God’s Word to Israel Served Christ to the Christian

“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 Peter 1:10-12

Today I want to introduce two terms. Some may already be familiar with them, or at least some synonym of them. They are not difficult or fancy words, but they are concepts that we should take seriously if we want to be mature Bible interpreters. The first is sometimes called full meaning and the second is called progressive revelation. These are two ideas that this very passage in Scripture teaches about Scripture. In other words, the Bible itself sometimes teaches us principles for interpreting the Bible. On the other hand, Peter is doing more than giving a hermeneutics lesson. He is unpacking yet another great privilege of the Christian, and that specifically of the believer living in the age of the new covenant, on this side of the cross and the empty tomb.

Doctrine. God’s word to Israel served Christ to the Christian. 

(i.) The Hebrew Scriptures had a fuller meaning than its messengers meant.

(ii.) The Hebrew Scriptures had Christ as its substance.

(iii.) The Hebrew Scriptures are properly Christian Scripture.

The Hebrew Scriptures had a fuller meaning than its messengers meant.

When I say “messengers” here, I mean two groups of messengers who were past messengers to this people group. A third kind of messenger is referenced here, contemporary to them, namely, ‘those who preached the good news to you’ (v. 12b). But Peter mentions two past messenger groups—one at the beginning of the passage and the other at the end. At the beginning he says, ‘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’ (v. 10b). So the first group of messengers are the Old Testament prophets. They were God’s mouthpieces to Israel; but though they were made infallible by the Spirit to write, it does not follow that they suddenly became omniscient. They remained human, and as such, remained curious.1 But then look at the end of the passage, where Peter adds, ‘things into which angels long to look’ (v. 12c). Why put angels in the same category? Two reasons: first, the word by which they are called, מֲלְאָךְ in the Hebrew and ἄγγελος in the Greek has as its primary meaning “messenger”; second, we see instances of this very thing in Old Testament narratives.

The LORD came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand (Deut. 33:2).2

So too the New Testament offers this commentary: “it was put in place through angels by an intermediary” (Gal. 3:19); and “the message declared by angels proved to be reliable” (Heb. 2:2); and Stephen in condemnation to Israel’s leadership, “you who received the law as delivered by angels and did not keep it” (Acts 7:53).

Peter’s ultimate point here is that there is a significant difference between what those messengers had access to and what the new covenant era Christian has access to. That’s what prophets and angels have in common. They served God by delivering His message, but they did so under a kind of veil that has been removed. I am not speaking of a veil of judgment, such as Paul mentioned that the Jews of his day who, “whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts” (2 Cor. 3:15), but rather a veil of time that would be removed in the fullness of time. But the fullness that matters for us here is a fullness of meaning.

Consider this definition.

The full meaning of a text is the sum of all that God means by its words, some of which are what the immediate human author understood and meant, some of which had to wait for another of God’s servants to draw out.

But the key is that because God is the ultimate Author of Scripture, no circle of true meaning can ever stick outside of that ultimate circle: “The sum of your word is truth” (Ps. 119:160). For visual learners, one can imagine a set of concentric circles taking up the field of any text, the largest circle being God’s whole intended meaning with these words and in relation to other words, and a series of circles narrowing into the main meaning—one of those inner circles being what the immediate, inspired author had in his mind; but it is the sum of God’s word that is truth.

Let me give a famous example of this “sum” or fullness, this involving David and our apostle here who wrote this letter. In his Pentecost sermon, Peter first quoted from Psalm 16, and then followed with these words:

Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption (Acts 2:29-31).

Did David understand all the particulars of the resurrection of Christ that Peter was announcing to that crowd? No. Nevertheless, Peter says that he spoke about the same and, at least in a smaller field of vision, foresaw it.

Now let me mention that second piece of grammar I introduced.

By progressive revelation I mean the way in which the Bible reveals more and more information about God’s plan of redemption as one moves from Genesis to Revelation, and especially with the coming of Christ in the New Testament.

