Christ The Theme Of The Bible – Norman Geisler

The law said love others as yourself; Jesus showed in His death that one can love others more than oneself. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And “in this is love perfected with us, . because as he is so are we in this world” (I John 4:17). So the precepts of love from the Old Testament are not only re- affirmed by Jesus but are transcended in the perfect love of the New Testament.

The Old Testament law had punishments connected with it, and hence, fear of the consequences of disobedience. The New Testament idea of love elevates the motivation for love and therefore eliminates the need of fear. “For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love” (I John 4:18). Once Jesus had shown, by His teaching and by His own life and death for sinners, that one ought to love others more than oneself, and not merely as much as oneself, love was lifted from the level of natural or reciprocal morality to the supernatural plane of sacrificial ethics.

That is, once love was lifted from the level of “I love you because this is what I want you to do to me” to the higher plane of “I love you because God first loved me,” then love could be perfected and fear could be cast out. For if one has this “perfect love,” he no longer operates on the plane of reciprocal consequences but on the plateau of divine constraint.

As John put it, “Be- loved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (I John 4:11) or, again, “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (I John 3:16).

This book is dedicated to two faithful friends in Christ, Axel and Phyllis Lorin. Quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James Version (AV), from the American Standard Version (ASV), and, unless otherwise noted, from the Revised Standard Version. Copyright © 1968 by Tue Moopy BIBLE INSTITUTE oF CHICAGO Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-26411 Manufactured in the United States of America AE D+ ob < CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Preface x 1. Christ Is the Key to the Bible 9 2. Christ in the Old Testament 31 3.

Christ in Both Testaments 53 4, Christ in Every Section of the Bible 69 5. Christ in Each Book of the Bible 88 6. The Word of God: Personal and Propositional 111 Bibliography 124 Subject Index 125 126 Scripture Index PREFACE This book grows out of the conviction that Christ is the key to the interpretation of the Bible, not only in that He is the fulfillment of Old Testament types and prophecies, but in that Christ is the thematic unity of the whole span of scrip- tural revelation.

Christ claimed on several occasions to be the central message of the whole sweep of Old Testament Scripture (Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:39; Heb. 10:7; Matt. 5:17). This work is an attempt to take seriously the affirmation of Christ who said, “Everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke 24:44). The Christological approach to the Bible in these pages is not centered primarily in a study of the types, or even of the prophecies of the Old Testament, but rather it is an attempt to see Christ as the unity and unfolding message of the whole of Sacred Writ.

Christ is presented as the tie between the Testaments, the content of the whole canon, and the unifying theme within each book of the Bible. The emphasis here is upon the Christological unity of the Bible as it relates to the great sections and structure of Scrip- ture. Ina sense, this is a Christ-centered survey of the Bible. There is no direct theological purpose of this book, but it does address theological questions, such as the inspiration of the Bible and the deity of Christ. However, these grow out of or relate to the central theme of the presentation of Christ as the clue to a correct interpretation of the Bible.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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