Tag Archives: Him We Proclaim

“Covenant” is the biblical way to say “relationship.” But “covenant” refers to a particular kind of interpersonal relationship. There are all sorts of interpersonal relationships in society: superficial acquaintance, business contracts, employment agreements, international treaties, friendship, casual dating, marriage, and more. Biblical covenants between the Lord and human beings are like some of these in some respects, and radically different from others.

The biblical way to say “the relationship of God and humankind” is “covenant.” To “get the lay of the land” that shows how all roads (even faint footpaths) lead to Scripture’s “metropolis,”—to “follow the current” of each biblical stream—we need to see the Bible as the book of the covenant, the book of the bond between our Creator-Lord and us, his creature-servants.

As we read our Bible and see prophets, priests, and kings in the historical narrative, we recall that, by virtue of his office, every prophet, priest, and king in Israel’s history (and every judge and every father) was in some way a landmark directing Israel’s hopes ahead to the final and preeminent Prophet, Priest and King, Jesus the Anointed.

Landmarks: Biblical elements and motifs that are built into the offices of covenantal mediation that God gave Israel, offices that now converge in Christ, who is, in the end, “only mediator between God and man” (1 Tim. 2:5).

How can we, should we, read and preach the Bible like Peter and Paul? After all, we are not apostles. We have no special inspiration of the Holy Spirit that secures our inerrancy as interpreters! From that obvious difference between them and us, some conclude that we must not employ the apostles’ interpretive methods to Old Testament texts on which they have not commented. I believe that we should draw just the opposite conclusion.

Because the Spirit conforms believers to the image of Christ in purity and love by deepening our faith in Christ and grasp of the implications of the gospel, our preaching must fix our hearers’ minds and hearts on the transforming glory of Jesus the Christ.

Because Christ is the overarching theme of Israel’s Scriptures, as well as the New Testament, we want our preaching to do for Jesus what God intends the Bible to do for Jesus: namely, to direct faith to him as the only mediator between God and man.

Because Christ is the overarching theme of apostolic preaching, he must be the overarching theme of our preaching.

Apostolic homiletics does not assume that the Christocentric fulfillment of all the Scriptures is focused exclusively in the atonement.

Rather, apostolic homiletics presents Jesus the anointed as achieving a comprehensive redemption not only from sin’s guilt and penalty but also from sin’s tyrannical control, from sin’s conscience-defiling influence, from sin’s mind-darkening deception, and eventually from all of sin’s toxic byproducts—including death itself.

Apostolic homiletics does not merely exhort hearers to imitate Jesus as example (turning gospel indicatives into dutiful imperatives). Nor does apostolic homiletics let hearers merely contemplate Christ’s once-for-all redemptive accomplishment without responding in a living faith that expresses itself in obedience (savoring Scripture’s indicatives while discarding its imperatives).

Rather, apostolic homiletics proclaims Jesus’ unique and inimitable redemptive achievement on our behalf, for the sake of calling us to faith, and then calling us to Christ-like love and living in gratitude for grace and assurance of the Father’s favor.

Apostolic homiletics does not assume that every text testifies to Christ in the same way.

Rather, apostolic homiletics exhibits various ways in which the Old Testament’s diverse genres and texts diagnosed humanity’s need for restoration to true knowledge, reconciliation for holy communion, and rescue and rule in righteousness. And apostolic homiletics show the various ways in which the coming of the supreme Prophet, Priest, and King was anticipated, promised, and foreshadowed in the era of promise.

Apostolic homiletics is not a Trinity-ignoring Christomonism.

Rather, apostolic homiletics is robustly Trinitarian: its focus on Christ as the divine executor of the Father’s creational purpose and as the divine-human mediator of the covenant of grace increases our appreciation for the engagement of the Father and the Spirit in the great works of creation, providence, and redemption.

Let’s start by sketching what apostolic Christocentric, redemptive-historical interpretation and proclamation of the Bible looks like, as we see it exemplified in the New Testament.