The sonship of Christ

“Covenant, in a nutshell, is omnidirectional love: love between God and humans, love between humans and humans, and love between humans and the creation over which they have charge.”

Chapter Eight

THE GRAND REENACTMENT

A covenant was made, to which God was faithful and Israel was not. As the Son of God, the life of Jesus was a complete and faithful reenactment of Israel’s history. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is the whole point of the Bible.

Christ passed over the same experiential ground Israel traversed, but He was true to the covenant in place of Israel’s failure. The parallels between the two stories are deliberate and striking, although most of us have never been taught to read Scripture in a manner that would allow us to notice the intentional narrative linkage between the Old Testament and the New. Some branches of Christianity have gone so far as to completely negate the Old Testament and discourage people from reading it. It is even popular to print the New Testament alone, placing in millions of people’s hands only half of the book, thus making it virtually impossible for the reader to gain an accurate view of who Jesus was and why He came to our world.

Let’s take a different approach. Let’s pan way out and observe the seamless connection between the Old Testament and the New. In this chapter, let’s take in the inspired artistry of the Bible by summarizing its story in the most minimalistic fashion we can.

In the Old Testament, a young man named Joseph had dreams and was sent into Egypt to preserve his family, followed by Israel, the nation, relocating to Egypt to escape certain death (Genesis 42; 45:5). In the New Testament, another Joseph had dreams and then fled with His family into Egypt to escape the certain death of Israel, now reborn in the Christ child (Matthew 2:13-15).

When Israel came out of Egypt, God called the nation, “my son” (Exodus 4:22). When Jesus came out of Egypt, God said, “Out of Egypt have I called my son” (Matthew 2:15), forging an intentional parallel between the story of ancient Israel and the story of Jesus as God’s new Israelite son.

God’s son, Israel, passed through the Red Sea as they fled from the Egyptian army (Exodus 14:10-13). The apostle Paul says they were thus “baptized unto Moses . . . in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10:2, KJV). Directly after being baptized as Israel’s new corporate representative, Jesus was introduced to the world by God with the words, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:13-17). Jesus is relaunching Israel’s history, this time to please God with covenantal faithfulness.

Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years on its way to the Promised Land, yielding to temptation over and over again, finally entering into Canaan under the leadership of a leader bearing the name, “Joshua,” which means, Yahweh Saves (Exodus 16; Numbers 13). Christ spent 40 days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil without ever yielding, before He began His earthly ministry to lead humanity into the heavenly Promised Land under the name “Jesus,” which means Yahweh Saves, the Greek equivalent of Joshua (Matthew 1:21; 4:1-11).

Moses went up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God and then delivered them to Israel (Exodus 19-20). Jesus positioned Himself at another mountain in Israel, announcing that He had now come to “fulfill” the law, magnifying its relational significance, and pronouncing His blessings, or beatitudes, upon the people (Matthew 5-7).

Ancient Israel was composed of the twelve sons of Jacob and their posterity (Genesis 35:22-26). Jesus deliberately followed this narrative pattern by calling twelve apostles, from which emerged a spiritual posterity that would become the continuation of Israel, called the church, now composed of all nations (Matthew 10:1-4; Galatians 3:29; Ephesians 2:19-22).

Israel was called by God to be “a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation,” for the purpose of being a light to all nations, the intent being to incorporate into Israel every people group of the world (Exodus 19:6; Deuteronomy 4:5-8, 40, KJV). The church Jesus founded was the new Israel, called to be “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9, KJV), composed of people from every nation (Revelation 7), and given the mission of bringing the light of God’s love to the whole world (Matthew 24:14; 28:18-20; Revelation 14:6).

Wow, so all of that is there in the Bible, isn’t it?

Yes, it sure is.

The sheer literary art of the narrative is so breathtaking that it simply cannot be a coincidental production. The chances of more than forty authors, writing over a span of fifteen hundred years, composing a seamless story of such pure genius, without the guidance of a single Super Mind, are so remote as to be impossible. But that’s not even the most astounding part of it. The truly remarkable thing is that this story invites us to believe the very thing we secretly hope in our inmost hearts to be true—namely, that we are the objects of a faithful love that would rather die than let us go. One of the reasons we can know the story of Scripture is true is because it is true to our deepest longings for a quality of love that finds no perfectly satisfying match in this covenant-breaking world of ours. Jesus embodies what we intuitively know we are made for—perfect relational integrity.

And yet most Christians are never taught to even notice the deliberate narrative connection between the Old Testament and the New, let alone grasp what it means for the restoration of God’s love in human relations. Our focus has largely been directed to egocentric concerns for personal salvation. The theological vision of Christianity became so thoroughly saturated in Greek thought by the medieval church, that the distinctly Hebrew orientation toward covenant relationship is almost unknown to modern Christianity.

The Bible is telling us a story. The goal of the story is that covenantal love would be restored to the human race. Jesus is the central, towering figure of the story. He is the one in whom the entire covenant enterprise is finally and fully achieved. In Christ, we witness the grand reenactment of Israel’s history, this time with covenant faithfulness. In Him, everything God envisioned for Israel, and for the whole human race, has come true. In every act of His life, to the point of giving His life for his enemies as the climactic act of covenantal faithfulness, Jesus lived out God’s love, and, in so doing, He fulfilled the entire Old Testament narrative with all of its covenant ideals and relational imperatives. Paul clearly understood this when he summarized the whole Bible in a single sentence:

For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. 2 Corinthians 1:20

The grand narrative arc of Scripture lands with colorful bursts of light and life in the person of Christ. Everything God promised to the world through Israel, God’s unfaithful son, was now brought to pass in God’s faithful Son, Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus is a microcosm of Israel’s history, only this time the story is beautiful with unfailing love. This, then, is the sense in which the New Testament calls Jesus, “the Son of God.”

Let’s unpack the New Testament details now.

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