When you pack up and travel, it’s impossible to get anywhere without going a direction. Scripture is like that. It’s directional. Rather than being a collection of principles flung together like iron shavings randomly clinging to a magnet, it's headed somewhere. It all ultimately points to Jesus Christ.

Because Christ is central to all that God speaks of in His Word, to all of history, and as the zenith of praise and worship, He is to be central to our life. This means He is not only to be central to our relationships, ambitions, thoughts, preaching, and ministry, but also to our interpretation of the Bible.

But what does this look like practically? Christ-centered Bible interpretation (what theologians call the “christological principle” in hermeneutics) is not so much like viewing Scripture through Jesus 3-D glasses but more like a compass, viewing all of Scripture as headed one direction that culminates in the person of Jesus. Reading Scripture without this awareness is like playing ball without a goal. It’s random and aimless.

What about Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1?

My primary reason for believing in Christ-centered Bible interprtation is because this is how the New Testament authors interpreted the Old Testament. For years I sided with those who dismissed the apostles’ example of Bible interpretation with, “They were writing under the leading of the Holy Spirit,” Or, “They weren’t really interpreting that Old Testament passage, they were just using it as an illustration of the point they wanted to make.” I understand why these scholars shudder at the thought of following the apostles’ hermeneutical example. They are protecting historical-grammatical interpretation that lets the original meaning of the text be the meaning of the text. And with this I agree. We should not let one passage of Scripture trump the original meaning of a previous passage.

For example, when Matthew uses Hosea 11:1 as a prophecy that Jesus would be delivered in Egypt just as Israel was delivered out of Egypt, does he really want the reader to erase what Hosea meant, 700 years before? Definitely not. We should interpret Hosea’s statement in its original context: God reminding Israel that He loved her as a son, proven by how He delivered her from slavery. But does following the New Testament authors’ example of interpreting the Old Testament force us to ignore, dilute, or tamper with the original meaning and setting of the Old Testament passage? I’d contend that it does not.  

Then what do we do with Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1? How can this point to Christ without changing what Hosea meant when he wrote it? Instead of re-interpreting the Old Testament through the eyes of the New (Jesus 3-D glasses), Matthew wants us to see that all of the Old Testament Scriptures ultimately point to the coming, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Jesus compass). One can label Hosea a prophecy, a type, a foreshadow, an allegory—in the end it makes little difference. What matters is that we see the unifying theme of all of Scripture: God raising up a redeemed people through whom He will bring glory to His name, and this all happens through the single person of Jesus. There is no doubt that Hosea specifically referred to God’s deliverance of Israel from Egypt, yet at the same time, this historical event foreshadowed God delivering Christ from Herod when Jesus’ parents fled to Egypt. Just because the Old Testament readers could never have known that Hosea’s writing foreshadowed the Messiah does not mean that it didn’t. In a similar way, the mystery of Christ to the Gentiles was not revealed until Paul’s time (Eph 3:6; Col 1:27), so many Old Testament passages could never have been understood as Christological until the New Testament authors looked back at them and told us so.

What the apostles’ method teaches us…

In his classic work, Him We Proclaim, Dennis E. Johnson concludes that the apostles’ method of interpreting the Old Testament (what he calls the “apostolic hermeneutic”) is given not only to teach doctrine and interpretation of Old Testament texts, but to “acclimate our minds to a way of viewing all of God’s dealings” as ultimately being fulfilled in His Son.¹ Too often, dispensationalists defending historical-grammatical interpretation argue that one cannot use a Christ-centered approach to interpretation and at the same time be committed to the original historical setting behind the passage as well as the grammar of the text. Johnson proves this otherwise. He uniquely promotes a Christ-centered, apostolic hermeneutic still grounded in historical-grammatical interpretation and demonstrates it powerfully in his work.²  In his book, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, Graeme Goldsworthy persuasively writes that, “The overall structure of biblical revelation finds its coherence only in the person and work of Christ.”³

The instinctive nature of Christ-centered hermeneutics

There's an instinctive, Spirit-led side to interpreting the Bible that cannot be reproduced through mathematical figures. The Enlightenment's elevation of reason to the basis of all authority has been unwittingly adopted by many Bible students today to the degree that they would say unless Bible interpretation is guided by cold and hard rules, it runs risk of falling into allegory or reading things into the text. Yes, reason and rules are important, for God expects us to use our brains and protect ourselves from wild interpretation. But we cannot afford to ignore the fact that in every sermon the apostles preached, we find Christ at its center, and in every instruction from the Old Testament epistles, we find the gospel as its foundation. The New Testament authors' use of the Old Testament shows us that all of the Old Testament ultimately points to Jesus Christ, and apart from Him, it is nothing more than a religious story.

How the Law vindicates Christ-centered interpretation…

Examples of Christ-centered interpretation can be found all over the New Testament, but one powerful case in point is found in Paul’s use of the law. Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, “Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith” (Gal 3:24). When we think “law” we normally resort to the Ten Commandments. And indeed, the Ten Commandments stood at the heart of God’s law to Israel, summarizing all 613 commandments (Ex 20; Deut 5). But the “law” was bigger than simply the moral commands under the old covenant. It included the ceremonial washings and civil codes, sprinkling of blood and laws for stoning idol worshippers. It included the seven feasts, the Sabbath, and God’s promises of blessing or cursing based on Israel’s behavior. All of this together Paul says has “become our tutor to lead us to Christ.” God’s law does far more than show us our desperate need for grace. It points to the personal embodiment and fullest expression of grace, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God.

