Reading Scripture

But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.  2 Corinthians 3:15-16

The arrangement of books in our Bibles, in a chronological order so that the Hebrews scriptures are placed before the Christian scriptures which were written much later, is theologically problematic. We are encouraged by default to read the texts in that order, but Paul says it will not work.

Paul is not criticizing his Jewish contemporaries, but highlighting the problem anyone faces who reads the Hebrew Scriptures without first understanding Christ as Lord. If we do that today, we too will have an obscuring covering preventing us from appreciating what we read. The true meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures is veiled unless we know Jesus as Lord.

How often we have  thought that an appreciation of the Old Testament is necessary in order to properly understand Jesus, when Paul claims it is the other way around! For instance, do we have to understand the Jewish sacrificial system to grasp the meaning of the cross of Christ, or do we have to understand Christ and his cross to truly understand what the animal sacrifices were and were not? 

By following a chronological order rather than the theological order of knowing Christ first, by which we would view the law and prophets only from knowing Christ, we end up conforming Christ to what came before. Instead, we should be finding the Christ we have come to know in the texts which came before.

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life. John 5:39-40

Someone might argue that the Hebrew writer is attempting to base our understanding of Jesus on the sacred writings that we call the Old Testament. But is this author actually taking a chronological approach?

It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Hebrews 10:4

Consider this statement in Hebrews. Do the Jewish writings anywhere state that the whole animal sacrificial system is ineffectual? Quite the opposite! The Mosaic code speaks as if the sacrifices are indeed removing the sins of the people.

It seems that only in light of the cross of Christ can the Hebrew writer draw a new insight about the impotence of the Mosaic and cultic practice at the temple altar. He is not trying to get Jews to understand Christ through the ancient scriptures, but giving a new understanding of those texts on the basis of the divine revelation of Christ. This writer, whoever he might be, is reading Christ first and all the law and prophets only in light of Jesus as Lord and the lamb of God.

If we arranged our Bibles in a less misleading order we would put the four gospels first, followed by the other Christian writings which provide commentary on the person and teaching of Jesus. At the end would be the Old Testament, only to be read once one had come to know Jesus as the Word, so that we might find that same Word metaphorically and figuratively within all those scriptures.