- Original picture by Dari lli from Unsplash
Biblical Types
What is a "type"?
In Biblical terms, it can be defined as something which points forward to something in the future. A study of Biblical types can be fascinating, even exciting and instructive. The Bible is an extensive book, comprising a large collection of writings inspired by God, compiled over many centuries, in different places, by different writers. These combine to describe a great plan stretching from Creation at the beginning to the Kingdom of God at the end.
This wonderful plan is developed through the lives of faithful men and women, and then through God's chosen nation of Israel, culminating in the ministry of Jesus Christ. The plan then widens to freely embrace both Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews). It will find its fulfilment when Jesus returns from heaven to set up the Kingdom of God on earth. This is the message of the Gospel.
Throughout the Bible, God has included a number of "types", in which people, objects, and events are used as a pattern or type for the future. When we discover these types, we can see how they provide us with evidence that God's purpose is clear and consistent; and as history repeated itself in various ways, they provide firm evidence that everything is working out as He intended. The sheer variety, and the circumstances in which the types were fulfilled, assures us that these things could not have happened by chance.
There is a further benefit which is that, while human philosophy and religion has sought to find its own answers to the fundamental questions of life, and inevitably changed according to culture or era, God's purpose declared in the Bible remains unchanged. Through His Word, and through the types found within it, God has provided answers to questions which humanity struggles with to this day, and has given us reason to trust and believe in Him.
Pointing forward to Jesus
Many of the types find their ultimate fulfilment in the work of Jesus Christ, and therefore we discover them in the Old Testament, long before Jesus was born. Jesus was, after all, at the very centre of God's plan of redemption for mankind, and so we are not surprised to find significant types from the very earliest pages of God’s Word, in the book of Genesis, which point forward to the coming of Jesus. The most impressive way to appreciate these types is to see how they were explained after their fulfilment, as we read in the New Testament. For example, in Paul's letter to the Romans, there is a striking comparison between Adam and Jesus:
''... just as through one man (Adam) sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned… death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come ... \
For if by the one man's offence death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ.'''
We may not have expected the man who brought sin into the world to have the status of a type of Jesus, who was sent to take away the effect of that sin, but this certainly teaches us how Jesus was sent to reinstate what Adam's sin had taken away, and the need for that role to be fulfilled by a man who had the nature of Adam.
A type of baptism
Another notable illustration of the use of types, with crucial relevance to human salvation, is found in Peter's first letter, where the apostle referred to Noah's ark, which Genesis chapter six tells us was made in faithful obedience to God, in full view of a wicked and Godless world. Peter wrote:
... God waited patiently in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water. And this water symbolises baptism that now saves you also − not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience towards God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
- Noah's Ark in the rain
- Original picture from biologos.org
Noah and his family emerged after the Flood into a clean, fresh world, where no trace of the wickedness which had corrupted the old world remained. This symbolised the essential act of baptism, by which a believer confesses their sin and becomes a true follower of Jesus Christ. This is explained by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans, where he wrote:
... we are buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
The cleansing waters of the Flood are thus seen as a type of the waters of baptism. In addition, Noah became a type of Jesus. Following a faithful life of obedience, God saved him, along with his close family who believed as Noah did. They shared with him the reward – a new world in which the old order had been swept away.
Did people in Old Testament times benefit from the types? If the type was fulfilled during and after the ministry of Jesus, we may ask if people in earlier times were deprived of a major support to their faith. They could not see what we can see by looking back. What, for example, did Adam or Noah know about Jesus?
The answer is that they knew God would send a saviour for mankind. Adam heard God's promise in Eden (Genesis 3:15) and Noah heard God's promise when the Flood was over (Genesis 8:22). Whilst they and many others may not have appreciated the significance of everything that God had done, it is evident that they understood what God required of them, and that they could share in the future which God had promised. This is made very clear in the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews where we read concerning people like Noah:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, they were assured of them.
