The Firstborn

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, "Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, 'Let my son go that he may serve me.' If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son." --Exodus 4:22-23

I had not noticed till this week that God not only threatens to destroy Egypt's firstborn; he does so, more fundamentally, because Egypt has enslaved Yahweh's own firstborn, Israel. God gave Pharaoh a choice: my firstborn or yours. Pharaoh chose to continue his enslavement of God's firstborn, which led to Pharaoh's losing both--God's firstborn, Israel, and Pharaoh's firstborn.

But Pharaoh is not below us. His idolatry has been mirrored in my life and yours in a thousand ways just in this past week. Pharaoh chose self rather than God; so do you and I.

But for me (and for you?), God has not destroyed my own firstborn. He has destroyed his own firstborn. My idolatry is no less rebellious and sinister than Pharaoh's. But for some reason God has substituted his son for my sin rather than my son for my sin. As a result, Jesus has become the firstborn among a whole new order of life, into which I have been initiated by the Great Sacrifice.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. --Col 1:15

. . . Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood . . . --Rev 1:5-6

A Biblical Theology of Trees

1. God created mankind, giving us a tree of life and a tree of death (Gen 1-2)

2. We chose the tree of death, then as now (Gen 3; Eccl 8:8)

3. As the inevitable consequence of our rebellion, God declared that the ultimate curse would be on the one who hangs on a tree (Deut 21:23; Gal 3:13)

4. Jesus came, dying for us that cursed death on a tree (Acts 5:30; 10:39; 13:29; 1 Pet 2:24)

5. At the end of all things, because of Jesus' cursed death, the saints are invited to eat, once again, of the tree of life (Rev 21-22)

Hays: An Example of Intertextuality

Genesis 22:12 - "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not spared (ouk epheiso LXX) your son, your only son, from me."

Romans 8:32 - He who did not spare (ouk epheiso) his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Romans 11:21 - For if God did not spare (ouk epheiso) the natural branches, neither will he spare you.

Richard Hays comments:

The parallels between these three beloved ones "not spared" are too rich to be fortuitous. Abraham did not spare his son Isaac but bound him to the altar, only to receive him back through God's intervention. God did not spare his son Jesus but offered him up to death for the world, then vindicated him through the resurrection. God did not spare his people Israel but broke them off like branches for the sake of the Gentiles. . . . In each case, the rejection acceptance pattern plays itself out to the vicarious benefit of others.

Yes!

--Richard B Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (Yale University Press, 1989), 62

I had not read any Hays till this week, with the exception of his Rom 4:1 article for a ThM class. I'm finding this book extremely helpful, never prolix, written with a mastery of the English language that almost none of us share, at times overpressed, frequently frustrating (e.g. reading Paul's baseline hermeneutic as "ecclesiocentric" rather than "christocentric"); all in all, very profitable.

Paul Washer: Life and Revival

See more at www.heartcrymissionary.com.

The Fulfillment and the Fulfiller

I'm finding Greg Beale's edited volume of essays on the OT in the New very exciting and opening up a panoramic view of the Bible and redemptive history that I had begun to see in seminary but remained fuzzy to me even upon graduation. A representatively helpful essay is that by Francis Foulkes. At one point, toward the end of his contribution, he writes:

The Old Testament is an incomplete book; it is revelation developing towards a climax. There is the constant prediction of a 'day of the Lord,' a consummation, a unique revelation of the power and glory of God. . . . This hope is expressed in terms of the past, yet exceeds anything experienced in the past. There is to be a new David, but a greater than David; a new Moses but a greater than Moses; a new Elijah or Melchizedek, but one greater than those who stand out from the pages of the old records. There is to be a greater and more wonderful tabernacling of God, as his presence comes to dwell in a new temple. There is to be a new creation, a new Israel, redeemed, revived, a people made up of those to whom a new heart and a new spirit are given that they may love and obey their Lord.

Old Testament prophecy . . . needed only the coming of the One in whom all the prophecies of the Old Testament would be fulfilled, in whom all those themes of hope in the Old Testament would be gathered up and realized, the Fulfillment and the Fulfiller. . . .

In a word, Jesus.

Could the story of the Bible be put any better, in such short compass?

--Francis Foulkes, "The Acts of God," in Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts? edited by Beale, 364-65

Happy 30th Sweetheart

I love you more than ever. Thanks for making our home such a happy place to come home to.

Don't believe me? I have proof:

Promised Good

The Lord has promised good to me
His word my hope secures
He will my shield and portion be
As long as life endures

--John Newton, "Amazing Grace"

Needed that this morning.

The Antitype of the Entire OT

In biblical theology a "type" is a person, event, or institution that corresponds to a similar person, etc later in biblical history, its "antitype" (Jonah's three days in the whale is a type, Christ's "three days" between the cross and the empty tomb are it antitype; animal sacrifice and Christ's sacrifice; Passover, Lord's Supper etc).

But I'm learning these days that every type, ultimately, finds its climax and deepest meaning in Christ himself. Leonard Goppelt puts it this way:

In his own person Christ takes the place of temple and sacrifice and every other OT means of salvation. He is not simply the mediator of God's New Covenant; he is the incarnation of it. His place in typology becomes clear only when we realize there is no typology that by-passes Christ; he is the antitype of the entire OT.

--Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, 116

Goppelt: The Focal Point

With the following two sentences Leonard Goppelt jolted me out of the increasingly hypnotic slumber into which his 1939 doctoral dissertation on typology had been sending me.

If Jesus of Nazareth is 'the one who was to come,' if he is the goal of all biblical history, then he is the focal point that gathers all the rays of light that issue from Scripture. Now they do not shine miraculously here and there, but give a clear, unambiguous picture that is consistent with the salvation that Christ brings.

I would only change, under the influence of Jonathan Edwards' History of the Work of Redemption and typological writings in the second half of vol. 11 of the Yale Works, "biblical history" to "human history."

Leonard Goppelt, Typos: The Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament in the New, 58

Henry: Pleasure and Duty Reunited

Here's another fascinating section of Carl Henry's study of Christian ethics. He explains that pleasure and duty ought not to be seen as in antithesis, as in secular ethics, which tends to either place pleasure at the top and neglect duty, or duty at the top (Kant's categorical imperative) and neglect pleasure. Henry writes that Christian ethics

overcomes the tension introduced into the moral life when pleasure and duty are set in opposition. Secular ethics has issued on the one hand in an ethics of duty at the expense of personal pleasure, and on the other hand in an ethics of pleasure which threatens to negate duty. The failure to exhibit the organic relation of pleasure and duty is the deficiency which allows for such miscarriage in moral theory. . . . Actual Christian ethics shows the path of duty to be also the path of genuine happiness, and true happiness as the service of God and man. It reconciles the two - and here proves itself again to be superior to secular ethics.

--Christian Personal Ethics, 171