Easter Sunday: In Accordance With The Scriptures
“And he said to them, ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
~ Luke 24:25-26
This quote was spoken by Christ after His resurrection when walking from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. It is taken from a larger passage unique to Luke’s gospel, in which Christ is said to have narrated how the entire story of Scripture points to His Passion and resurrection. I find this passage very moving; I wish I could’ve heard all that the Lord taught, and be nourished by Him in both mind and heart. Indeed, the two disciples that Jesus spoke to were themselves deeply stirred: “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”
Now resurrected, Christ wanted His Church to be equipped with the knowledge that the resurrection was planned, predicted, and foreshadowed long before the tomb was emptied. For centuries beforehand, God witnessed to this glorious event through the long, patient, and inspired composition of the Hebrew Scriptures. So, while we are not given the details of what Jesus said on the road to Emmaus, we are challenged to read the Scriptures as He did — with Christ as the central subject and aim. Paul grasped this reality when he said that Christ “was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:4, italics mine).
Rather than a few isolated verses, Christ wants us to see how all the Scriptures testify to His life, death, and resurrection. While the New Testament is proliferated with Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Christ, there are, for example, many other figural readings that aren’t developed in it.1 Consider the story of Joseph: a “beloved son” who’s betrayed by his brothers, lowered down into a pit (a common symbol for death in the Bible), but raised from the pit, and ultimately elevated to a place of great authority. The very men who gave Joseph up to death are afterwards saved and forgiven by him when they cry out to him for mercy. Joseph’s life points us to Christ, the beloved Son of God, who was betrayed by sinners, given over to death, and raised up again for the forgiveness of those who cry out to Him for mercy, making us — His enemies — the beloved sons and daughters of God.2
Or consider the Exodus and the various ways it reaches its fulfillment in the gospel. One such example is the Passover lamb, whose blood protected the Israelites from God’s wrath. Christ is the ultimate Passover lamb, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world by being slain on its behalf (John 1:29).3
Or consider the many prophets, like Isaiah, who wrote some of the most explicit prophecies concerning the suffering and atoning work of Christ (e.g., Isaiah 53). Jeremiah prophesied that God would make a “new covenant” with His people (Jereiamiah 31:31-34), and prefiguring Christ, the “weeping prophet” was unjustly thrown into (another) pit, but vindicated and raised up out of it (Jeremiah 38:1-13). And Christ Himself said that the prophet Jonah prefigures His death and resurrection: “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40, Jonah 1:17).
These are only a few scattered instances for how the Scriptures point to and are fulfilled in Jesus. One only needs to read the New Testament to get a much fuller account. But if we take the claim seriously that all of Scripture points to Christ, then we are called to search and find, to inquire and hear the many gospel-echoes that resound throughout the Old and New Testament. The absence of Christ’s entire teaching on the road to Emmaus should perhaps create this longing to search for ourselves, to take up the calling of discovering how the Scriptures and all of history are only properly understood through the lens of our resurrected Lord.
It is important that Christ chose to end His walk with His two disciples, not over text, but over a meal. Still not recognizing that the man they were speaking to was Jesus, their “eyes were opened” when He reenacted the Eucharist — taking, blessing, breaking, and giving them bread (Luke 24:30-31; cf. Luke 22:19). After one of the most stirring and profound teachings in history, the two disciples came to “taste and see” the Lord — and, indeed, that He is good — through their fellowship with Him.4 After all, that is what all of Scripture, all of Christian teaching and discipleship, all of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection are aimed toward: eternal communion with our risen Lord. Alleluia!
1 Richard B. Hays, “Reading Scripture in the Light of the Resurrection” in The Art of Reading Scripture (2003), p. 234.
2 Gary A. Anderson, “Joseph and the Passion of Our Lord” in The Art of Reading Scripture (2003), pp. 206-215.
3 For a short and good book on the different Exodus themes that show up (or, “echo”) throughout the Old and New Testament, check out Echoes of Exodus by Alastair Roberts and Andrew Wilson (2018).
4 Importance of the final scene raised by Richard B. Hays in “Reading Scripture in the Light of the Resurrection,” p. 231.
Chase Chumchal is about to graduate with a degree in English lit and a plane ticket back home to Texas. He is excited but will miss his friends.