Why does evangelism matter when God has chosen whom he will save? Pastor John unpacks and rejoices in our role as God’s instruments.

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Where is Christ when calamity strikes? John Piper shows from Colossians 1:9–20 how Christ rules over all things for his glory.

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The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. (Revelation 12:4)

[Let us] not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs. (2 Corinthians 2:11)

The devil grinned from ear to ear in July of 2024.

His seeming setback in the Dobbs decision two years earlier now took a striking turn: The one major political party that had officially included a pro-life plank since 1976 dropped its advocacy for a federal solution to infanticide.

Abortion, and the so-called “woman’s right to choose” — and with it, apparently, a man’s right to pressure her to kill their child — is the single greatest, most egregious, most obvious moral issue in our day.

The twentieth century, the greatest century of slaughter in war and in the womb, gave us abortion on a new scale. And in the twenty-first century, at least in the United States, we’re tempted to sweep it under the rug rather than right the glaring wrong of our times. We know that abortionists are killing children. The abortionists themselves know. Politicians know. Men know. Women know. We all know.

The murder of humans, regardless of age and size, is not an issue “the states should decide” any less than slavery was. Infanticide is a reprehensible moral evil in any and every state, and in any and every nation on the planet.

We have been frogs, enjoying the warm water of late modern life, not realizing how the temperature in our pot has risen to boiling. July 2024 came and went so quietly that it showed many had already been cooked.

Signature Move of Satan

Infanticide is one of Satan’s signature moves, and we who have access to God’s word should not be unaware of the devil’s devices. Satan, we should know, is a master at asking, “Did God really say?” as he twists the meaning of God’s words, rather than outright denying them. Satan, we should know, perverts the goodness of God’s creation. And Satan, we should know, angles for gradual, almost indiscernible compromise. These are his moves. And once Satan learned of God’s purpose to send hope through childbirth, he began his rage against pregnant women.

The focus at the center of Satan’s irrational raging is God himself in Christ entering our world, in the promised seed of the woman, to crush the serpent’s head. Abortion is not just an assault on those made in God’s image, but an attempt to murder the image of God himself: Jesus. Evil, whether in the hearts of fallen angels or depraved humans, is not only anti-God but anti-Christ. It took one form before his coming: Try to snuff out the seed. It takes another form after his coming: Destroy hope and, even in the death throes, wreak as much havoc as possible. The devil mounted a pre-Christ campaign against male children in the promised line; now he mounts a post-Christ war on all children and the hope they embody for the future Christ has secured.

When man fell at the serpent’s temptation, God declared not only curse but coming reversal. Addressing the serpent, he said,

I will put enmity between you and the woman,
     and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
     and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15)

Whether Satan already knew the secret of the woman’s seed or not, now he knew. And now, even on a divine leash, he would unleash his demonic fury to cut off the woman’s offspring if he could. And oh, did the devil try: Through Cain to murder Abel. Through Pharaoh to murder baby-boy Hebrews. Through the wicked queen-mother Athaliah to wipe out the line of David. And through Herod to destroy the divine Son himself in human flesh.

Massacre at Bethlehem

Before the devil pursued Jesus with temptation in the wilderness, and before he released his full, irrational fury on Christ at the cross, Satan first tried to consume him at the incarnational threshold, at Bethlehem.

The arrival of magi, star-gazing pagan astrologers, journeying to Jerusalem from the east, must have arrested public attention. They sure had Herod’s attention when they asked, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews?” (Matthew 2:2).

Herod did not need to be possessed by Satan himself when his own soul was full of the same evil, the same anti-God and anti-Christ impulse that fills the devil’s soul. Such diabolical directions could have been whispered by Satan himself:

Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him. (Matthew 2:8)

Remarkably, in a great ironic reversal, the pagan astrologers found the child and fell down in worship, while the acting king of Israel waited to kill the nation’s Messiah. But when the magi didn’t eventually return to Jerusalem (having been warned in a dream), the serpent on the Jewish throne no longer held his peace.

Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. (Matthew 2:16)

In doing so, Herod revealed the same spirit that had driven the devil’s fury for centuries, only now the effort to slaughter baby boys was not a preemptive attempt to cut off the royal line but an assault on the Son of God himself dwelling among us in human flesh and blood. Herod’s fury let loose the same venom that raged in Pharaoh, the same demonic spirit that called for child sacrifices to Molech and again centuries later in the Hinnom Valley, sacrifices Psalm 106 laments as offered to demons:

They sacrificed their sons
     and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood,
     the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
     and the land was polluted with blood. (Psalm 106:37–38)

Hungry Red Dragon

Revelation 12 captures with a grotesque apocalyptic image the satanic campaign as it sweeps across the centuries. A woman who represents the people of God is ready to give birth and cries out with labor pains. Meanwhile, a great red dragon stands before her “so that when she bore her child he might devour it” (Revelation 12:4). This dragon is “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (verse 9).

But Satan does not succeed: “Her child was caught up to God and to his throne” (verse 5). And what does the devil do when the anointed one has ascended and is out of reach? Does he concede defeat and sue for peace? The evil that once appeared rational now rages irrationally. He cannot change his certain fate, but still he comes after Christ’s people “in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” (verse 12). Even as God protects his church through trial, and even as the inevitability of the devil’s defeat sets in, he continues his assault on the woman’s offspring:

The dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (verse 17)

Infanticide Today

Infanticide was not only a signature move of Satan until the incarnation, but the impulse is so deeply ingrained in his soul, and in all evil, that the strategy continues today.

Abortion is not simply wrong. For those who have the Book and can observe Satan’s devices, this is profoundly, diabolically anti-God and anti-Christ. The devil’s hatred for God led to his hatred of Christ, led to his hatred of the church, led to his hatred of genuine human hope — a hope embodied in every human birth.

“To us a child is born” is history’s quintessential expression of hope, a sign that real good is yet to come — in fact, the best is yet to come (Isaiah 9:6). Each new human birth represents an avalanche of hopes: who this child might grow up to be, what joys and laughter this child will occasion, what love and good deeds will be unleashed, what human injustices might be righted, what divine grace might be seen and enjoyed.

A human life dies, and hope dies, in the horror of abortion. And Satan, defeated as he is, still grins to share his misery with as many as he can before his time is done.

Satan Loves ‘States Decide’

The devil delights in “the states should decide” and in the “woman’s right to choose,” just as he did in Eden. He loves the phrase “reproductive freedom.” In the end, these will be small, passing delights. His time is short. But all of us who are within earshot of Scripture know enough to be aware of his devices.

The slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem and the raging of the red dragon in Revelation show us that abortion is not an issue of personal choice or state choice, not for those who claim the name of the Christ that this same devil sought to snuff out at his birth.

And for the many living casualties of the abortion industry today, who share in varying degrees in its evil, we have true hope beyond the hope-killing work of abortion. The ghastly irrationality of sin against God, embodied in the dragon and buried in some measure in the souls of all sinners, does have a remedy in the very infant that Satan tried to abort: “They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 12:11).

In wisdom, God hides his plan of salvation from the self-proclaimed wise of this age. In grace, he reveals the power of the cross to those he calls.

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Most of us carry the news in our pockets. Headlines no longer wait for the morning paper or evening broadcast. They interrupt our work, follow us to the supper table, and crowd our last quiet moments before sleep.

This makes the sources we choose especially important. No outlet reports from nowhere. Each interprets events through some understanding of what matters, what has gone wrong, and what might put the world right. Christians should therefore seek sources that are not merely politically agreeable but biblically faithful — sources that help us interpret the news according to the truth and categories of Scripture.

Several Christian news sources pursue this aim in different ways. WORLD magazine describes it as “biblical objectivity”: not perfect neutrality, but a commitment to view the world under the authority of God’s word. Other examples include The World and Everything in It, The Briefing with Al Mohler, the Colson Center’s Breakpoint, and The Pour Over. The last began as a short email Jason Woodruff sent to Christian friends and grew into a “Christ-first” news source designed to keep believers informed without discipling them in fear, outrage, or despair.

Such help is needed because much of the news is framed to alarm us. Wars, scandals, abuses of power, and disasters press the same question upon us: What is the world becoming?

How, then, should Christians engage the news? We should not look away as though the sufferings of others do not matter. But neither should we consume every crisis, dispute, and controversy as though it demands our immediate attention and emotional investment.

Begin with the End

The apostle Paul gives us a place to begin: at the end. Rather than teach us how to keep up with or explain the happenings in the world, he shows us where the world is going: The Father is moving all things toward their appointed end under Christ. Only with this truth in mind can we learn to read the news without being ruled by it.

