ABSTRACT: “And the Rock was Christ.” Some have interpreted Paul’s claim in 1 Corinthians 10:4 as a departure from grammatical-historical exegesis, or even as evidence that Paul gave credence to unhistorical Jewish myths. A close reading of his words against the backdrop of the canon, however, shows that Paul was reading Moses the way Moses intended. In the Pentateuch, Moses identifies the two water-giving rocks in the wilderness with Yahweh himself. Later in the Old Testament, the psalmists and prophets further identify the rock with Yahweh and look forward to a new exodus. In the Gospels, Jesus fulfills Old Testament expectations for that new exodus, with himself as the bread from heaven and water-giving rock. And in 1 Corinthians, therefore, Paul embraces the united perspective of the biblical authors. In drinking water from the rock, the Israelites drank from a type of Christ, who now lives as the thirst-quenching spiritual Rock of the church.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked Jim Hamilton, professor of biblical theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, to explain Paul’s typological exegesis in 1 Corinthians 10:4.

Peter Enns identifies his “aha moment” — when he realized that what he was taught about the Bible and how to interpret it in his evangelical background was untenable — as coming to his understanding of 1 Corinthians 10:4: “They drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” Enns relates how Professor James Kugel explained in a lecture

that water coming from the rock twice — once at the beginning of the wilderness period (Exodus 17) and again toward the end of the 40-year period (Numbers 20) — led some Jewish interpreters to conclude that the “two” rocks were actually one and the same, hence, one rock accompanied the Israelites on their 40-year journey.

To help his readers feel the force of the problem, Enns asserts,

Let me put a finer point on that: no rock moved in the Old Testament, but Paul said one did. Paul says something about the Old Testament that the Old Testament doesn’t say. He wasn’t following the evangelical rule of “grammatical-historical” contextual interpretation. He was doing something else — something weird, ancient, and Jewish.

I am going to argue in this essay that we should regard this moment as an “oops” rather than an “aha.” That is, Enns’s conclusions do not stand up to examination. While the apostle Paul has interpreted the Old Testament in accordance with the intentions of its authors, Peter Enns has not.

Before we look at the Old Testament contexts and New Testament claims of fulfillment, let us observe that Paul does not say exactly what Enns says he does. Enns claims that Paul says the rock moved, and he takes that as conclusive evidence that Paul believed an ancient Jewish myth that was not, in fact, true.1 Note, however, that Paul identifies the rock as Christ, in which case a possible interpretation is that Paul does not endorse the Jewish myth at all but rather says that the people drank from Christ, their rock, and that Christ followed them through the wilderness.

In what follows, we turn our attention to the Old Testament contexts of Exodus 17 and Numbers 20, and move from there to how the ideas developed in the rest of the Pentateuch and later Old Testament writings. We will then consider the way Jesus seems to present himself as the fulfillment of the water-from-the-rock episode, before returning to Paul’s treatment in 1 Corinthians 10.

Water from the Rock in Exodus and Numbers

Michael Morales has persuasively suggested that the whole of the Pentateuch is chiastically structured, centering on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16, with the two episodes of water from the rock standing across from one another in the literary structure.2 This suggests that Moses, author of the Pentateuch, intended the two episodes to be read in light of one another.3

Given the topic under discussion, it seems particularly significant that the first of these episodes entails Yahweh standing before Moses on the rock that Moses is to strike, from which the water will flow for Israel to drink: “Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink” (Exodus 17:6). It is almost as though, by placing himself on the rock that Moses is to strike, Yahweh means to identify himself, in some sense, with the rock, so that when Moses strikes the rock he implicitly strikes Yahweh, as a result of which the people’s need for water will be met.4

Some points of contact between the contexts of Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 are worth observing. For instance, after the water from the rock in Exodus 17, Israel defeats Amalek, and Moses builds an altar and names it “Yahweh is my banner” (Exodus 17:15), the term rendered “banner” reflecting the Hebrew nēs. After the water from the rock in Numbers 20, Israel defeats Arad (Numbers 21:1–3) but then speaks against God and Moses (verse 5), in response to which the Lord sends fiery serpents so that many Israelites die (verse 6). When the people repent, the Lord instructs Moses to “make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole” (verse 8), and the term rendered “pole” in Numbers 21:8–9 is the same as the term rendered “banner” in Exodus 17:15, nēs. The only other place this term is used in all the Pentateuch is Numbers 26:10, making its presence in the contexts that immediately follow the two water-from-the-rock episodes all the more noticeable.