The full benefit of the types, however, was reserved for a minority of believers in the generations that followed, who were exposed to a vast array of false religion, including a corrupted Christianity, for whom the harmony and clarity of God's Word shone as a light in a dark world.
The Letter to the Hebrews
In this letter there is a detailed account of how the system of worship followed by the children of Israel after the Exodus foreshadowed the work of Jesus. As a letter to ‘Hebrews’, we are reminded that the main recipients were the descendants of the Jews of Old Testament times. The letter refers to the time when they had been delivered from slavery in Egypt, a defining moment in their history which was never to be forgotten. They were given a new and highly symbolic form of collective and individual worship in the wilderness. The centre of their worship was the Tabernacle, which Moses was commanded to build, as a dwelling place for God in their midst (see Exodus chapter 40).
There are many types in the features of the Tabernacle, with its two rooms, the fabrics and coverings, the clothing of the priests, the offerings and sacrifices, and in the wilderness location itself. But the focal point came on the annual Day of Atonement, when the High Priest went into the Most Holy Place, part of the Tabernacle, into the very presence of God.
Hebrews chapter nine tells us that "it was symbolic for the present time" (verse 9), meaning that it served a purpose at the time but Bible. It continues:
But Christ came as high priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation
Then we read:
How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
The rich symbology of Israel's worship in the wilderness not only looked forward to the future ministry of Jesus, but was consistent with the patterns or types which had been established much earlier, as recorded in Genesis. Some have already been mentioned. The necessity for sacrifice, involving the shedding of blood, was clearly explained to Adam and his immediate family. The fig leaves with which Adam and Eve attempted to cover their nakedness were divinely replaced by "tunics of skin" (Genesis 3:21), and this principle followed through into the animal sacrifices offered throughout Old Testament times. The fulfilment of these types was provided by the blood of Jesus, a complete and
looked forward to something greater to come. This is the very essence of a type in the
perfect sacrifice which no animal could provide (see Hebrews 10: 4,11,12).
- The camp of Israel in the wilderness with the Tabernacle at its centre
- Picture from trinitylafayette.com
Abraham as a type
The future provision of such a sacrifice was completely understood by Abraham. God made far-reaching promises to Abraham, in which he totally trusted. These are outlined in Genesis chapter 12 and later chapters. Genesis tells us how God told Abraham to take his only son Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice. As they both went on their way to the appointed place, Isaac asked his father where the lamb was. Abraham replied:
My son, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering.
When Abraham was on the verge of slaying his son, an angel stopped him; but both the faith of Abraham and the type were confirmed, as the letter to the Hebrews reminds us:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called”, accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.
Abraham's agonising act of obedience was not a barbaric act of primitive mankind but foreshadowed the merciful provision God made for that perfect sacrifice:
... God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life
Jesus did die; but God raised him from the dead, and Abraham was certain that God had the power to raise the dead.
A type for us
Examples from the past illustrate how the fulfilment of the types can apply to both Jesus and to faithful believers. In addition to the example of Noah, Jesus referred to the world of his day in a powerful message to his disciples. In his teaching called "the Mount Olivet prophecy", he was answering a question by his disciples about the end of the Jewish era, and applied that to the Gentile era as well, in which we live today:
But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
The Flood was therefore a type of God's judgements at the end of the age; and just as it came upon the Jewish nation at the hands of the Romans in retribution for their rejection of Jesus, so it will come on the world at large as a result of its rejection of God and His laws. These are the times we are living in – corrupt, violent, self-centred, and godless. But, like Noah, we have an opportunity to escape.
The Apostle Paul was a repentant Jew and his mission was to preach the gospel to the Gentiles. His example is one we should carefully note. He wrote to Timothy:
... Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern (a type) of those who are going to believe on him for everlasting life.
If we listen to what Jesus and Paul said, and act upon it, we can be given a place in the coming Kingdom of God on earth, and so become part of the fulfilment of the type that Paul wrote to Timothy about.
Author Alan Wharton
Country Surry, UK
Source Light on a New World reprint from Volume 32.1
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