Written by Benjamin L. Gladd |
Friday, September 20, 2024
Once we’ve detected the Old Testament quotation or allusion and explored the Old Testament background, now we must take a step back and ask the million-dollar question: How is the apostle using the Old Testament? New Testament writers don’t interpret and apply the Old Testament the same way each time. Most contemporary readers assume the apostles only use the Old Testament along an axis of promise and fulfillment. While the apostles certainly read the entire sweep of the Old Testament as anticipating Christ (Luke 24:27, 44; John 5:39), they often use the Old Testament to undergird a moral principle or to make a simple analogy. 

I don’t remember the first time I heard the words “biblical theology.” I do, though, remember the first time hearing a professor trace a theme through the Scriptures and connect it to Christ and the church. I was mesmerized.
I grew up in a dispensational environment, so it wasn’t natural for me to read the Bible as a whole, to read the Old Testament in view of Christ and his work. Perhaps this is why I’m so passionate about reading the two Testaments in concert.
Biblical theology concerns the sweep of God’s plan of redemption from Genesis to Revelation. It studies the plotline of Scripture, taking inventory of its themes and watching how these themes intersect with one another eventually climaxing in Christ and the new creation. In the last three decades, there have been a plethora of books on biblical theology. But as much as I enjoy reading these books and listening to biblical-theological sermons, I don’t come across many resources that instruct the church on how to “do” biblical theology.
Robust biblical theology is always wedded to Scripture, because biblical theology prevents artificial connections that can lead to odd or spurious theological conclusions. Good biblical theology is textual, always rooted in Scripture’s soil. A healthy way—perhaps the best way—to do biblical theology is to follow the lead of the apostles and examine how the apostles wed the Old Testament to their discourse. Once we discover these inner-biblical links, we can organically build on them.
Let’s examine the well-known passage of Luke 2:32 as a case study for doing good biblical theology and discover four important principles.
1. Look for Old Testament quotations and allusions.
The apostles quote the Old Testament about 350 times and allude to it 3,000 to 4,000 times. With all these inner-biblical connections, we should be in the habit of reading the New Testament expectantly. When we consult the cross-references in the margins of our Bible, we discover that Luke 2:29–32 contains a battery of allusions to Isaiah:
Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word;for my eyes have seen your salvation [Isa. 40:5; 49:6; 52:10]that you have prepared [40:3] in the presence of all peoples,a light for revelation to the Gentiles [42:6; 49:6; 52:10], and for glory to your people Israel.
Here in the hymn, known as the Nunc Dimittis, Simeon extols God and predicts that Jesus is the source of Israel’s “salvation” who will become “a light for revelation to the Gentiles” (Luke 2:32). For our purposes here, we’ll focus solely on Simeon’s allusion to Isaiah 49:6 (cf. 24:47).
2. Examine the Old Testament context.
The second step is a tall task because we must consider the immediate and broad context of the Old Testament quotation or allusion.
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Written by Benjamin L. Gladd |
Tuesday, August 27, 2024
The Christian life is marked by trust in God and his promises. At our conversion, we trust God’s promise to deliver us from our sin on account of Christ’s work. But don’t we continue to trust those same promises throughout our lives? Every morning, we must remind ourselves of God’s faithfulness in the gospel. Christ lived, died, rose, and ascended to the heavenly throne for us.