Given the myth of the moveable well that supposedly followed Israel from Exodus 17 until they entered the promised land in Joshua, it also would seem noteworthy that they come to a well in Numbers 21:10–20. In terms of narrative space, Israel has the rest of Numbers 22–36 and all of Deuteronomy before they enter the land. This includes the defeat of Sihon and Og (Numbers 21), the Balaam oracles (Numbers 22–24), and the sin at Baal Peor (Numbers 25), followed by the war against Midian (Numbers 31). So it would seem that they still face some time before they enter the land of promise, which is to say, the Pentateuch itself shows that the rocks Moses struck were not Israel’s only water sources during the forty-year wilderness wandering.

“At no point does Moses indicate that a literal stone or a moveable well followed Israel through the wilderness.”

The two narratives in question, Exodus 17 and Numbers 20, stand in literary relationship to one another, but at no point does Moses indicate that a literal stone or a moveable well followed Israel through the wilderness.

Water from the Rock in Deuteronomy

Note again that the apostle Paul does not, as Peter Enns suggests, endorse the Jewish myth of the moveable well. That is, Paul does not say that the rock from which the water flowed in Exodus 17 followed Israel through the wilderness, giving them water across the forty-year period. Rather, Paul says that Israel drank from the “spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). Why does Paul call it a “spiritual Rock,” and where would he have gotten that idea? As a step toward an answer for why Paul would refer to a “spiritual Rock,” I make two related observations. First, Paul identifies this “spiritual Rock” as Christ. Second, the KJV and ESV capitalize “Rock” in the phrase “spiritual Rock,” which seems to indicate that these translation committees understand Paul to be calling God the “spiritual Rock,” with Paul then identifying Christ with God.

As to where Paul might have gotten these ideas, I contend that he got them from the Old Testament itself, beginning with Moses. In Deuteronomy 32, Moses calls God “the Rock” five times (all with the Hebrew term ṣūr *for “rock,” which is also in Exodus 17:6, whereas Numbers 20:8–11 uses *selaʿ):

Verse 4: “The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he.”
Verse 15: “But Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked; you grew fat, stout, and sleek; then he forsook God who made him and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.”
Verse 18: “You were unmindful of the Rock that bore you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth.”
Verse 30: “How could one have chased a thousand, and two have put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had given them up?”
Verse 31: “For their rock is not as our Rock; our enemies are by themselves.”

Perhaps reflecting the incident in Exodus 17:6, when Yahweh stood on the rock, so that when Moses struck the rock it was as though he struck through Yahweh to smite the rock, in Deuteronomy 32:13 there seems to be an identification made between Yahweh, Israel’s “Rock,” and the “rock” from which they drank:

32:13: “He made him ride on the high places of the land, and he ate the produce of the field, and he suckled him with honey out of the rock [selaʿ], and oil out of the flinty rock [ṣūr].”

Since both terms for “rock” appear in Deuteronomy 32:13, the one from Exodus 17:6 (ṣūr) and the other from Numbers 20:8–11 (selaʿ), it seems that Moses means to reference both passages.

Note, too, the proximity of the “rock” statements to one another in the poetry of Deuteronomy 32 — Yahweh is the rock whose work is perfect (verse 4), and he suckled his people with oil from the flinty rock (verse 13), but they were unmindful of Yahweh, their rock (verse 15). It also seems significant that Moses does not speak of prosaic and historical water from the rock but rather speaks poetically in verse 13 of honey from the crag and oil from the rock. Hereby Moses accentuates the life-giving provision the Lord made for his people, and simultaneously he forges a connection between the identity of Yahweh as the Rock for Israel and the physical rock, struck by Moses, from which water flowed.

I want to point out here as well that teasing out the sophisticated metaphorical and theological implications of the kinds of statements Moses makes does not entail a departure from grammatical-historical interpretation. No, understanding all the fullness of what Moses has written across the Pentateuch demands that we understand his grammatical constructions and the historical meaning of his terms in their literary context. We get at poetic, symbolic, metaphorical meanings by going through grammatical-historical interpretation in canonical context, not by departing from these necessary interpretive controls.

Before moving on to references to the water-from-the-rock episodes later in the Old Testament, we should make two observations on what Moses meant to communicate in the Pentateuch. First, we have no indication that Moses intended his audience to understand that the rock he struck in Exodus 17:6 became mobile and followed Israel through the wilderness all the way to the second incident in Numbers 20:8–11. In fact, the use of different Hebrew terms for “rock” in Exodus 17:6 and Numbers 20:8–11 seems to indicate that Moses did not intend his audience to understand that he struck the same object on the two occasions.

