To read the Old Testament like Jesus is to read it with spiritual eyes. The whole Bible points us to Jesus and without his Spirit indwelling inside each of us, we will be left to our own devices in faithfully interpreting God’s Word. It’s the Spirit of God that helps us discern what is spiritual and what is fleshly in the scriptures (1 Cor.12:10-16). It’s the Spirit of God that helps us know God as Abba Father (Rom.8:15). It is the Spirit of God that helps us discover our true identity in Christ (1 Cor.6:17; Gal.3:20, 27; 1 Jn.3:2).

          Not only are we to read the Bible with Jewish eyes but if we are to read it spiritually, I suggest we make ourselves very familiar with the Patristic early church fathers. There is a wealth of material to mine from those who lived their lives the closest to Jesus as well as contextualizing the scriptures into their own times and situations. Please don’t just read their conclusions and doctrines, read their biographies. Get to know the mind, the heart and the spiritual disciplines and spiritual encounters they had with the Living Lord that shaped their lives and thoughts.

7.  To read the Old Testament like Jesus is to read it with Jesus eyes. To read the Scriptures with Jesus eyes is to read it humbly, carefully, and with Jesus’ Spirit instinctively leading us a certain direction and taking us on a specific journey. To read the Scriptures with Jesus eyes is to cultivate such a deep faith and love for God that Jesus alone is our greatest focus and concern. To see Jesus is to see the Father and to see the father is to see Jesus (Jn.14:6-11).

          I pray this study of seeing how Jesus reads the Old Testament stretches your faith in a liberating and freeing way. My hope is that each of us would grow more and more into the image of God’s son that the whole world would come to see our love and unity for one another so that many more people would discover the great treasure of God’s kingdom hiding nearby, heaven always open to the next person who wants to walk through God’s gate which is none other than God’s Son, Jesus (Jn.10:9; 17:21-23; Rev.21:22-27).

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[1] This quote is from Keith Giles book, Jesus Unbound, p.135.

Canonical Course Corrections

The canon of Scripture that Jesus read and studied from is often referred to as the Old Testament. The canonical books that made up that testament are the Scriptures that Jesus was taught and studied from the time he was a child. When Jesus selects or makes some course corrections in his use of the biblical material, he is not doing anything different than what earlier Rabbis and prophets did in utilizing Scripture to one’s present circumstances.

          The Ten Commandments are actually listed in three places (Duet.5:6-21; Ex.20:2-17; 34:12-26). Progressive revelation of God’s Word is always putting new light onto new situations and one will see some slight variations in these three lists because the Jewish people are dealing with social changes when it came to new forms of idolatry, Jewish holidays, and agricultural changes. God’s Word is not static or unmoving but changes and accommodates people with their changing circumstances because God’s Word is a living document and not a dead fossil.

          God’s commandments and laws change over time to accommodate people where they are at in the moment of history. Israelites are told they can have slaves (Ex.21:2-11; Duet.15:12-18) but they are told in Leviticus 25:39-43 that they are not to have slaves because they were once an enslaved people themselves.

 What about worship and sacrifices? Deut.12:13-14 and Lev.17:1-8 spells out clearly that the only place to offer God sacrifices is in the sanctuary. Exodus 20:24-26 says you can make alters of stone and do sacrifices any where on God’s good earth.1 Then the later prophets come along and they say God does not want sacrifices at all but desires mercy (Hosea 6:6 & Micah 6:6-8). Jesus later affirms Hosea and Micah and not the earlier revelation in Matthew 9:13 and 12:7. God’s progressive revelation is fully expressed in Jesus God’s holy Son.

And the Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, ‘Is it lawful to divorce one wife for any cause?’ He answered, Have you not read that he who created them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and ‘the two shall become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.’

They said to him, ‘Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?’ He said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives,     but from the beginning it was not so    (Matthew 19:3-8).