Paul repeats this idea in his letter to the church in Rome, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom 10:4). The Greek word for end does not mean termination but fulfillment. It’s the Greek word telos and can be translated as “to fill up,” “to summarize,” or “to complete.” Jesus Himself said that He did not come “to abolish the Law or the Prophets...but to fulfill” them (Mat 5:17). It’s not like God tried to save Israel through the Law, figured out it wouldn’t work, and then turned to Plan B, sending Jesus. The Law was given to call out a people of God’s own possession for holy living, to be different from the world around them, to be a people through whom the world could see the riches of God’s glory and power. And it all pointed to the fullest expression of God’s person (Heb 1:3), Jesus Christ, the only one who could redeem any sinner. The law was given so that Israel would see their inability to keep it (Rom 7:7-11), realize the dreaded damnation that the law brings when one disobeys it (Gal 3:10; Rom 2:12; Rom 4:15), and turn to believe in the coming of the only One who would ultimately fulfill it. The Messiah would obey the law they failed to keep (Rom 8:3-4; Heb 5:8), endure the curse they deserved to suffer (Gal 3:13), and prove victory over the its damning consequences by being the only slaughtered Lamb to come back from the dead (1 Cor 15:55-57).

Objections to Christ-centered hermeneutics

Dr. T. J. Betts tells a story of his seminary days when he wrote a paper on Moses as a prophet, and on his twenty-fifth page he quoted Steven’s sermon from Acts 7:37, where Stephen calls Jesus the better prophet. The professor wrote on Dr. Betts’ paper, “You get to Jesus too fast.”

Some would respond with applause. “Yes, we cannot make the Origen error of allegorizing the text and reading Jesus into everything.” I agree. I was taught in seminary to seek out the original setting of every passage and test my interpretation with the simple question, “What did this author mean at the time he wrote it?” Or, “How would this author’s audience have interpreted what he said in their day?”

These questions are excellent tests for accurate interpretation. What it meant back then must be discovered before we ask, “What does it mean to me?” This is simple Bible hermeneutics, a fancy word for one’s method of interpreting.

But does this mean we cannot look for how this passage might illustrate, point to, or foreshadow the coming of Jesus? After all, the apostles did this repeatedly. Following are classic objections to Christ-centered hermeneutics:

• What right do we have to say what the Bible does not say? If the Bible does not directly mark an Old Testament event as a foreshadow of Jesus, then neither should we. Response: The New Testament authors did not eclectically pick certain Old Testament passages as prophetic of Jesus but instead viewed the entire Old Testament as pointing to Jesus. So instead of spending all our time trying to figure out which events point to Jesus and which don’t (which often leads to headache-producing categorizing of what is a type versus a shadow versus an allegory, something the New Testament authors hardly did), it is better to view the entire Old Testament as pointing to Jesus. The apostles saw all the Old Tesament as heading toward Jesus and sometimes our Western, age-of-reason perspectives can get in the way. Christ-centered hermeneutics is more a way of viewing Scripture than it is trying to figure out which passages point to Jesus and which don’t. If you back up enough and get the larger and larger context of a passage, eventually you’ll find that every passage ultimately points to Christ.
• The correct method of interpreting Scripture is historical-grammatical (based on the historical background of the passage and the text’s grammar), therefore, seeing an allegorical connection between an Old Testament event and Jesus is unwarranted. Response: Allegorical interpretation is not the same thing as finding allegories. Jesus Himself used allegories such as calling himself a vine and His disciples vine branches (John 15). We should not subject Scripture to whatever Christological fancy we fathom, and the historical context and grammar of every Old Testament passage will yield its single meaning. But this does not mean that this passage does not also point to illustrate or serve as an allegory of Jesus’ first or second coming. 
• Progressive revelation demands that when studying or teaching any passage, we not use books from the Bible written at a later time to interpret what we are reading now because those are based on different contexts and settings. Response: This rule is ardently defended by Kaiser but the New Testament authors didn’t seem compelled to follow it. Although we should not read any New Testament passage back into Old Testament passages, it would be foolish to ignore the New Testament authors’ use of Old Testament passages. The New Testament authors never changed the meaning of Old Testament passages, but rather shed more light on their Christological significance, in some cases, light that we could never have seen apart from their help. Progressive revelation teaches us that many Old Testament passages were only partially understood until the person of Jesus brought out the full meaning through His life, teaching, and ministry.

Endnotes 

1. Dennis E. Johnson, Him We Proclaim (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2007), 216.

2. In his classic, Toward an Exegetical Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1981), Walter C. Kaiser offers excellent reasons for the primacy of the historical-grammatical method. In his seventh chapter, “Homiletical Analysis,” he provides clear steps for finding the universal principle in a text that crosses over to modern day application, for finding the subject of the text, the emphasis of the text, the main and sub-points of the text, and then rewording these points so that the principle behind them is brought to bear on the present hearer. This chapter is handy for help in expositing difficult Old Testament narratives and poetries that the preacher finds hard to preach relevantly to an audience today. But Kaiser’s method stops short of showing how this passage fits into the redemptive theme of Scripture, finding its ultimate fulfillment in Christ.

3. Graeme Goldsworthy, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), 21.