Second, there are indications that Moses meant for his audience, at some level, to identify Yahweh with the rock. Moses clearly distinguishes between Yahweh and the rock, and yet by relating how Yahweh stood before Moses on the rock he was to strike (Exodus 17:6), and then by referring to Yahweh as Israel’s Rock in close proximity to his rehearsal of the water-from-the-rock episodes in Deuteronomy 32, Moses seems to say that Yahweh is the real source of Israel’s provision, the real solid ground and stable shelter. Yahweh is the Rock for his people.

Water from the Rock in Later OT Writings

There are a number of references to the Lord providing water from the rock through the rest of the Old Testament. Consider the following:

Isaiah 48:21: “They did not thirst when he led them through the deserts; he made water flow for them from the rock [ṣūr]; he split the rock [ṣūr] and the water gushed out.”
Psalm 78:15: “He split rocks [ṣūr] in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.”
Psalm 78:16: “He made streams come out of the rock [selaʿ] and caused waters to flow down like rivers.”
Psalm 78:20: “He struck the rock [ṣūr] so that water gushed out and streams overflowed. Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people?”
Psalm 78:35: “They remembered that God was their rock [ṣūr], the Most High God their redeemer.”
Psalm 81:16: “But he would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock [ṣūr] I would satisfy you.”
Psalm 105:41: “He opened the rock [ṣūr], and water gushed out; it flowed through the desert like a river.”
Psalm 114:8: “. . . who turns the rock [ṣūr] into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.”
Job 29:6: “. . . when my steps were washed with butter, and the rock [ṣūr] poured out for me streams of oil!”

Note three observations on these texts. First, just as Moses never indicates that the physical stone he struck in Exodus 17:6 followed Israel through the wilderness for forty years, so also later Old Testament authors never indicate that during the forty-year wandering in the wilderness Israel relied upon a moveable well to provide them with water. That is to say, the myth of the moveable well does not derive from exegesis of the Old Testament.

Second, in the same way that Moses identified Yahweh with the rock, later Old Testament authors regularly speak as David does in Psalm 18:2: “The Lord is my rock [selaʿ] and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock [ṣūr], in whom I take refuge.” In the bullet-pointed list above, I included the references to the water from the rock in Psalm 78:15, 16, and 20, and in that same psalm we see the assertion, “They remembered that God was their rock [ṣūr]” at verse 35. Similarly, in Psalm 42:1 the psalmist likens God to the streams of water for which the deer pants, and then in 42:9 he says, “I say to God, my rock [selaʿ].”

Third, these references to the water-from-the-rock episodes in later Old Testament texts often point back to the way God saved his people at the exodus in order to point forward to the way he will save them at the new exodus. In other words, once the two water-from-the-rock episodes in Exodus 17 and Numbers 20 have been narrated, when water from the rock is mentioned in later Old Testament texts, these later authors are contributing to the typological expectation of a new exodus.

I contend, then, that Moses, the prophets, and the psalmists all treat the water-from-the-rock episodes in the same way: Moses narrates the historical events of the exodus, and because he has presented similar patterns of events in the lives of Abraham (Genesis 12:10–20; 15:7–16) and Jacob (Genesis 28–32), while also indicating that the conquest of the land will be a new exodus (Exodus 15:5–10, 13–17), the historical correspondences generate an escalating sense of expectation.5 That is to say, Moses intends his audience to understand that the exodus (including related wonders like manna from heaven and water from the rock) typifies the way God will save his people in the future. The prophets and the psalmists have learned from Moses and been led by the Spirit to understand the exodus and water from the rock in the same way, and thus they too present Israel’s past experience of salvation as typifying what God will do for them in the future.

Moses and the Old Testament authors who followed him did not indicate that the literal stone followed Israel through the wilderness, but they did indicate that insofar as Yahweh was Israel’s real source of protection and provision, he was their Rock. Further, they also indicate that the exodus and God’s provision for his people in the wilderness typify the way God would save his people in the future. I contend that the New Testament authors learned this same perspective from Moses, the prophets, and the Lord Jesus.

Water from the Rock in John’s Gospel

In his Gospel, John everywhere presents Jesus as the one who brings about the typological fulfillment of the exodus from Egypt.6 As part of this, in John 4:10–14 Jesus presents himself as the source of living water. Then in John 6, Jesus is the prophet like Moses (verse 14) who feeds the people in the wilderness in the season of Passover (verses 4–13). Then having miraculously crossed the water (verses 16–21), Jesus identifies himself as the true bread from heaven that gives life (verses 32–33), going so far as to assert, “I am the bread of life” (verse 35).

