Seeing Christ in all of Scripture means seeing Scripture as Christ teaches you to. In Luke 24:25–27, Jesus appears to his disciples after his resurrection, and he tells them that they have been slow to understand and foolish in heart. And then he opens their minds and beginning with Moses, teaches them of all the things in the Scriptures of the Old Testament concerning his suffering and glory. And then further, in Luke 24:45–49, he teaches them of the things in the Law, in the Prophets, and in the Wisdom Literature concerning himself.
And so, those things involve, among other topics, the suffering of the Messiah and the glory of the Messiah. Jesus himself told the Pharisees in John 5:39–40 that you search the Scriptures, thinking in them that you have eternal life, but those Scriptures testify to me. This is Jesus telling us that the Old Testament, on its own terms, is a witness to him. He says down later in 5:46 that Moses wrote of me, yet you refused to come to me. He says in John 8:56 that Abraham saw my day and rejoiced.
He says in John 12 that Isaiah spoke of me and my suffering. So that Jesus himself is not only the Lord who produces the Scripture, he’s the Savior who forges its central redemptive subject matter. And as the resurrected Lord, he teaches all who would come to the Scriptures that from Genesis 3 forward until the end of the Book of Revelation, the Scriptures have not only their central redemptive subject matter but their climactic fulfillment and telos in Jesus Christ, crucified, raised, ascended, interceding and returning in glory to gather his people to Himself and bring them to beatitude and to judge the wicked and cast them from his presence forever. We see Christ in all of Scripture because our Lord has opened our eyes and taught us all things in Scripture concerning himself, from Genesis to Revelation.
Adapted from a transcript of the video.