In Ephesians 1, before Paul tells us in chapters 4 to 6 how to walk, stand, speak, marry, parent, work, pray, and fight, he tells us what the Father has done, is doing, and will do in Christ. He blesses “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). Then, near the center of that opening blessing, Paul says the Father has made known to us “the mystery of his will” — namely, that he plans “to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10).

Paul does not say the Father has revealed the mystery behind everything. We don’t know why every war begins, why every leader rises, why every disaster strikes, or why every heartbreaking event happens. We are not omniscient.

But we are not in the dark either. God has told us where all things are going. History does not drift. The world cannot spin loose from God’s control.

The news often shows us a world coming apart. Ephesians shows us the Christ, in whom all things will finally come together.

The word translated unite carries the idea of summing up: bringing scattered parts together under one head. It has a mathematical connection: As separate numbers gather into one sum (1 + 1 = 2), so the Father is gathering all things together in Christ. Sin scatters what God made whole. It drives man from God, brother from brother, nation from nation, and earth from heaven. But in Christ, the Father gathers what sin has torn apart.

This unity matters because the all-hours news cycle trains us to see the world in fragments: violence here, deception there, greed somewhere else, suffering everywhere — story after story, crisis after crisis. If we take in these fragments apart from the larger story God has revealed in Scripture, we may begin to assume that fragmentation is final.

But Ephesians 1:10 tells us otherwise. Evil is active in the world, but it is not ultimate. Human rulers matter, but they do not reign over Christ. The nations rage, but they don’t determine the destiny of the earth. The Father has placed the future of all things in the hands of his beloved and sovereign Son.

Our confidence in Christ means we need not come to the news as anxious citizens or loyal partisans or helpless doomscrollers. We read as those whom Christ has chosen, redeemed, and forgiven according to the riches of God’s grace — as those included in God’s purpose to unite all things in Christ (Ephesians 1:4–10).

This identity changes how we engage the world, including the news, in many ways. Here are three.

Read Honestly

Christianity guards us against a sentimental view of our present age. Scripture never flatters us or the world. It tells us the truth about sin, death, injustice, deceit, oppression, and judgment. The Bible gives us a moral vocabulary robust enough for the worst headlines so that we can face “the sufferings of this present time” honestly, without letting the news drive us to despair (Romans 8:18).

Because Scripture tells the truth, we can read the news with our eyes open. We can grieve what is grievous, lament what is evil, call injustice unjust, and name sin for what it is. We do not have to look away from suffering.

The Christian gospel does not offer us fragile optimism; it announces resurrection hope. Ephesians 1:10 does not teach us to minimize the world’s fallen condition; it teaches us that Christ is greater than the world’s brokenness, and that all things in heaven and on earth will finally be summed up in him.

Judge Slowly

The speed of modern news tempts us to judge instantly. Within minutes, our feeds expect us to know what happened, who is guilty, which side is lying, what it means, who benefits, who doesn’t, and what everyone should do next. Our news cycle rewards speed, not careful thought. It rewards heat, not wisdom.

But Christians know we are creatures. We see in part and know in part (1 Corinthians 13:12). We recognize that in our limited understanding, we miss facts, context, history, motive, and proportion. What seems obvious in the first hour may look very different by the third day.

Our creaturely limits should make us humble. Humility does not require our silence, but it does require us to be patient and prudent. It makes us slower to accuse, slower to spread the hot headline, and slower to treat our first impressions as righteous discernment.

Ephesians 1 tells us that the Father has revealed the final meaning of history in Christ, but he has not revealed the significance of every headline. So, we judge slowly, speak carefully, and refuse the urge to mistake immediacy for wisdom.

Refuse to Panic

The same truth that humbles us also stabilizes our hearts. As Christians, we do not read the news indifferently. We pay attention. We grieve when appropriate. We refuse the laziness of looking away. But we do not have to panic.

If Ephesians 1:10 is true, then history is not up for grabs. So, we groan, yes, but not without hope (Romans 8:21–23). We lament, but not without the Lord (Lamentations 3:21–24). The loud breaking story is not the last line. Beneath and beyond it stands the mystery God has made known: The Father has blessed us in Christ, redeemed us through his blood, lavished grace upon us, and purposed to unite all things in his Son.