Whereas the feast of Passover celebrated the exodus from Egypt, the feast of Tabernacles celebrated the way God provided for his people through the forty-year wilderness wandering, when God led his people by the pillar of fire and cloud and gave them water from the rock. These two aspects of Israel’s experience likely inform the famous candle-lighting and water-pouring ceremonies that came to be celebrated in the feast of Tabernacles (cf. m.Sukkah 4:9–5:3). In keeping with this, Jesus not only presents himself as the light of the world (John 8:12), but he also presents himself as a rock-like source of water, only he offers something better than water: the Holy Spirit (7:37–39). In the same way that Jesus is himself the fulfillment of the manna from heaven and the pillar of fire, he is the fulfillment of the rock from which the water flowed.

Thus we read in John 7:37–39,

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

I submit that John intends his audience to understand this statement along the following lines: In the same way that God saved his people from Egypt then provided for them in the wilderness, God is saving his people through Jesus and will provide for them in him until they reach their destination. In the fulfillment of the exodus accomplished by Jesus, however, God gives something better than manna from heaven and water from the rock to sustain his people on their life-journey through the wilderness to the fulfillment of the land of promise, the new Jerusalem in the new heavens and new earth. God gives his people Christ himself as the bread of life, and Jesus gives to his people the Holy Spirit as the fulfillment of the water from the rock.

John has asserted that Christ is the Word made flesh (John 1:14) and that the Word was in the beginning, was with God, and was God (1:1–2). John thus identifies Jesus with Yahweh, and his presentation includes Christ, the one who has promised living water, being struck: “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water” (19:34). After testifying that he tells the truth (verse 35), John immediately asserts that the fact that the legs of Jesus were not broken (verses 32–33) fits with his death being the typological fulfillment of the death of the Passover lamb in the fulfillment of the exodus pattern of events: “These things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken’” (verse 36).

From the Gospel of John, we can make the same three points about the idea of water from the rock that we have made about this theme in Moses and the Prophets. First, at no point does John present Jesus or any other character in his narrative suggesting that a literal rock or moveable well followed Israel through the wilderness across the forty-year wandering. Second, Yahweh, and in John’s case Jesus, whom he identifies with Yahweh, is symbolically and metaphorically presented as the one who abides with, provides for, and protects his people, and like Moses, John presents the Lord as the stricken water-giver. And third, God’s deliverance of his people at the exodus and through the wilderness typifies the future salvation, which John claims is fulfilled in Jesus.

Given the claims made by Peter Enns, we can engage in a thought experiment at this point. Which is the more likely scenario, that Paul perpetuates what Moses, the prophets, the psalmists, and the evangelist John indicate about water from the rock, or that Paul picks up a relatively obscure Jewish myth7 — a myth unsubstantiated by exegesis of the Torah, unsupported in the Prophets and Psalms, and unattested in any tradition of what Jesus taught — and perpetuates it in 1 Corinthians 10:4?

It is not as though there were no careful thinkers in Paul’s earliest audiences, and it is not as though all his letters were recognized as having been inspired by the Spirit and included in the New Testament. I suspect that if the believing community had understood Paul to be perpetuating that myth, which was in fact false to history, they would not have received what we now refer to as 1 Corinthians into their growing collection of New Testament Scripture.

So what did Paul say, and what does it mean?

‘And the Rock Was Christ’ in 1 Corinthians 10:4

Paul has addressed the identity issues, sexual immorality, and idolatry plaguing the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 1–9. The identity issues manifest in members of the church making themselves notable through their claims about whom they follow, whether Paul, Cephas, or Christ (1 Corinthians 1:12), and in his opening words in chapter 10 Paul continues to reshape their understanding of who they are with his typological application of Scripture. He addresses the Jewish and Gentile congregation as his “brothers,” and he refers to the exodus generation as “our fathers”: “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea” (10:1). Paul speaks to the church as though they belong to the family of faith.

In the reports that have come to him (e.g., 1:11; 5:1; 7:1), Paul may have heard that some members of the church thought that because they had been baptized and had partaken of the Lord’s Supper, they could engage in sexual immorality and/or idolatry with impunity — or he could be anticipating this unacceptable response. He seems to address this mindset with his typological explanation of what happened to Israel in 1 Corinthians 10:2–5.

Paul’s view appears to be that Moses presented a recurring pattern in which Noah was saved through the floodwaters of judgment, then baby Moses was saved in his ark-basket through floodwaters of judgment, and then the nation was saved through the floodwaters of judgment when they crossed the Red Sea (there are verbal connections between these narratives that signal Moses’s intent to link them).8 The Lord Jesus seems to allude to this “salvation through the floodwaters of judgment” theme when he speaks of his looming death as a baptism he has to undergo (e.g., Mark 10:38–39). Paul explains in Romans 6 that when believers are immersed in water, they are plunged into a symbolic union with Christ in his death, that they might then symbolically rise from the waters with him (Romans 6:1–11; cf. Ephesians 2:5–6).

