The Portrait of Christ
On the day Jesus rose from the dead, two of his disciples took a walk to Emmaus. On the way, while they discussed the events of the prior three days, “Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (Lk 24:15b-16). When this “stranger” asked what they were talking about, they related their grief and confusion. They thought Jesus would be the promised Messiah, but he had been crucified. And now some women were spreading a rumor that he had risen from the dead. At this, Jesus replied,
“‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lk 24:25-27).
What about you? Do you have a hard time seeing Jesus in the Old Testament? Do the New Testament’s references to the Old seem obscure? If so, the first thing the road to Emmaus should show you is that you’re not alone. Even those who knew him in the flesh had trouble seeing it.
We want the completed picture, perfectly detailed, right now. But that is not how God has chosen to reveal himself to us. Like the artist he is, God delights in his process, and he wants his people to share in it as well. Rather than presenting us with the finished portrait of the glorified Christ and his church, he begins with a simple sketch, the bare but recognizable outline of a people made in God’s image dwelling with him in a perfect world of his own creation.
Our role as his people is to know and love him, to study his words and his deeds carefully, to learn to recognize his hand in the themes and patterns he has painted for us in Scripture, and to trust in the steadfast love that he reveals to us there as he adds layer upon layer of color, generation after generation, bringing greater texture and detail to his portrait of Christ.
Peter tells us that the Old Testament prophets themselves yearned for a clearer picture of the salvation their sketches were pointing to:
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look” 1 Pt 1:10-12.
So, the prophets, even while they spoke to the events of their own times, understood that their words pointed to something more. It was clear to them that the finished work was generations away, but with each repeated theme, like another stroke from the artist’s brush, they saw the shape of what was to come more clearly.
In the language of theology, these repeatedly layered sketches are called types. Perhaps you’ve heard the term. Davd Murray gives the simplest definition I’ve heard:
A type is a real person, event, or thing that God has ordained as a predictive pattern or resemblance of Jesus’ person and work.”
Much of the New Testament interpretation of the Old comes from the recognition of types. And the recognition of types develops not simply from knowing a few verses, but from deep familiarity, from long, careful, prayerful, and repeated observation and meditation on the whole of God’s word. It comes from a deep desire like that of the prophets to know our God, to recognize his Christ, and, as each type is brought to its full clarity, to see more and more of his glory. And as we do, we will find ourselves saying, as did the disciples on the road to Emmaus, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Lk 24:32).
