The Bible's One Story

David Anguish

"Why study the Old Testament? This question has echoed down through the centuries of church history” (Hill and Walton 2009, 11).

Most believers affirm that, at some level, the church needs to study the OT. We’ve read the reasons identified in Romans 15.4 (“instruction”) and 1 Corinthians 10.11 (“warnings” [NIV]). We know the OT’s importance for providing the details needed to understand references to names and events in some NT passages (e.g., Jude 5–11). We are enriched by the life lessons learned from people in the OT era who were called to serve YHWH. We are also generally aware of the OT’s role in the development of the theological teachings that constitute our faith.

These reasons for OT study are not of equal weight, but together they point to the integral connection between the testaments that we must understand to fully appreciate Luke’s references to “the reign of God” in Luke-Acts. Christopher Wright concisely summarizes the connection between the testaments as follows: (1) “The Old Testament tells the story that Jesus completes.” (2) “Not only does the Old Testament tell the story that Jesus completes, it also declares the promise that Jesus fulfills” (Wright 2014, 16, 64).

Bear in mind that “the promise that Jesus fulfills” refers to “much more than a promise box full of blessed predictions about Jesus.” In fact, without the OT’s promises, “we would lose most of the meaning of Jesus himself” (Wright 2014, 38, 45). Or, as N. T. Wright stated it, when we get to the end of the OT, we have the sense that “it is an unfinished narrative, an unfinished agenda. Things are supposed to happen that haven’t happened yet” (Wright 2012, 66).

Luke–Acts, the two-part narrative of Christianity’s origins, illustrates the NT writers’ shared conviction that they were completing a single story already begun, not composing a new story. We see this at the outset of Luke in his use of the word “fulfilled” (πληροφορέω, plērophoreō; 1.1), and then in how he presents the birth narratives of John and Jesus. Though his preface in Luke 1.1–4 is written in some of the most cultured Greek in the NT, in the birth narratives in 1.5—2.52 he adopts the style of the LXX, unlike anything else in the remainder of Luke-Acts. People immersed in the OT’s language and themes would have noticed this shift. As Mark Strauss writes, they would have recognized that the chapters “transport the reader into the world of the Old Testament,… introduc[ing] the reader to the faithful remnant of the people of God, waiting expectantly for the fulfillment of the promises God has made to them.” Use of the LXX’s style, allusions, and themes reinforces “the central theme of the birth narrative [which] is the arrival of God’s salvation and the fulfillment of his promise to Israel” (Strauss 2007, 264). Important examples of this idea are Mary’s connecting of the events in her life to God remembering his mercy to Abraham (1.54–55), and Zechariah’s emphasis on God’s expected visitation, the house of David, the holy prophets, and the oath he swore to “our father Abraham” (1.68–75). From the outset, Luke is clear that his narrative is continuing a story already begun.

Though not the only other place it occurs, the same emphasis is evident at the end of Luke. After the two men Jesus met on the Emmaus road shared their dashed hope that he had been “the one who was about to redeem Israel” (Luke 24.21), he explained that “Moses and all the prophets” had been writing “things concerning himself in all the Scriptures” (v. 27). In Jerusalem later the same day, Jesus repeated the point for the Eleven and those gathered with them: “everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (v. 44). The “written Scriptures” had anticipated that “the Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead the third day” (v. 46).

Richard Hays illustrates the effect Luke creates in Luke 24 as follows:

The more we focus on this scene, the more we will appreciate God’s wisdom in bringing to completion the amazing story the Bible tells.

Works Cited

Hays, Richard B. Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness. SPCK.

Hill, Andrew E., and John H. Walton. 2009. A Survey of the Old Testament. 3rd ed. Zondervan.

Strauss, Mark L. 2007. Four Portraits, One Jesus: A Survey of Jesus and the Gospels. Zondervan.

Wright, Christopher J. H. 2014. Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament. 2nd ed. IVP Academic.

Wright, N. T. 2012. How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. HarperOne.

All Scripture quotations not otherwise designated are from the CSB. Italics in biblical quotations are added by the author. Permission is granted to reprint original materials with the credit line, “Reprinted from David Anguish, ‘The Berea Page,’ August 4, 2026.”

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Featured from davidanguish.com​

From the Sermons and Class Notes, Topical page (here), "The Bible's Story, 1 – The New Testament's Assumption" (here) — After addressing various reasons for studying the Old Testament, we turn attention to the need to study the two testaments together and to selections from Luke as an example of how the New Testament writings assume they are continuing the great story left incomplete at the end of the Old Testament.

Think about it …

“‘Fellowship’ means, for many, simply the enjoyment of the company of other Christians.… The idea we need to grasp … is that, in Christ, Christians not only belong to one another, but actually become mutually identified, truly rejoicing with the happy and genuinely weeping with the sad (Rom. 15:25; cf. 1 Cor. 12:26; 2 Cor. 11:28–29). Koinōnia is part of the truth about the body of Christ. All are bound together in a mutual bond that makes our much-prized individualism look shallow and petty.” ~ N. T. Wright. 1986. The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and to Philemon: An Introduction and Commentary. The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 176. Image by Peggy & Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

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"May grace and peace be multiplied to you" (1 Peter 1.2),

David

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