Thus, when Paul speaks of Israel being “baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” in 1 Corinthians 10:2, he words it this way to highlight the pattern of salvation-through-the-waters-of-judgment that typify Christian baptism. Paul moves to address the presumption that baptism allows one to sin with impunity by rehearsing how “with most of them God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness” (verse 5). The point being: Israelites “were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (verse 2), and God judged them for their sin, so do not think that having been baptized into Christ allows for continuing in sin with impunity.

Before we proceed to discuss 1 Corinthians 10:3–4, we must note the thoroughly typological way Paul is dealing with the events of the exodus from Egypt. The Greek rendered by the ESV “examples” in verse 6 and “example” in verse 11 is the root we transliterate to form the English term type. We could just as well translate these statements as follows:

Verse 6: “Now these became types of us . . .”
Verse 11: “Now these things happened to them typologically . . .”

The point I am trying to emphasize is that just as Moses indicated that the exodus typified future salvation, just as the Prophets and Psalmists learned that view from Moses, and just John presented Jesus as the one who brought the exodus pattern of salvation to typological fulfillment, so Paul applies the exodus and wilderness narratives typologically to the Corinthians. On this point, Paul’s understanding is consistent with that of Moses, Isaiah, Asaph, John, and Jesus of Nazareth.

When Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 10:3–4 of the exodus generation eating “spiritual food” and drinking “spiritual drink,” he clearly has in view the manna from heaven and water from the rock. He seems to refer to these as “spiritual” as opposed to “natural” (cf. the same contrast in 1 Corinthians 2:14–15) because, unlike normal food and water obtained in the usual human way, this food and water were provided through the direct intervention of God. The fact that Paul speaks of the Lord’s Supper in 10:16–21 and again in 11:17–34 fits with the idea that he sees the manna from heaven and water from the rock as prefiguring types of the Lord’s Supper. In the same way that, having saved Israel from Egypt, God provided for them through the wilderness on their journey to the land of promise, so now, having saved Christians through the fulfillment of the exodus in Christ, God provides the Lord’s Supper to sustain his people through the wilderness to the fulfillment of the land of promise in the new heavens and new earth. Paul’s treatment of the Lord’s Supper thus matches the way that the Lord Jesus provided himself as the fulfillment of the manna from heaven in John 6 and the fulfillment of the rock from which the water flowed in John 7.

This brings us to Paul’s explanatory comment in 1 Corinthians 10:4b: “For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.” The fact that Paul calls this a “spiritual Rock” argues against the idea that he means to refer to a literal stone that supposedly followed Israel around in the wilderness. That he proceeds to identify this Rock with Christ amounts to the assertion of a conclusion that naturally follows from the premises he has established, and neither the premises nor the conclusion has anything to do with the myth of a moveable well.

Rather, Paul’s premises are those that we have seen in the Law, Prophets, Writings, and Gospels. First, this is a “spiritual Rock” for the same reason the food and drink were “spiritual” — because it is not a naturally occurring physical stone as a source of water but something that results from the direct intervention of the transforming work of God. Second, just as Moses identifies Yahweh with the rock, and just as John identifies the Christ with Yahweh, so Paul identifies the rock with Christ. Third, just as the point of identifying Yahweh as the rock was to communicate his presence with, protection of, and provision for his people, so also Paul asserts that the people of Israel experienced the presence, protection, and provision made by Christ. This affirms the inseparable operations of the members of the Godhead — what the Father does the Son does — and it matches Jude referring to “Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt” (Jude 5).

“The God who saved Israel at the exodus and in the wilderness is the Christ who has saved Christians.”

Paul’s point here is to warn the Corinthians. He urges them not to think, wrongly, that they can sin with impunity since they partake of the Lord’s Supper. His proof against this is that even though the Israelites partook of the type of the Lord’s Supper, God judged them for their sin. Why does Paul assert that the rock was Christ? By doing so, he affirms that the God who saved Israel at the exodus and in the wilderness is the Christ who has saved Christians.