There’s nothing better than a good night’s sleep. When my wife and I had our first kid, Judah, 14 years ago, we prized sleep above all else. One of us napped while the other took care of the baby. We’ve never been so tired in our lives.
In his narrative account of the stilling of the storm, Mark tells his readers that Jesus was “asleep on the cushion” (Mark 4:38). Why mention that Jesus was sleeping? Was he exhausted from a hard day’s work?
From Teaching to Sleeping
Grasping the context of Jesus’s sleeping during the onslaught of the storm is critical. After Jesus relates several parables on the kingdom of God (vv. 1–34), he commands the disciples to “go across to the other side” of the Sea of Galilee (v. 35). We also learn that the sea crossing takes place “on that day, when evening had come” (v. 35). This is the same day that Jesus taught the parables on the kingdom. By aligning the sea crossing with the kingdom parables, Mark invites his readers to relate the nature of the kingdom with what will transpire on the sea.
As the storm rages and waves crash into the boat, we encounter one of the strangest lines in all of Mark’s Gospel: “But he [Jesus] was in the stern, asleep on the cushion” (v. 38). The flow of the narrative is jarring, since we expect Jesus to be awake in such dire circumstances. His behavior is also perplexing because this is the only passage that mentions him sleeping. You typically sleep because you’re, well, tired, and this passage mentions nothing of the sort. Why is Jesus asleep? Let’s consider the significance of the sea and the symbolic value of sleep.
Chaos of the Sea
God’s enemies dwell in the sea, as the Old Testament is replete with texts that describe the sea as the embodiment of death, rebellion, and chaos (e.g., Ex. 14:16–31; Ezek. 32:2; Dan. 7:2). Even Mark’s use of the word “sea” is noteworthy, because “lake” is a more apt description (e.g., Luke 5:1, 2; 8:22, 23). Could it be that the storm on the “sea” of Galilee symbolizes a demonic horde’s attempt to thwart the gospel’s spread? I think so.
While it may seem strange to view the storm as a demonic attack, notice Jesus’s response: “He [Jesus] awoke and rebuked [epetimēsen] the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still [pephimōso]!’” Why rebuke a storm?
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Written by Benjamin L. Gladd |
Monday, August 12, 2024
The Gospel writers include only the most pertinent information in their narratives. They don’t give us every historical detail at their disposal. For example, here in Mark 16:5, only one angel is found in the tomb, whereas Luke 24:4 says there were two. Is this a contradiction? No, Mark doesn’t claim there was only one angel. He simply aims his spotlight on the one angel and how that angel functions in the scene. The evangelists only included details that hold interpretive value.

Good stories often include odd details. But what first strikes the reader as odd or random may later turn out to be interesting and insightful. Have you noticed, for example, that Doc Brown’s bandana in Back to the Future Part III is made from the same material as his shirt in Part II? What appears to be a run-of-the-mill piece of clothing takes on new significance when it’s viewed in light of the larger narrative.
There’s a similarly odd but significant detail in Mark 16. The ending of Mark’s Gospel has long been problematic for some commentators because it lacks an explicit resurrection appearance (vv. 1–8). Matthew, Luke, and John narrate Jesus appearing to the disciples and to two women. But an odd detail in Mark’s ending may be one reason Jesus doesn’t make a post-resurrection appearance in this Gospel. Could an angel’s enigmatic posture hold an important clue?
Vivid Description
Mark 16 opens with three women—Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of John and James, and Salome—approaching Jesus’s tomb at dawn on Sunday (vv. 1–2). On their way, the women wonder who could roll away the large stone that sealed the tomb. But when they arrived, to their surprise, the stone had been rolled away (vv. 3–4).
The women ventured into the tomb and observed “a young man sitting on the right side [kathēmenon en tois dexiois], dressed in a white robe” (v. 5) Mark divulges three vivid details here: the presence of an individual (“young man”), the man’s apparel (“white robe”), and the man’s posture and location (“sitting on the right side”).
Repeated Wording
These concrete details certainly underscore the three women’s eyewitness account, but perhaps there’s another significant reason Mark mentions them. He may have included the odd detail of the angel’s “sitting on the right side” (kathēmenon en tois dexiois) because of its symbolic significance.
A literal rendering of the phrase is “seated on the right.” Often, the adjective “right” (dexios) occurs by itself and lacks a noun, so the context determines the implied noun (e.g., Matt. 6:3; Mark 10:40; Luke 1:11). In Mark 16:5, the “right” likely means the “right side” of the bench inside the tomb. But “sitting at the right” only occurs two other times in Mark’s Gospel:
David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared, “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand [kathou ek dexiōn], until I put your enemies under your feet.’” (12:36)
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