When Jesus was asked about marriage, divorce, and remarriage in Matthew 19:4-6, Jesus quoted from Genesis 2:24 and, in essence, said that it means the same thing today: “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Jesus’ “therefore” draws a conclusion that every Jew living since Moses penned (“quilled”?) the passage and every Christian should draw.
Peter does a similar thing in Acts 3:22-23 when he quotes from Deuteronomy 18:15. Moses wrote: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.” Roughly fifteen hundred years later, Peter preached that this passage was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. That’s what the text meant when Moses wrote it and that’s what the text still means today.
In Colossians 4:16, Paul told the Christians in the church of Christ at Colossae and the church of Christ in Laodicea to exchange letters he had written to each congregation. It is unlikely that the situation in one congregation was an exact parallel to the situation in the other congregation. But the principles and doctrine taught in one letter would still be relevant to the situation in the other congregation.
In Isaiah 7:14, Israel famously wrote: “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.” While the application of the word “virgin” (‘almah) to Isaiah’s audience might be perplexing today, when Matthew applies the passage to Jesus in Matthew 1:23, we learn once and for all what the text was intended to convey.
In Hebrews 10:1, the Hebrew writer is speaking of the superiority of Jesus over the appurtenances of the temple and, more specifically, the tabernacle. He writes: “For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near.” While the Law of Moses was “substance” to the Jews who lived under its precepts, it has now become a “shadow” pointing to the real substance who is Jesus Christ.
When we sit down to study God’s holy word, we should always ask what did it mean to the people who first received the writing? With certain events, we should even ask what the message was to the audience who saw the event happen, and then ask what the event meant to those who read it for the first time. Stephen’s preaching in Acts 7 had a message for the Sanhedrin who were in front of him, then a slightly different message to Theophilus for whom Acts was written, and finally, a message for those beyond Theophilus who read Acts. I’m not suggesting the message is different but we need to ask the question for sure.
Paul Holland