Paul the Biblical Theologian

How would the affirmation of the little-known myth of the movable well have helped Paul to make this point with his Corinthian audience? Would it not have been a confusing distraction from the point he sought to make? Would it have helped him to establish typological identity between Israel and the church? Would it have helped him to warn the church in Corinth away from the sexual immorality and idolatry that tempted them? Would it have helped them to relish their experience of the fulfillment of the manna from heaven and water from the rock as they partook of the Lord’s Supper? Would it have established him in the church as a sound interpreter of the Law and the Prophets, as a faithful exponent of the message of the Lord Jesus? Paul comments in 1 Corinthians 4:6, “I have applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written.” Bringing in the myth of the moveable well undoubtedly goes “beyond what is written,” and such interpretive moves more likely characterized Paul’s opponents in Corinth rather than Paul himself.

“Christ is the Rock. Let all who thirst go to him and drink.”

The fact that the moveable well would not have helped Paul in any of these ways does not establish that he did not reference the myth. That he did not say it has already done that. Paul did not say something like, “Forty years did he rain bread from heaven for them, and he brought them quails from the sea, and a well of water following them” (Ps.-Philo, L.A.B., 10.7). Paul did not teach that the miracle that happened in Exodus 17:6 kept happening across the forty years in the wilderness because the well from which the water flowed actually followed Israel through their journey. No, Paul did what Moses did. He treated the exodus and wilderness narratives typologically. He identified the rock with God, and for Paul that includes God the Son, Christ. And hereby we see the brilliance of Paul as a biblical theologian. He has succeeded in the task of understanding and embracing the perspective of the biblical authors,9 and the church recognized that Paul’s success was due in no small part to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Further, they recognized that the Spirit had inspired Paul’s writing of what we refer to as 1 Corinthians, as attested by its presence in the New Testament.

Christ is the Rock. Let all who thirst go to him and drink. And those who go to him shall never hunger, those who believe in him never thirst, for what he gives is better than mere water. Indeed, he gives the Spirit. And those who eat this bread and drink this cup proclaim his death until he comes. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Have you ever wondered why history began with a lonely husband?

Why did God make man, and then pause? Why did he parade “every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens” before the man, before finally giving him a bride, a helper, a queen? In a paradise filled with good, there was one glaring not-good: “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

Marriage was a late arrival to the garden, and God clearly meant for it to be that way. With meticulous and patient care, he labored to set this wide and wondrous stage called earth, all so that these lines would reverberate, like a pleasant earthquake, through all he had made:

This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. (Genesis 2:23)

Marriage was the consummation, not a last-minute addition — the image of God in flesh and blood, male and female, intimacy and security and procreation. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them” (Genesis 1:27–28). God holds back marriage just long enough for us to feel how colorless a world without marriage would be. And then the wedding comes, and that mounting tension holding the whole earth hostage suddenly resolves — God makes two from one, and then one from two.

The beauty of marriage, however, wasn’t the inspiration for that first love story. God let the lonely man search high and low, near and far, all in vain, to hint at another love, a higher love, a better Groom.

Why Does Marriage Exist?

God let Adam stand uncomfortably long at the altar of creation so that we would long to meet Eve. Then he waited centuries more before sending his own Son to the altar, so that we would long to meet the Bridegroom and love him when he comes. Through the apostle Paul, God himself tells us what he was doing as he officiated that first marriage:

“A man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:31–32)

“Marriage doesn’t exist to remedy the loneliness of singleness; marriage exists to tell us that we need Jesus.”

Marriage doesn’t exist just to remedy the loneliness of singleness; marriage exists to tell us that we need Jesus. It’s a living exposition of Christ’s relentless and passionate pursuit of his chosen people, the church — and of the church’s restless ache for him. He would not rest until he had her; she would not rest until she had been found by him.

God calls husbands to love their wives in a way that shows the world something of Christ’s delight in us:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor. (Ephesians 5:25–27)

Likewise, God calls wives to love their husbands in a way that shows the world something of our delight in Christ:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. (Ephesians 5:22–23)

God has made each marriage a canvas for spiritual reality. A wife’s words, attitudes, actions, and decisions either honor or betray the Bride of Christ. A husband’s words, attitudes, actions, and decisions either honor or betray the Bridegroom.

My Delight Is in Her

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, when God reaches again and again for the imagery of marriage to explain the zeal and intensity of his redeeming love. For instance, in Isaiah 54:5–6:

For your Maker is your husband,     the Lord of hosts is his name;and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,     the God of the whole earth he is called.For the Lord has called you     like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit,like a wife of youth when she is cast off,     says your God.

When God conceived of husbands, he wanted us to comprehend something of what he is like. He painted weddings and marriages into his story as illustrations so that he could say to his people, “You shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your sons marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:4–5).

God made husbands to delight in their wives so that we might know that God really does delight in us — that we might believe God when he promises, “I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:19–20).

God Walks the Aisle

Though he never married, Jesus knew he was the long-awaited husband of history. He knew his coming was the love the world had waited for.

