Read Scriptures Like the Early Church
WANT TO UNDERSTAND THE OLD TESTAMENT LIKE JESUS AND HIS FOLLOWERS? IT'S EASIER THAN YOU THINK (5 Minute Read)
How did Jewish believers comprising the Early Church read and interpret the Holy Scriptures (Old Testament)? Easy! They read retroactively, or backwards from Jesus.
Like the hub of a spoked-wheel, Jesus is the “interpretive key” to unlock all OT Scripture and truly understand WHO the “Great I Am” is. To make sure we didn’t miss it, the post-resurrection Jesus sits beachside while eating fish in his transformed physical body and explains to his disciples “all the Law, Prophets, and Psalms are fulfilled in me.” He then opens his disciples’ minds as only a Rabbi who is the source material could. Two things jump out. It’s all about Jesus. And God enjoys a beach lunch with friends.
You see, for these early believers, finally, the great Jewish Expectation came to pass in their generation. The “Lord of Hosts” did what He’d always said He was going to do. He ended the exile, undid Eden at the cross, reconciled all mankind to himself by pouring out His spirit, and inaugurated a New Covenant Kingdom that operates on “Earth as in Heaven”.
Like the tearing of the veil, this access to knowing God’s intent and personality, unleashed floodwaters of insight. No longer would Scriptures get filtered through the interpretations of religious political leaders whom Jesus generally referred to as “stumbling blocks” or the harsher term “sons of satan”. With such a clear visual in Jesus, no longer is there room for the Holy Scriptures to be a “Rorschach Test” for what suits the powers and principalities. “The perfect image of God” came to earth and set the record straight once and for all; in the process providing a character study of the One True God that was so desperately needed.
In Jesus, God made “his higher thoughts and ways” accessible to all. The upside-down Kingdom of “turn the other cheek”, “forgive seventy times seven”, and “love those who hate you” in word and deed begins to make sense. These are those “higher thoughts and ways” of a God who is “not a respecter of persons” but wishes that “all would turn to Him” and be made new. When we read the below Scripture, we must acknowledge that humans, in our self-interest, could never have devised such a holy, loving, and selfless plan as executed by Messiah Jesus on the cross. As human beings, we’re used to solving our big problems with bombs and brutality. We too often flip the creation narrative and assume God must be like us, missing the whole point of Jesus’ mission to restore the “very good creation” to the expected vocation as “image bearers” of God.
ISAIAH 55:8-9 “Indeed, my plans are not like your plans, and my deeds are not like your deeds,” says the LORD, “for just as the sky is higher than the earth, so my deeds are superior to your deeds and my plans superior to your plans.
Paul is the perfect example of this renaissance of comprehension that encountering Jesus catalyzes. One day, a Pharisee of Pharisees, acting in the tradition of Jewish zeal, even holding the coats of those who murdered Stephen. That Jewish zeal of Paul is turned upside down in Kingdom-fashion on the road to Damascus when God reveals “His higher thoughts and ways”.
ACTS 9:3-5 Suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” So he said, “Who are you, Lord?” He replied, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting!
Paul saw the “One True God of Israel” exactly like the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. This encounter immediately sets off a domino effect of eureka moments for Paul. We can almost hear the gears turning in Paul’s well-trained rabbinic mind. Click, click, Jesus is the Messiah. Turn, turn, the long-awaited exile is over. Click, click, the new and better covenant has been ratified in blood. Turn, turn the Kingdom of God is at hand!
Next, we witness Paul’s response. It’s urgent and immediate. Within three days Paul participates in that new and better covenant as Ananias baptizes him, calling on the name of Jesus. Paul needs his “flesh to die”, a “washing and regeneration from sin”, and receives “a clean conscience towards God” in the process. Like a participant in the Jewish Marriage Covenant, Paul is a spotless bride and comes up out of the waters a new Paul, “like a risen Christ”. Most likely, Paul is filled with the spirit of God in the waters of baptism like so many today, or, maybe it happened in the home of Ananias. He writes about being “one with Christ”, “sealed for resurrection”, “an adoptive heir”, and even “I thank God I speak in tongues frequently.” Revelation will do that to the sincere. It’s the immediate about face (repentance) Jesus expects from His followers. Paul is now a “Messiah-man” and will help turn the world upside down with an ever growing assembly of “Messiah-people”.
So, how does this help modern readers? Knowing that all the Holy Scriptures are pointing towards Jesus gives us a framework to evaluate the entire OT. Paul applies this framework and sees Jesus everywhere. Like someone who finally got the right eyeglass prescription, Paul retells the entire narrative of Jewish history through the lenses of the death, burial, resurrection, and outpouring of God’s spirit. Below is just a partial example.
1 CORINTHIANS 10:2-4 And all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.
How fortunate for us that so much of what Jesus said and did is recorded in the Synoptic Gospels. This compass helps us to navigate tough OT passages where often, the context is not readily available to modern readers. The Gospels help train our ears to God’s personality as we read through the earliest OT interactions between God and human beings. Since we know that God does not change, therefore by applying the personality of Jesus to these much earlier OT interactions can help illuminate the stories in rich and unexpected ways. The same personality that teaches the sermon on the mount is familiar in the OT prophetic utterances announcing justice for the poor, widows, orphans, resident foreigners and the oppressed. Also, coupled with the transformative power of the Spirit inside of us, acting out the personality of Jesus in public is how we become the angled mirrors that reflect to our Creator the praise and worship He desires. My challenge to you today is to begin reading the Holy Scriptures like the early church did, retroactively from Jesus the Messiah. God bless!
© 2024 by The Apostles Handbook