The Pharisees quoted Deuteronomy 24:1-4 which is in the larger context of all the laws that God had given Moses to instruct his people (Deut.1:3). The Pharisees question was not just why did Moses say but as good biblicists, they knew the law came straight from heaven from God to Moses and then to the people. One could ask, then why did God tell Moses to say it?

          What is both shocking and surprising is Jesus undercuts this teaching by saying that the only reason God allowed this at this time was because of the hardness of men’s hearts. Understand, women could not divorce a husband and men were the only one who could file charges against their wives. There were many abuses going on so God gives a concession at this time and tries to limit the scope of abuse that was going on in that particular time. What sounds like God’s eternal Word is actually an accommodation to people of that particular time but this was never God’s eternal will. God hates divorce as Malachi 2:16 says (in some translations) because it does damage and harm to the whole family.

If we take Jesus words to heart and apply them to other difficult situations in the Bible, one could say, why genocide or polygamy or slavery or violence in the Old Testament? Jesus answer is not that God wants or even causes these things to happen but it is because of the hardness of our hearts that such things like these exist. The problem is not the Bible or God but us! How we read and misapply God’s Word. How we end up supporting the very things God actually hates.

          The Sadducees who don’t even believe in the resurrection of the dead try to trap Jesus who more followed the teachings of the Pharisees who did believe in the resurrection of the dead. They make up this ridiculous “what if” story of a woman who marries seven different brothers and ask, ‘whose wife will she be in heaven?’ Don’t you love these kinds of “Gotcha!” questions that people like to throw at followers of Christ? Jesus rebukes them for neither knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God (Matt.22:29). How well do I really know the Scriptures? Do I ever limit the power of God?

            Jesus goes on to reply to the Sadducees that in the resurrection, there is no marriage but people will be like the angels (Matt.22:30). Many people have taken Jesus statements here to mean that no one will be married in heaven, and even the strange teachings I’ve heard by the older generation that people will not even know their wives or husbands in heaven as if that would be a good thing? The issue here is not that nobody s married but everyone is married to Jesus in heaven. Jesus is the bridegroom and the community of faith is Jesus bride. 

          Here comes the big punch-line for Jesus in verses 31-32.  Jesus says,

And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ He is not God of the dead, but of the living.’

Mark 12:18-27 says something similar to Matthews account. Here two gospel writers quote Exodus 3:6 where God introduces himself to Moses at the burning bush and tells Moses his name. But how does one go from that Old Testament story to the cryptic God of the living and the dead is some kind of hidden code for “I will raise the dead?” We need to at least be honest that the deeper meanings of Scripture and their original contexts are not as important as the full meaning that Jesus and his disciples give to the Hebrew Bible. Christ is the key to unlocking all the mysteries of Holy Scripture and he is also the doorway into the deeper dimensions of God’s glorious kingdom.

          Probably one of the most often quoted Old Testament Scripture in the New Testament canon is Psalm 118:22-23. It is quoted several times in the gospels and even by the Apostle Peter (Matt.21:42; Mk.12:10; Lk.20:17; Act 4:6; 1 Pet.2:7). Is Jesus marvelous to our eyes or is he somehow obscured and hidden away by other ancient texts of Scripture? If Jesus is our rock and refuge, why do so many people act like it is the written word that is their rock and refuge rather than the Living Word Jesus? Do we stumble and trip over some of these difficult hard passages in the Old Testament or are we liberated like Jesus to view them through the lens of Christ and him crucified and resurrected and ascended?

          When I read the Scriptures with a Christ-centered focus of seeing the God of both testaments through the eyes of Jesus, it is almost too marvelous to behold. God in Christ is doing more than we can ever imagine or hope for. I love the way Keith Giles says it,

But When Jesus arrived that Word took on flesh and blood; that Word laughed out loud and cried tears of sorrow and joy; that Word breathed and sang and taught and healed and came alive like never before in history (Jesus Unbound, p.33).