When the Pharisees came to him and condemned his disciples for not fasting, he said, “Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15). For centuries, the bride had watched and waited, wallowing in sin and shame and separation — and then he came. The seed God had planted in the garden finally sprung up in the little-known garden of Bethlehem.

Instead of removing a rib, he now took on ribs and walked the long and lonely aisle to Calvary, “taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:7–8). The Bridegroom did not emerge dressed in white, but he was clothed in humility, raised in obscurity, showered with hostility, and then crucified in agony.

The first husband searched and searched to find his bride; this last husband died to have his.

Marriage of the Lamb

We know that marriage — in the garden and today — is meant to prepare us for something beyond marriage because one day marriage will end. “In the resurrection,” the Bridegroom says, “they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Matthew 22:30). God placed a bride and groom at the center of creation to plant the seed of a future marriage between Christ and his church. When Jesus returns, however, the marriages we have known will give way to the Marriage for which we were made.

“When Jesus returns, the marriages we have known will give way to the marriage for which we were made.”

When Adam came to take Eve, he sang, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” When Jesus comes to take his church, the nations will sing, “like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder,”

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God     the Almighty reigns.Let us rejoice and exult     and give him the glory,for the marriage of the Lamb has come,     and his Bride has made herself ready;it was granted her to clothe herself     with fine linen, bright and pure. (Revelation 19:6–8)

An angel will declare, “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Revelation 19:9). The joy of a husband who finally finds his wife has always been a whisper of the thrill we will feel when this great and final wedding comes.

God gave us marriage so that he might one day give us to Christ. God gave us wives so that we might see something of the beauty he sees in his church. God gave us husbands so that we might see something of the courage, strength, and love in his Son.

“Next to the Bible,” Charles Spurgeon once wrote, “the book I value most is John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. I believe I have read it through at least a hundred times. It is a volume of which I never seem to tire” (Pictures from Pilgrim’s Progress).

This describes my own experience well. Years ago, I picked up a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress, and I have never set it down. A bookmark steadily moves through its pages each year. I take it with me to bed, on vacation, and whenever I find a few moments to retreat for spiritual refreshment. Bunyan has so strengthened my pilgrimage that I count him as one of my dearest yet-to-meet friends.

“Bunyan has so strengthened my pilgrimage that I count him as one of my dearest yet-to-meet friends.”

With Spurgeon, I am both a pilgrim and a pastor. I am striving toward the Celestial City and helping others do the same. Bunyan’s brilliant story has made me a better pilgrim pastor, and I trust it can do the same for many others.

Learn from Evangelist

“Fly from the wrath to come,” the Evangelist cries. His sobering message alerts Christian that he must flee the City of Destruction and seek the Celestial City. Christian doesn’t understand everything Evangelist says, yet he heeds his warning. Loved ones call for Christian’s return, but he “put his fingers in his ears, and ran on, crying, Life! Life! Eternal life!” (5–6).

The ministry of Evangelist moves me with thankfulness to God. Like Christian, I was a sinner destined for destruction. Yet God mercifully sent over twenty witnesses to me before I believed. I didn’t want Jesus, but he wanted me. My pilgrimage began because evangelists came and warned me to flee destruction.

The courage of Evangelist has also emboldened me to resist the fear of man. He never cowers in his witness to Christian, but continually points to the source of eternal life. He endures Christian’s questions and reproves him after he falls prey to Mr. Worldly Wiseman. Even after Christian believes, Evangelist keeps pursuing, challenging, and encouraging him. Evangelist’s endurance has reminded me that we never stop pointing pilgrims toward their heavenly Home.

Saturate Your Soul with Scripture

One would be hard-pressed to find a page of Pilgrim’s Progress that doesn’t contain at least an allusion to Scripture. Spurgeon’s estimation of Bunyan as “a living Bible” is true: “Prick him anywhere — his blood is Bibline. . . . He cannot speak without quoting a text, for his very soul is full of the Word of God” (C.H. Spurgeon Autobiography, 2:159). Bunyan loved the Bible, and he’s helped me love it too.