So, stay informed, but don’t doomscroll. Pay attention to the sorrows and dangers in our world, but don’t let the news disciple you. Do not let fear rule you. And do not let the fragments of the news obscure your view of the whole story.

Don’t merely consume the news. Read it beneath the lordship of Christ. Bring the world’s problems to him. Let his cosmic reign guard your heart. When the headlines suggest the world is coming apart, remember what God has already told us: The headlines are not ultimate. Christ is. Our Father is summing up all things in him.

Should we believe Paul’s words? John Piper opens Galatians 1:11–24 to show why Paul’s testimony about Christ can be trusted.

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They sacrificed their sons
     and their daughters to the demons. (Psalm 106:37)

I’ve wondered if demons ever appear as bees. At night, my children sometimes come to me complaining that the bees are after them. “What bees?” I ask. “The bees right there,” they say, pointing insistently to the air.

Even if the riddle of these recurring events can be solved in the shared imaginations of my children, we know demons do exist. They harass, enslave, and stalk. These fallen angels, cursed with their captain, know their time is short — and so they rage (Revelation 12:12). Like a tiger held down by a strong man, Satan thrashes, bites, claws with every dying gasp. His kingdom swarms like a beehive pierced through by three nails.

That world knows a lake of fire is reserved for them — fallen angels have no gospel, no Christ to save them. So they content themselves to play cosmic arsonists, burning as much as they can before they fall.

Principalities and Powers

But Scripture reveals that they do not deploy their chaos from a grassroots resistance against the Almighty — they have had a hegemony over the nations. “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God” (Deuteronomy 32:8). The sons of God, which can refer to divine beings in the Old Testament, rule from above, influencing and governing the affairs of men, fostering the spirit of unbelief and idolatry — yet all under the permissive lordship and impending return of Christ.

Demons behind our politics. Demons behind false religions. Demons behind cultural madness. Demons throwing nation against nation in utter darkness, trying to snuff out the light of the gospel. Demons as bees, following, stinging.

Moses, David, and Paul lived in this same world. A world where dark spirits acted. A world where such things as idols were not just blocks of wood transfigured by the fevered imaginations of men. Beings heard their praises and watched them bow before them.

Moses writes of Israel,

They stirred [the Lord] to jealousy with strange gods;
     with abominations they provoked him to anger.
They sacrificed to demons that were not God,
     to gods they had never known,
to new gods that had come recently,
     whom your fathers had never dreaded. (Deuteronomy 32:16–17)

Paul writes,

What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons. (1 Corinthians 10:19–20)

The gods of the nations, though dealt the decisive blow by Christ (Colossians 2:15), continue to be what they have been — demons, harassing the souls of men and encouraging rebellion against God. Demons are alive today and manipulating a secularism that denies their existence.

Blood on the Altar

From Moses in the Old to Paul in the New, we see men sacrificing to “gods” and idols which are not divine but demonic. Paul speaks of offering food to them, but Psalm 106 mentions something far more treacherous.

They served their idols,
     which became a snare to them.
They sacrificed their sons
     and their daughters to the demons;
they poured out innocent blood,
     the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,
     and the land was polluted with blood. (Psalm 106:36–38)

God’s people — not just the pagan savages — poured out the blood of their own sons and daughters to the idols of the nations, to demons. The land was polluted with blood. “They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin” (Jeremiah 32:35). Spilling the blood of one’s own children is so abominable that the Almighty says such an evil never even entered his mind, and he promises “the land shall become a waste,” devoid of joy and gladness, on account of it (Jeremiah 7:31–34).

God forbade such unutterable villainy and commanded his people not to tolerate any hint of such sacrifice.

Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to [the demon] Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech. (Leviticus 20:2–5)

Molech is most commonly the “god” in view with child sacrifice. Ironically, demonically, many of the child sacrifices in the ancient Near East were offered to fertility gods, who demanded a return on the goods they (allegedly) granted (cf. The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, 53).

They burned some of their children to honor the supposed god who gave them children — in hopes of having more children. They killed their children to ensure the gods gave them more. Today our world kills its children in the womb and vows to be more careful to prevent conception next time. This — if walls matter in hell — is a distinction.

