04. The Identity of the Written and Living Word

The Identity of the Written and Living Word

Chapter 3

“In the volume of the Book, it is written of Me” (Psalms 40:7). The Holy Scriptures and the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ are so inseparably bound together, that whatever impairs the integrity and authority of the one correspondingly affects the other. The written Word is the Living Word enfolded: the Living Word is the Written Word unfolded. Christ is the Cornerstone of all faith, but that Cornerstone is laid in Scripture as a bed-rock, and to disturb the Scripture authority unsettles the foundation of the believer’s faith and of the church itself. Our Lord is found in the Word, in the letter; the Word is found in Him in the life. It is of the highest importance to guard the written Word from losing its firm hold upon us as God’s Revelation of Christ. There are two forms or modes of such revelation: first, to the soul in the Scriptures; second, in the soul by the Spirit, in the experience of His indwelling; but the Scriptural precedes the experimental as its basis, so that, without the former the latter is impossible in all ordinary cases.

It is therefore a delusion to suppose that, even if the Scriptures were destroyed or impaired we should still have Christ. This may in a sense be true in the case of one who has already known Christ experimentally, but two important questions arise; first, how did the believer get experimental knowledge of Him except through the Scriptures? and, secondly, how are others who do not yet believe in Christ and have no inner revelation of Him, to find the way to faith if confidence in the Scriptures is destroyed or undermined? Even if our faith in the Lord Jesus survives loss of faith in the written Word, what becomes of the authoritative note in preaching? The teaching of our Lord Himself on this matter is very explicit: “Search the Scriptures; for they are they that testify of Me.” “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them; for if they believe not Moses and the prophets neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” “Had ye believed Moses ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me; but if ye believe not his writings how shall ye believe My words?” (John 5:39; John 5:45; John 5:47; Luke 16:31)

Here is a progressive testimony. First those who honestly search the Scriptures find in them sufficient testimony to Christ; second, where there is faith in their witness there will be faith in His words; and, third, if men reject their testimony, even the miracle of His resurrection will fail to convince.

Here, curiously enough, is an outline of the whole history of modern rationalistic “criticism.” It began by not believing “Moses’ writings;” then it assailed the testimony of “the prophets,” then it proceeded to undermine the authority of Christ’s words; and at last, the confidence in His Resurrection from the dead. Our Lord thus in a few words hinted the course of rationalistic thought nineteen centuries later.

Explicitly our Lord, in His post-resurrection interview, declares that in the whole Old Testament He is revealed (Luke 24:27-44). His words are unmistakable and His witness is repeated: “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself,” declaring that “all things must be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms concerning Me.” Thus, on the way to Emmaus, He traced one progressive Messianic revelation throughout the three popular divisions in which the Old Testament workings were arranged. To understand New Testament records of Christ, then, we must know the whole Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi, for the two are as closely related as a medallion and its mold. The whole Scripture is the Mirror of the Messiah. This is verified from several points of view, as will appear later:

1. The Prophetical. Directly and indirectly His Image is forecast and foreshadowed (Genesis 3:15; Psalms 22, 110; Isaiah 53).

2. The Sacramental. Under the Covenant of the Law circumcision and sacrifices, both sweet savor and ill savor. Under the Covenant of Grace, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

3. Ceremonial. The whole Levitical System, Tabernacle and Priesthood; with the specific provisions and ordinances, Passover, Day of Atonement, Red Heifer, Leper’s cleansing, etc.

4. Historical. Events, like the Deluge, Exodus, Desert Journey, Conquest of Canaan; persons, like Adam, Abel, Abram, Melchizedek, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, David, Solomon, etc.

5. Evangelical. The four gospel narratives separately mirroring Him from as many different points of view; and jointly projecting His figure before us in a combined and complete witness.

6. Autobiographical. His testimony concerning Himself when its scattered fragments are gathered together witness to Him as the Son of Man and Son of God, prophet, priest and King; His parables and miracles forming part of His witness, and above all the crowning miracle, His Resurrection.

