Luke 24:46-47
Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
A cursory reading of the Old Testament does not give the reader the sense that the writers were thinking “Someday, Jesus of Nazareth will be crucified, die and rise from the dead, so I better write these mysterious things about parting Red Seas and bronze serpents in order for people to have useful images of baptism and crucifixion in their heads when he comes.” On the contrary, much of the Old Testament was written by “men moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21) but not by men who necessarily understood they were so moved nor by men who understood where the Spirit was pointing them. The author of the Song of Song, for instance, gives no indication he was writing a book that would be a goldmine of images for understanding Christ the Groom and his Bride the Church. Most likely, he thought he was just writing a wedding ode for a king. But since God was inspiring him, he had wound up writing a wedding ode for The King of the Universe. The same goes for the rest of Scripture. The Spirit of him who suffered and died inspired the whole thing from beginning to end. And since the Spirit is God, he knew how to write the story so we could see, as Augustine said, that the New Testament is hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is only revealed in the New. Today, thank God for the riches of Christ, hidden in his word.