American Idol

Our world — and my own land — is polluted with far more blood than ancient Israel. Our altars are visited more religiously; devils here are better fed. Secularism allows wickedness to flourish without the statues, the ceremonies, or the idols. We destroy life without fearing any gods’ wrath. We sacrifice our children to our ambitions and comforts. We serve no god higher than ourselves; our evil stands unpropped by superstition.

Consider: Today, in just the United States, hundreds of babies will be vacuumed out of their mothers’ womb with a suction 29 times the power of a household vacuum cleaner. Hundreds of others will be cut up in the womb and extracted. Others will be given amniotic fluid that kills through salt poisoning and hemorrhaging of the brain. Mothers and fathers of the child will pay money for this. Insurance companies and tax money will fund the rest. Doctors will perform the assassination and go home to have dinner. Consciences will be seared. Little bodies of babies will be thrown away.

And behind this sophisticated barbarity will be something more sinister than flesh and blood. Demons — watching, smiling.

Our warfare is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the heavenly realms. They hate God’s image-bearers, body and soul. They love our ruin. They receive our child sacrifices, whether at the altar or in the abortion clinic. Demons stand behind the deaths. May God have mercy upon us.

Have we grown tired of praying and protesting and preaching? This battle needs spiritual men to fight it; the flesh will not prevail. So yes, work toward legal justice and stay earnest about confronting this evil, but the Supreme Court that we appeal to most must always be the very throne of God. At his feet, demons fall. At his feet, nations receive mercy to repent and believe.

I want you to love typology.

I recognize that statement may seem a little strange, so let me explain. I want you to love typology because typology exposes us to the glory of the Son of God incarnate. It reveals the grace of God found in Jesus Christ. It gives us a three-dimensional portrait of all that Christ achieves for us and in us.

I want you to love typology because I want you to love Jesus. Typology isn’t an end in itself; it’s a road that leads to grace, God’s unmerited favor toward us in Jesus.

One Christ, Many Types

Before you can love typology, you need to know what it is. Typology is the study of how certain persons, events, and institutions foreshadowed the person and work of Christ. Generations of saints prior to the Enlightenment were far more willing to recognize that Scripture is one cohesive story and that earlier parts anticipated that story’s climax in Jesus Christ. In the modern era, that idea is suspect, one that doesn’t seem to conform to the rules of grammatical-historical interpretation. So, many modern Christians consider the practice of typology as suspect too — something akin to a well-intentioned, Christianized reader-response hermeneutic that imposes Jesus on passages that have nothing to do with him.

Of course, if that’s typology, I’d share in the skepticism. But typology isn’t a reading strategy or an imposition on Scripture; it’s the product of exegesis. Typology is what you discover when you attend carefully to the intent of the Old Testament authors; it’s very often an essential part of the argument they’re crafting. In other words, we don’t read typologically. The biblical authors wrote typologically. They intended for you to recognize patterns that anticipate some messianic resolution.

The Shadows

Authors intend types in Scripture as early as Genesis 1. In these first chapters, Moses makes explicit that nearly every element of the created order is a prototype for patterns that follow in redemptive history. He narrates creation with language that resonates with Israel’s experience of the exodus and tabernacle worship, and then as the Torah unfolds, he describes the exodus and Israel’s worship in language that evokes the creation narrative. For instance, Moses describes Adam’s role in the garden with the same language he employs to describe priestly service in the tabernacle (Genesis 2:15; Numbers 3:7–8; 8:26; 18:5–6). The Sabbath is a pattern for Israel’s worship and anticipates eschatological rest (Genesis 2:1–3; Exodus 20:8–11). Even the separation of the dry land from water is a shadowy expectation of God’s work of new creation, deliverance from slavery, and judgment against his enemies (Genesis 1:9; 8:2–3; Exodus 14:21).

The typological patterns only intensify from that point forward. Understood in context, the anticipation of a serpent-crushing seed of the woman is typological (Genesis 3:15). The seed will do what Adam should have done; the seed of the woman is a new Adam. Moses then traces a line of “seeds” that both develop and distort the typological pattern established by Adam and by Genesis 3:15.

Moses portrays Noah, for instance, as a new Adam — he’s given dominion over the world, rules over animals, and receives the same commission Adam himself received (Genesis 9:1–3). Further, Noah is a righteous priest-king who turns away God’s wrath, which serves as the foundation of a new creation (Genesis 8:20–22). Sound familiar? Moses intends for us to see Noah as one installment in a pattern that anticipates the second Adam, the true seed of the woman.

