How do the Prophets apply to Christ?

Eschatology — the study of “last things” — is all about how God’s promises come together in the end.

Maybe we should call it Yeschatology — the study of how God’s promises find their Yes in the Messiah. For all the promises of God find their Yes in him (2 Corinthians 1:20).

So how do all the promises God delivered through the prophets find their Yes in the Messiah? Ah, that’s the central story of the Bible. That’s how the Prophets apply to Christ.

The Old Testament prophets called God’s people to be what God had created them to be: a kingdom under God, so the nations could see what they were missing. God rescued Jacob’s family from slavery in Egypt, forming them into his own nation at Sinai, a prototype kingdom of God for the world.

The prophets told them that if they refused to follow their heavenly sovereign’s leadership, it would all fall apart. God had promised the kingship to David forever (2 Samuel 7:8-17), but it began to fall apart just one generation later when Israel broke away from Judah to form a separate nation with their kings reigning in Samaria and golden calves to worship in Bethel and Dan.

Into this divided kingdom, God sent Amos. Amos warned the northern kingdom it would fall because they’d rejected God and his anointed ruler. It would be tragic, but not terminal. In his final address, Amos spoke of a time when God’s reign through David would be restored:

Amos 9:11, 15 (NIV)
¹¹ “In that day, I will restore David’s fallen shelter — I will repair its broken walls and restore its ruins — and will rebuild it as it used to be … ¹⁵ I will plant Israel in their own land, never again to be uprooted from the land I have given them,” says the Lord your God.

In 722 BC, Israel fell, leaving only Judah. Other prophets agreed that God would rescue the northern tribes as his kingdom, with a descendant of David reigning over them:

Isaiah 9:1, 6-7 (NIV)
¹ In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honour Galilee of the nations … ⁶ For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. ⁷ Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever.

But the kings of Judah misused the power God gave them too. Eventually God sacked them to prevent his shepherds “eating” his flock. That’s what Ezekiel said (34:10).

Once again, God promised that the exile would not be the end. God would restore his people into his reign through an anointed son of David:

Ezekiel 34:23-24 (NIV)
²³ I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. ²⁴ I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the Lord have spoken.

At every stage, the prophets repeat the promise that God would provide a descendant of David, his anointed, to restore them as a kingdom of God.

And that’s what the word Christ means: the anointed one, the ruler appointed by God. The Christ is the descendant of David who restores heaven’s reign to the earth, just as the prophets said.

It was almost 600 years between the loss of God’s reign (the exile) and the restoration of God’s reign in his Christ. Some despaired. Others speculated about how God would restore his reign. Some imagined God giving the nations what they deserved, crushing the oppressors so his nation could rise again. Some imagined God would save them if they were more obedient. But the New Testament gives a different testimony.

God’s Anointed restored God’s reign to the earth not through conquest over evil but by dying at the hands of evil and being raised up by God.

The gospel is God’s announcement that his anointed (the Christ) is in charge (our Lord). That’s God’s gospel — the good news God promised through the prophets:

Romans 1:1-5 (my translation, compare NIV)
From Paul, servant of Messiah Jesus, his agent assigned to announce God’s gospel, the message he promised through his prophets in the Old Testament about his Son. He was the physical descendant of David, named “Son of the divine ruler with power” by the cleansing Spirit when he raised up Messiah Jesus from the dead. Jesus is therefore our ruler, and we’ve received his favour—appointing us to call all the nations into trusting obedience under his authority.

At the end of the Old Testament, God’s kingdom had not been restored. The main goal of what God had promised through the prophets was only fulfilled in Christ. Ultimately, that’s what the prophets were talking about (2 Peter 1:16-21).

Conclusion

It’s not as if every verse in the Prophets is about the Christ. The Prophets delivered the word of the Lord to his people in their situation, during that whole time when the kingdom fell and God’s people suffered oppression under power after power.

But the resolution of that oppression arrived in the Christ. The final prophet who preceded the Christ echoed Isaiah’s words, declaring that the time for the kingdom restoration had come (Matthew 3:1-3). Heaven confirmed the anointed ruler was here (Matthew 3:16-17). The Christ overcame their enemy (Matthew 4:1-11), declaring the kingdom of God in Galilee — the region lost first (Matthew 4:12-17).

Heaven’s anointed announced the gospel of the kingdom, embodying its restorative power (Matthew 4:23).

That’s the gospel we echo and embody: the good news of heaven’s reign arriving on earth, in the Christ.

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him (2 Corinthians 1:20).

What others are saying

T. Desmond Alexander, From Eden to the New Jerusalem: Exploring God’s Plan for Life on Earth (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity, 2008), 89–90:

To comprehend the importance of the New Testament emphasis upon the coming of the kingdom of God, we need to appreciate that this involves the re-establishment of human beings as God’s viceroys. As Dan McCartney has perceptively observed, ‘The arrival of the reign of God is the reinstatement of the originally intended divine order for earth, with man properly situated as God’s vicegerent.’ By way of expounding this, McCartney argues that the reinstatement of human vicegerency centres on Jesus Christ, for as a human he receives the kingdom.

George H. Guthrie, 2 Corinthians, BECNT (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015), 111:

The promise to Abraham of blessing for all the nations of the earth (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; Gal. 3:16; Eph. 1:13; 3:6), the promises to David concerning his messianic descendant (2 Sam. 7:12–16; 1 Chron. 17:11–14; Pss. 89:3; 132:11; Isa. 11:1–5, 10; Jer. 23:5–6; 30:9; 33:14–18; Ezek. 34:23–24; 37:24; and Rom. 1:4), and the promise of a new covenant given through Jeremiah (31:31–34)—all have their fulfillment in Christ.

Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: 2 Corinthians (London: SPCK, 2004), 12:

There is the Yes to all the promises God made in the Bible. For over a thousand years Israel had lived on those promises, trusting that the God who had called Israel to be his people would lead them forward, and accomplish in the end what he had planned and purposed. Paul’s whole life was built on the belief that in Jesus of Nazareth God had done exactly that: Jesus was the Messiah, the culmination and crown of Israel’s long story, the answer to all Israel’s hopes and prayers, the fulfilment of all the promises. God had finally said Yes, and had said it so loudly through Jesus’ resurrection that it was now echoing all around the world.

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