Christ's Cherishing and Contemplation

Have you ever thought about how Jesus read the Old Testament? How he must have read it and thought, “This is me. This is my mission. This is my identity. This is my purpose. This is my Father’s plan.” How he must have cherished and pondered each word, growing in “wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52).

How he read the Torah, distressed at his people’s failings and rebellion against God, but seeing the hope of the new community he would form with a new spirit and a new heart, on which God’s laws would be written—engraved with his own blood.

I see him tracing the story in the historical books—the story of his people, and of himself, the new Israel. He must have meditated on how Abraham and Moses and David and others foreshadowed him, and how he would ultimately fulfill each role of prophet, priest, and king. He must have seen how he would surpass the failings of the Israelite and Judean kings, becoming the true King without sin and without fault and without fail. The Christ, for us.

Pondering on the Psalms and Proverbs, he would have perceived himself predicted and pictured, and seeing his and his Father’s wisdom laid forth and how he obeyed and embodied the wisdom of his Father—for he is Christ, the wisdom of God in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom (1 Cor. 1:24, 30; Col. 2:3). He would have publicly praised and prayed and passed on pilgrimages, singing the psalms, the mountains echoing his prayers to their Creator who walked on earth. We sing the same songs, only because He fulfilled them. We sing them with him, and in him, and for him.

He must have grieved with the prophets over the hardness of his people’s past, but also how they continued to reject God, and grieving over how they would ultimately reject him on the cross. Yet, seeing the hope that he would bring in the new eschatological age that the prophets cried out for and dimly saw. In him, we read the same and praise, knowing it is fulfilled.

This is the same Old Testament we read—and I suddenly cherish it more, seeing how he meditated on it, cherished it, pondered it, and grew by it. I don’t touch the same parchments he must have gingerly traversed through, but I touch the same words, and the same living words touch me by the power of the Spirit, his Spirit. By his Spirit, I see him too—for all the Old Testament speaks of his suffering and his glory. It all points to Christ.

"He [Jesus] said to them, 'How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?' And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (Luke 24:25-27).

"Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, 'This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:45-49).