Every step of Christian’s journey is guided by the light of Scripture. Every conversation draws from it. Every trusted friend points him back to it. He holds it as precious, especially in his darkest hour. In the dungeon of Doubting Castle, Giant Despair tortures Christian and his beloved friend Hopeful, ordering them to take their own lives. Christian nearly succumbs, until he suddenly exclaims,

“What a fool . . . am I. . . . I have a key in my bosom, called Promise, that will, I am persuaded, open any lock in Doubting Castle.” . . . Then Christian pulled it out of his bosom, and began to try at the dungeon door, whose bolt (as he turned the key) gave back, and the door flew open with ease, and Christian and Hopeful both came out. (132)

I too have walked on the precipice of compromise and fallen into the pit of despair — and yet God’s word has given me strength to not give in or give up. The power of Pilgrim’s Progress is that Bunyan infuses God’s word into the characters’ lives and plot so creatively that I cannot help but delight in God’s word when I read it. Christian and his faithful friends cling to God’s precious promises through every trial until they pass into the land where faith becomes sight. Bunyan’s word pushes me into the word so that, like them, I may be helped to inherit eternal life.

Treasure Pilgrim Partners

The early part of my Christian life was isolated from the local church. I developed Christian friendships, but too often I walked alone. Yet as I have matured, I have learned that I am too weak to journey to heaven alone. I need pilgrim partners to help me persevere. Bunyan’s portrayal of the Christian life has only reaffirmed this reality.

God providentially provides friends for Christian in just the right seasons for just the right reasons. Help swoops in to save him from the Slough of Despond. Early in his walk, Interpreter teaches Christian to see with spiritual eyes. Faithful suffers with him in the crucible of Vanity Fair. Hopeful holds Christian back from succumbing to suicide. The saints at Palace Beautiful encourage Christian regarding his progress on the journey and exhort him to keep pressing on. Even in Christian’s dying moments, Hopeful helps him keep clinging to God’s promises.

Watching God providentially provide friends for Christian has helped me to treasure the friends he has given me. A wall in my office is covered with pictures of people God has used to pastor me and people he has given me the honor of pastoring. Each snapshot in time testifies to God’s providential love for me through those friends. Yet, as with some characters in Pilgrim’s Progress, some friends in the pictures have wandered and no longer seek a heavenly home. Their sorrowful departure sobers me to keep my eyes on Christ and not be lured away.

Watching Christian and his friends also inspires me to cultivate Christ-centered friendships. I want to love like Faithful and encourage like Hopeful. I want to run with a company of pilgrims whose hearts are set on heaven, knowing that no matter what we face, we will soon arrive in that land where we shall never say goodbye again.

Endure Suffering with Hope

Immediately upon setting out for the Celestial City, Christian and Pliable are met with trouble. While they struggle in the Slough of Despond, Pliable “began to be offended, and angrily said . . . ‘Is this the happiness you have told me all this while of? If we have such ill speed at our first setting out, what may we expect betwixt this and our journey’s end?’ . . . So away he went, and Christian saw him no more” (11).

This trial would not be Christian’s last. He ascends difficult hills, endures debilitating doubt, overcomes worldly deception, undergoes unjust trials, and narrowly escapes execution. He is constantly haunted by concern for his unsaved family and endures unrelenting spiritual warfare. Yet Christian presses on. Watching Christian teaches me that suffering pushes us — either toward God or away from him. In this way, suffering separates sheep from goats. Christian’s endurance also assures me that it is possible and profitable to continue pressing toward Home.

I am not typically given to discouragement, but in recent years the dark cloud has visited more often than I prefer. But observing Christian trust the Son, who ever shines on the other side of the cloud, encourages me to keep going. As with Christian, God has supplied a spring to accompany my difficulties. From this reservoir of grace, not only am I helped, but I am able to assist suffering sheep in their painful pilgrimage (2 Corinthians 1:3–4). Together we are limping toward glory, and the Lord does not despise feeble steps.

Set Your Heart on the Celestial City

Of all the aids Christian avails himself of, none is more vital than keeping his gaze on Zion’s shores. An eternal perspective strengthens the steps of pilgrim perseverance. Seeing Christian and Hopeful pass through the dark river and into Zion’s brings me deep joy.

The angels’ welcome causes redeemed hearts to dream:

There also you shall serve Him continually with praise, with shouting and thanksgiving. . . . There your eyes shall be delighted with seeing, and your ears with hearing the pleasant voice of the Mighty One. There you shall enjoy your friends again, that are gone thither before you. . . . When He shall again return to the city, you shall go too, with sound of trumpet, and be ever with Him. (182)

“An eternal perspective keeps all obstacles and afflictions in their proper perspective.”

God calls me and the people I pastor to set our hearts on this promised place. An eternal perspective keeps all obstacles and afflictions in their proper perspective. It shows us that the cost of following Christ will be abundantly worth it. Seeing God remain faithful to Christian assures me and those I pastor of this truth: ten thousand years from now, when we know what God knows, we will not accuse him of anything. He has always been faithful.

So keep an eternal perspective, fellow pilgrim. We’re almost Home.