Or consider Joseph: a beloved son rejected by his brothers, placed in a grave, and then resurrected with power over the nations to give life to all who come to him. In Genesis 49:8, Moses states plainly that Joseph’s life is a type — an anticipation of the royal seed from the line of Judah. If Israel wanted to know what the coming king from the line of Judah would look like, he would look like Joseph.

The types continue from there. Moses indicates that his own life anticipates a prophet “like [him]” who will one day come (Deuteronomy 18:15). The entire sacrificial system anticipates a sacrifice to end all sacrifices (Hebrews 10:1–4). Joshua recounts the salvation of Rahab using the same vocabulary and imagery Moses used when describing the Passover (Joshua 2; cf. Exodus 12). Her salvation is a Passover-like salvation — this is the type of thing God does for sinners and the type of salvation he will deliver through the Messiah (1 Corinthians 5:7). David defeats a giant dressed like a snake by crushing his head (1 Samuel 17:5, 49). By evoking the promise of Genesis 3:15 in the conflict between David and Goliath, the author of 1 Samuel telegraphs that David’s victory is the type of thing God will do again.

Scripture is filled with types. We don’t have to impose Jesus on the Old Testament. The authors of the Old Testament filled their writings with what Jim Hamilton calls “promise-shaped patterns” that anticipate his coming.

The Light

If the above is true, Scripture doesn’t just contain good news; it is good news. The Holy Spirit didn’t simply sprinkle a few passages in the Gospels and Epistles that preach grace. Grace — messianic grace — is the heart of every biblical story. Every story reminds us that, at its core, Christianity is not about what we do for God but about what he has done for us in Jesus Christ.

And there’s more. The grace that pulsates in Scripture’s typologies points us both to past grace and future grace — grace found in Christ’s first coming and grace to be found when he comes again.

The Old Testament expected that the Messiah’s arrival would usher in the eschatological state. The old creation would end, and the new creation would take its place. That means that the Old Testament’s promises, prophecies, and patterns (types) have one eschatology in view. Yet one of the most shocking facets of the New Testament is that, though Christ ushered in the eschatological state, he didn’t end the old one. He inaugurated the new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), but he didn’t consummate it (Revelation 21:1). He began the age of resurrection, yet we await the fullness of that age at his second coming (1 Corinthians 15:23).

The typologies of the Old Testament, therefore, very often point us to some element of what Christ has accomplished in the past and what he will accomplish in the future. The flood, which pictures God’s eschatological wrath (Matthew 24:38–39), has already been swallowed by Christ at the cross — something we signify in our baptisms (1 Peter 3:20–21). And yet that same flood also anticipates the day God will fully rescue his people, when he consummates the new creation by flooding this world with fire, purifying it forever (2 Peter 3:5–7).

Or consider the typology of the tabernacle. The tabernacle points ultimately to Jesus of Nazareth, the one who tabernacles among us (John 1:14). At the same time, the tabernacle points to the final day when all creation becomes God’s cosmic Holy of Holies (Revelation 21:15–21).

Or consider skull-crushing typology in stories like David and Goliath. Christ conquered the serpent at the cross, forever taking away his greatest power — legitimate accusation. And yet the saints themselves will participate in crushing Satan’s skull under their feet on the final day (Romans 16:20).

Savor This Grace

The typologies of Scripture often point us not just to what Christ has accomplished but to what he will accomplish. Typology teaches us that Christians live between two great pillars of grace — the cross and the consummation. We are quite literally surrounded by grace. All of the imperatives of the Christian flow from this past grace and future grace. The Christian life is animated by faith in what Christ has done and hope in what Christ will do.

I want you to love typology because typology helps you see and savor this grace. Typology shows you that Scripture doesn’t just contain good news; it is good news. Typology shows us that God’s love is so glorious and so expansive it spills into and out of every part of Scripture. The Son of God is so majestic that God gave us not just four Gospels to testify to that reality but 66 books written over 1,500 years. However highly you may esteem God’s grace, I promise you Scripture’s view is higher — that grace resonates in every word.

What makes Paul so unwilling to add eloquence to the word of the cross? The apparent folly of the cross proves its actual power to those who are saved.

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