PROMISED BEFOREHAND
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God – 2the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures (Romans 1:1-2, NIV).
Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome, first introduces himself by telling them that he is ‘an apostle set apart for the gospel of God’ (v. 1). Having introduced himself, we would expect him now to name those to whom he is writing, but Paul has just mentioned the gospel and he gets so excited by the gospel that he has to say something more about it. So, he goes on to tell his readers a little about this ‘gospel of God’ that so animates and inspires him. And the very first thing he tells them about the gospel is that it is not new. On the contrary, he tells them that the gospel is something that God had ‘promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures’ (v. 2).
By ‘the Holy Scriptures’ Paul means the ancient Jewish writings that Jews call the ‘Tanakh’ and that Christians call the ‘Old Testament’ and he tells his readers that the gospel that he proclaims was promised in these writings. It is true that the gospel was good news about certain events that had happened in recent times. But while these events were recent, they had been foretold long ago in the Holy Scriptures. The gospel was new in one sense: in the sense that the events it described had taken place only a few years previously. But the gospel was not new in another sense: in the sense that these events had been prophesied centuries before. These events were, of course, events concerning Jesus: his birth, life, deeds, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension. But these events had not come out of the blue and they should not have been unexpected, for God had promised them through his prophets, and these promises were recorded in the Holy Scriptures for all to read.
Whenever Paul preached the gospel, he loved to remind his listeners that his message was not something that he had devised himself, but something that God had promised long before. So, when he preached in Pisidian Antioch, Paul told his hearers, ‘God has brought to Israel the Saviour, as he promised’ (Acts 13:23). And again, ‘We tell you the good news: what God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us’ (Acts 13:32). And when he defended himself before King Agrippa, Paul declared, ‘It is because of my hope in what God promised our ancestors that I am on trial today’ (Acts 26:6). Here Paul calls his faith in the gospel ‘my hope in what God promised our ancestors.’
We see this not only in Paul’s preaching but also in his writing. He was always concerned that his readers should know that the gospel had been promised by God in the Old Testament Scriptures. So, when he wrote to the Christians in Corinth, he summarised the gospel in these words: ‘Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve …’ (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). Christ’s death for his people’s sins and his being raised on the third day were events that had happened in Judea just a few years before, but they had been foretold in the Scriptures many centuries before. The gospel is neither an invention of Paul nor an afterthought of God.
In his repeated insistence that the gospel is promised in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, Paul is following the example of the Lord Jesus. In the last chapter of his account of Jesus' life, Luke tells of two disciples walking at dusk from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus. They were disheartened and despondent because they had thought that Jesus was the promised Messiah who had come to rescue his people from their enemies but their hopes had been dashed when Jesus had been arrested by the Romans and executed on a cross. As they walked towards the setting sun, a stranger came alongside and talked with them. They told him of their failed hopes, and he said to them: ‘How foolish you are and slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’ Luke continues: ‘And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in the all the Scriptures concerning himself’ (Luke 24:25-27). After they recognised that the stranger was the Lord Jesus, he left them, and they said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24:32).
Two things stand out in these verses in Luke. First, Jesus tells these two disciples that their problem is not that Jesus has been crucified, but that they are ‘slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.’ Secondly, their hearts began burning within them, not when they recognised the risen Jesus, but when ‘he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’ This is why Christians down the centuries have valued and studied and memorised the Scriptures of the Old Testament. If we want to understand the gospel, it is important to know the Old Testament, and if we want to understand the Old Testament, it is essential to know the gospel, for the both the Old Testament and the gospel are all about Jesus. While the Old Testament contains the gospel in promise, the New Testament, contains the gospel in fulfilment. While the Old Testament looks forward to Jesus and promises his coming, the New Testament looks back to him and promises salvation to all who trust in him.
Copyright © Ronald Nugent 2021
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