The author of Hebrews says it like this:

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son (Heb. 1:1-2).

It makes sense that with Christ, we have one massive explosion of light and truth, whereas before we had, like those wisemen following from the East, guiding lights pointing forward. So we have another piece of imagery to add to our concentric circles of full meaning. Now picture a flower laying on its side—its roots planted all the way back in the Garden of Eden, and stretching to one stem through the books of Moses and the histories, budding here and there in the Psalms and Prophets, but then in the Gospels, a blossoming and the rest of the books of the New Testament spreading them out in full view. Notice that it is all one plant. There is nothing in the furthest extremities of the petals that was not packed into the DNA in that original seed.

The Hebrew Scriptures had Christ as its substance.

Now keep those circles and those arrows in your mind, because we must add a third feature to our picture. There will be a bulls-eye on a wall to the right, which is what is hit by the central arrow. Peter gives some specifics on that bulls-eye, that substance. What were they all inquiring about? He says, ‘what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories’ (v. 11).

First, what PERSON. When we say that Jesus is in all the Scriptures, from cover to cover, we are not just regurgitating the “pious” answer. It is a matter of life or death searching and finding. What did Jesus Himself say to the Pharisees?

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life (Jn. 5:39-40).

As we saw in our covenant theology class, that the gospel was preached beforehand to Abraham (Gal. 3:8). But what was the substance of that gospel, above all other promises? Jesus again answers: “Your father Abraham rejoiced he would see my day. He saw it and was glad” (Jn. 8:56). Another Old Testament saint who was made glad by seeing Jesus was Job. Do you remember where he said this?

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25-27)

All of the hope of God’s people is in a Person, a Person who is able to save.

Second, what TIME. Those who are expecting want to know what time it is because they want to know how much time is left. It is not mere ignorance that bothers them, but the anticipation. So when the disciples asked, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority’” (Acts 1:6-7). This was a natural expectation. They couldn’t know and you and I can.

There is a Christological principle about progressive revelation. Calvin comments here,

Nor was it indeed proper, while Christ the Sun of righteousness was yet absent, that the full light should shine as at mid-day.3

In other words, if Christ is “the light of the world” (Jn. 8:12), then we should expect a direct relationship between the nearness of His Person and the fullness of the time or season of truth.

Third, those SUFFERINGS and SUBSEQUENT GLORIES (of verse 11) go together, as there was an ordained pattern of humiliation before exaltation. Consider the end of Isaiah 52,

Behold, my servant shall act wisely; he shall be high and lifted up, and shall be exalted. As many were astonished at you—his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind—so shall he sprinkle many nations (Isa. 52:13-15).

So this pattern is retained in the New Testament, where “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him” (Phi. 2:8-9)—which, we will see later on in this letter, Peter applies as a pattern to the Christian as well. But the Hebrew Scriptures plainly drew a picture of a coming Messiah who would have all glory by first suffering. So plain was it that Jesus told those on the road to Emmaus, “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?” (Luke 24:25-26)

The Hebrew Scriptures are properly Christian Scripture.

One more glance back to those prophets of Old: ‘It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you’ (v. 12a). That is an interesting fact probably overlooked when we read this passage. Whatever else they did not know, Peter is telling us that they at least knew that there was an offspring coming, for whom God would unveil the fullness of the message they were delivering. There was an expression used by the prophets, that captures this limitation that was a limit for them and for their book, namely, that the message or vision reached a point where it would be sealed: “but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now” (Dan. 8:26).

But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, until the time of the end …  I heard, but I did not understand. Then I said, “O my lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?” He said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end. (Dan. 12:4, 8-9).

