The Christ Key Quotes

“We might think of the five books of Moses as a mini-Bible. Or to alter the metaphor, just as a massive oak tree grows from a single acorn, so that the entire future tree is already present in this seed, so also the rest of Scripture was already present in the Torah, just waiting to grow and flourish. When God planted the Torah-acorn in the soil of Israel, from it grew the trunk, branches, and leaves of everything from Joshua to Revelation.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“the intimately connected lives of OT believers, whose bios have been inscripturated and filled with foreshadowing hints, are designed so as to lead us to the divinely planned telos of the Messiah.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“The Hebrew word for wisdom, chokmah, is much more than intelligence. Chokmah is holistic because it involves a mind in tune with God’s word, hands engaged in good deeds, a mouth that speaks truth, a heart that leans on divine guidance.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“As Christians in the Scottish Highlands used to say to David Murray, “Christ enjoyed trying on the clothes of His incarnation.”9”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“They would not die, for the messenger was God’s way of making himself visible without decimating the viewers. He”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“Yahweh is saying, “Who I am is in him. To see him is to see me. To hear him is to hear me. To follow him is to follow me. My name, Yahweh, is in him, my messenger. In short, he is Yahweh to you.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“Yahweh is saying, “Who I am is in him. To see him is to see me. To hear him is to hear me. To follow him is to follow me. My name, Yahweh, is in him, my messenger.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“But as we don’t reduce cars to tires or people to eyes, let’s not reduce Torah to law. Its basic meaning is “instruction, teaching, direction.” To state the obvious, not every teaching or instruction is a law or rule. Torah is also chock full of promise, lovingkindness, and hope. Thus when you spot the word “law” in the OT, please do an immediate translation in your mind into “teaching.” Problem solved. It’s”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“But as we don’t reduce cars to tires or people to eyes, let’s not reduce Torah to law. Its basic meaning is “instruction, teaching, direction.” To”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“Athanasius illustrates his point this way. He says it’s like a stained and faded painting in need of some serious touching up. What does the artist do? Start over from scratch? No, he summons the original man, the one whose image is on the canvas, and has him sit down again so he can repaint his portrait on the existing canvas. The Father’s Son is that man, and we are the stained and faded canvas. The Father, looking to his image, the Son, repaints us in Christ’s image, that we might reflect him and know him once more.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“Athanasius illustrates his point this way. He says it’s like a stained and faded painting in need of some serious touching up. What does the artist do? Start over from scratch? No, he summons the original man, the one whose image is on the canvas, and has him sit down again so he can repaint his portrait on the existing canvas. The Father’s Son is that man, and we are the stained and faded canvas. The Father, looking to his image, the Son, repaints us in Christ’s image, that we might reflect him”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“Franzmann, a Bible interpreter and theologian, was also a hymn writer. In a hymn on the Reformation, he concludes with a beautiful, unforgettable prayer. He asks that the Holy Spirit would breathe on his “cloven church once more, That in these gray and latter days, There may be men whose life is praise, Each life a high doxology, to Father, Son, and unto Thee.”3 When our theology becomes doxology, it not only is sung but creates lives of “high doxology”—lives in which we truly no longer live, but having been crucified with Christ, we live in and through him (cf. Gal. 2:20). As Jesus prayed, “that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us. . . . I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one” (John 17:21, 23).”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“When Jesus cried out from the cross, Tetelestai, “It is finished” (John 19:30), he was declaring that all things had been brought to their divinely ordained telos—end or goal—in him. All history had been flowing in his direction. Every river, stream, and rivulet of OT history emptied into the sea of himself. Many of the people in that history pointed beyond themselves, to the telos who is Christ.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“qedem not only means “east” and “in front,” but also “past” or “olden days.” This makes perfect sense when you reflect on it a bit. The past is what we have already experienced, already seen, right? So the past is not behind us but in front of us. It is not hidden, but qedem—before our eyes. What about the future? The Hebrews had this one figured out too. Their words for “future,” acharit and acharon, also mean “behind” or “at the back.” Just like we can’t see what’s behind us, so we can’t see the future. It is hidden from us, at our backs, acharit and acharon. Therefore, in the Hebrew way of thinking, we walk backward into the future, with our eyes on “what has been” in order to know “what will be.” The past is our eye to the future.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“Metalepsis is a literary technique of citing or echoing a small bit of a precursor text in such a way that the reader can grasp the significance of the echo only by recalling or recovering the original context from which the fragmentary echo came and then reading the two texts in dialogical juxtaposition.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“What is going on? To begin, language is lifted from the Torah and prophets, rearranged and repurposed to show how Jesus is the Son of God, Servant of the Lord, New Isaac, and Prophet like Moses.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“Study Romans, Galatians, Peter’s epistles, Hebrews, James, or Revelation and ask yourself, “Why do these authors quote or allude to the Torah much more frequently than they do the words of Jesus? Because no gospels had yet been written?” No, that can hardly be the reason. Even if Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were not yet written, the teachings and sayings of Jesus would have been circulating orally. Then why does Moses get more apostolic press than Christ’s own words? The reason is straightforward: Jesus himself repeatedly affirmed that all things had already been written about him in Moses and the prophets. Far from ignoring the words of Jesus in their writings, therefore, the apostles strongly affirm them, for in quoting predominately from the Tanak, they confess, “You know what? Jesus is right. These Scriptures are all about him.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“To follow the Messiah entails following how he interpreted the Scriptures. And judging by his words, he interpreted them, in their totality, as a testimony about himself.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament

“The redemption of the Messiah is a gracious, creative act, prefigured already in the opening two chapters of the Bible. Isaiah describes his kingdom, in which we participate in a now-and-not-yet sort of way. Now, by our baptism into Jesus, we are members of his kingdom and citizens of the New Jerusalem. But we do not yet fully experience this, of course, for we await the return of our Lord, the resurrection of our bodies, and a life of joy and peace in the new creation.”
― Chad Bird, The Christ Key: Unlocking the Centrality of Christ in the Old Testament