7. Apostolical. The writings of the New Testament generally, the Epistles to the Churches, to the Hebrews, the epistles, individual and general, all center in Him and exhibit His teaching and character—officium propheticum, officium sacerdotale, officium regium. The Scriptures portray our Lord in His three great offices, as Prophet, Priest, King; each incomplete without the others—prophet, to instruct and inform; priest, to atone and intercede; king, to subdue and control. As has been well said, as Shepherd, He bears the crook; as Suffering Savior, the Cross; as Victorious King, the Crown.[1] [3]Rev. Hubert Brooke

There is a strange, almost mystic, similarity between the Written and Incarnate Word, traceable even in many minor matters. For instance, the one Bible is a compound of a Hebrew and a Greek portion; the composition of the Old Testament covered about a thousand years, and that of the New, about one-tenth that time. The life of our Lord on earth spans about thirty-three years, in two marked divisions, the latter, the period of public ministry, about one-tenth of the former. The Old Testament dealt in types and parables, and the New in clear and direct doctrine and fact. Our Lord taught largely in parable, promising in the Paraclete a fuller, clearer revelation. Again, as the whole inspired Word consists of body and spirit, the letter and the deeper insight that interprets it and gives it force and value, so our Lord had a body of flesh, indwelt by the living Eternal Spirit. The parallel may be further followed in many lesser particulars, both suggestive and instructive. The Supreme Importance of Prophecy arises, most of all, from its being the link between the written and the living word. Prophecy, in its larger sense, covers two-thirds at least of all Scripture. It is not necessarily predictive, but may be preceptive, the result of insight into truth as well as foresight of the future. A prophet was one who spoke in behalf of God. Whatever therefore represents God’s message to man is prophecy: even history is indirectly prophetic so far as it has an ethical or typical bearing. Special study needs therefore to be centered upon the prophetic element in Scripture, and most of all with reference to Him who was the Supreme Head of all the Prophetic succession. The Scriptures represent the Lord Jesus Christ as the Final and Supreme Prophet of God (Deuteronomy 18:15-19, Hebrews 1:1).

Though other prophets were both called and qualified of God, they were finite and fallible, human and necessarily imperfect. Their inferiority to Him will appear if they are contrasted with Him, in the following particulars:

The only way to read the two testaments, intelligently and adequately, is to compare them, to set them side by side; to remember Augustine’s great motto, and be prepared to find the Lord Jesus Christ “latent” in the Old as He is “patent” in the New. The entire old Economy, including its history and prophecy, ritual and ceremony, is a parable of Christ, which finds its amplification, explanation and illustration in the history and economy of the new. If the Bible, in its two great divisions, be thus regarded and studied, correspondences will continually reveal themselves, sometimes so exact and varied as to remind us of the counterparts, so often found in nature, between forms and colors, vegetable and animal life, causes and effects; or of the rhythmic harmony of lines in a poem, where the words differ, but the metrical flow is the same. Not only is the Old Testament the parable, it is also the prophecy of the New; it forecasts the future which the New reveals and records. A devout writer has compared the Old Testament to a dissected map which he once gave to his children for their amusement, and which, when all its parts were accurately fitted, and the map turned over, revealed on the back the figure of a man, so that his form might be the key to the true place which each fragment was to fill. Were we sufficiently familiar with the entire structure of the Old Testament, we might find in it at every point this analogy with the New. The superficial reader overlooks the correspondence; but the close and careful searcher finds it in multiplied details, until he wonders that he could ever have failed to detect it. This, we take to be a most valuable department of apologetics. It imparts to the whole Old Testament a prophetic character, making it like the mystic memorials of Egypt, whose inscriptions waited for centuries for a Champollion to decipher and interpret them. Niebuhr reckoned these results the crowning achievement of the century; and the Word of God is still waiting for its Champollion fully to read its deep meaning, and discover everywhere the Christ of God. The true way to know the scriptures is to regard them as what Bunyan called “The House of the Interpreter,” to all whose apartments and chambers of mystery, the Lord Jesus Christ is the Magic Key.

Obviously only thus can the Messianic chamber be opened and entered; the three hundred predictions, there stored up, are enigmas whose only adequate solution is Himself. The Symbolical Chamber, with its Tabernacle symbolism, its priestly robes and rites, its fasts and feasts, sacrifices and offerings are meaningless until He is seen as the Tabernacle of God with man, at once High Priest and victim, offering and offerer. The Historical chamber is a picture gallery, with scenic paintings and personal portraits, and He, the living guide to explain the events and characters of all ages. There is the Sacramental chamber, with its ceremonies and ordinances of separation and purification; its anointings and washings, its symbols of fleshly mortification, of burial and resurrection, and perpetual feeding on heavenly food: all these are without meaning until they serve to typify identification with Him in suffering and service, victory and glory. The Inspired Written Word and the Eternal Living Word are forever inseparable. The Bible is Christ portrayed; Christ is the Bible fulfilled. One is the picture, the other is the person, but the features are the same and proclaim their identity.