Some commentators think that Peter’s dichotomy between themselves and you refers to the extension from the Jews to the Gentiles, while others say it only has to mean the Old versus the New, or at least that first generation that the Apostles are writing to. It hardly matters whether this sentence is more or less restricted, because the implication remains and is taught throughout both the Old and New Testament. We saw in the class this morning how it was part of the promise to Abraham: “and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3); that the Christ would be “a light for the nations” (Isa. 42:6). But the very thing that was sealed by the end of the Old and made a mystery, Paul tells us,

This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel (Eph. 3:6).

The believing Gentiles would be the majority party to the covenant of grace first unpacked to Abraham.

Lest we forget, to be the chosen recipients of this revelation is not just about the hidden secrets of the universe. No, it is specifically ‘Concerning this salvation’ (v. 10a) or else ‘the good news’ (v. 12b). The Bible does not divide the Old and New by bad news and then good news, or no news and then good news—but it is all the unfolding of one gospel.

When we say that the Old belongs to “Christian Scripture,” there are several implications. One Christian Scripture—Old and New—is,

(i.) A necessary implication of who God is: e.g., immutable, faithful, etc.

(ii.) Good news to the Jew who would believe, being able to see the ultimate fruition of their ancestral heritage.

(iii.) A clear and coherent word to us who have a God-given, very human need for a single truth to all go together—and so it does!

(iv.) Not only a unified truth, but a unified story that you and I are in as Christians. Here we find that we have been included in what God has been doing from the beginning.

(v.) A vast treasury in Old for the Christian to rightly understand all of the imagery and idioms and many other contexts for interpreting the New, and equally the New’s interpretation of the Old.

Getting the message does not finally depend on any of these messengers who are creaturely and fallible, but Peter adds that they, ‘preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven’ (v. 12c). A faithful messenger of the gospel can be confident that he stands not only in a line of several millennia of messengers preaching the same gospel, but that we also stand in a delivery line from heaven. The Spirit guarantees its results.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it (Isa. 55:10-11).

Practical Use of the Doctrine

Use 1. Exhortation. Here we are taught that even ‘the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully’ (v. 10) Isn’t that interesting? When we hear stories of poor Christians in third world countries, who possess a single Bible, and sometimes mere pages from the Bible, and yet they pour over its words—we stand convicted. Many simple Christians put us to shame in their love for God’s word: memorizing it, going through it with a pen and highlighter like a fine-toothed comb. We can see why that puts us to shame. But why would the Old Testament prophets making such a diligent search put us to shame? Well, think about it. They “were entrusted with the oracles of God” (Rom. 3:2). Even they who had so much, in their right minds, knew so little of what they wanted to know!

We might say, “What more could they want?” when the correct question should be, “Why would anyone not want more?” and “Why don’t I want more?” Let us then search and inquire carefully.

Use 2. Consolation. There is a subtle practical aim in Peter’s reference to those ‘sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories’ (v. 11), which Calvin explains, “That they might bear submissively in their afflictions, he reminds them that they had been long ago foretold by the Spirit.”4 How does that work? Does it make any difference to you, when you are in the midst of suffering, to know that God marked you out before time, in Christ, to follow the same course of incomparable glory through temporary suffering? Not that God simply wove suffering into the fabric of the universe in some equal sense: How would that make sense of it for me? How is it any more comforting to know, purely and simply, that everybody gets hurt, everybody loses out, everybody dies? There is no transcendent hope in this kind of sobriety, but only a morbidity that pretends to be tough.

But if God has ordained the exact trials and pains to make of us something that outlasts this crumbling world—something that even resembled His Son—then these prophecies serve every Christian well, and therefore, as Peter says in his second letter,

And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts (2 Pet. 2:19).

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1. Calvin’s comment here is worth noting: “When, therefore, he says that the prophets searched and sedulously inquired, this does not belong to their writings or doctrine, but to the private desire with which every one boiled over” (Commentaries, XXII.2.37).

2. See also Psalm 68:17 — “The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary.”

3. Calvin, Commentaries, XXII.2.39.

4. Calvin, Commentaries, XXII.2.40.