Christ Pervades All Scripture

 

"The Christian, who has truly met [Christ] in the New Testament realities, recognizes Him in these Old Testament shadows. Our minds fill in the missing details. The Old Testament pictures provoke our hearts and minds to recall the Lord and the things He said and did, and we fill in the Old Testament shadows with high-definition New Testament detail. But to believers in both Testaments, the glory of God was seen most clearly in His Son."

― Dr. John Snyder, Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically

 

Henry Law (1797-1884) was Dean of Gloucester in the 19th Century and a member of the Church of England’s Evangelical party. Today, Law is best known as an author of multiple works on books of the Old Testament, including Christ is All, a five-part work on the images of Christ and the Gospel in the Pentateuch.

Every believer may come to the Old Testament alongside Henry Law, to explore and admire the implications of the words of Christ in the Gospel of Luke,

 

Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures…Now He said to them,“These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Luke 24:27, 44

 

In the preface to Christ is All, Henry Law rejoices in the opportunity to behold the beauty of Christ on the pages of the Old Testament, and writes,

Christ pervades all scripture, as salt all waters of the sea, as light the brightest day, as fragrance the garden of choice flowers. 

To see this is my prime delight. To testify it is my happiest duty. Devoted loyalty to Him who is the first and last, the sum and substance of all Scripture, impels me. Earnest zeal for the undying souls of men constrains me. I know, and am intensely persuaded, that all peace, all joy and all salvation, are in Him. My eyes are widely open to the fact that men are blessed, and are blessings, just in proportion as they live ever gazing on Christ, ever listening to His voice.

Shame, then, and guilt and woe would be my portion if I should leave any effort untried to unfold His glorious image. Let me rather use every power of life and pen to magnify and exalt Him; beseeching men to ponder Him, to search for Him, to receive Him, to love Him, to follow Him, to serve Him, to commend Him, to live in Him, and through Him, and for Him. I would thus strive, the Spirit helping, to assail and melt and conquer hearts, that Christ may there be enthroned in all His rightful majesty, a beloved and adored Lord. There can be no excess in the faith and love and adoration and obedience of the only Saviour, the King of kings and Lord of lords.


behold your god: rethinking god biblically

 
Christian LifeSarah Snyder