The Shadows: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament's Picture Book

Long before Jesus was born, God was already sketching His portrait — in lambs and tents, in blood and veils, in priests who never got to sit down. The Old Testament is full of what theologians call "types": real, historical things that were also shadows of a greater reality still to come. Paul gives us the key in one sentence: these things "are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ" (Colossians 2:17).

Think about how a shadow works. You can tell a lot from a shadow — the shape, the size, which way it's moving. But a shadow is not the thing. Nobody is saved by a shadow. A shadow's whole job is to announce that something solid is on its way and to give you its outline in advance. That's what Israel's rituals were: God's picture book of redemption, drawn centuries early, so that when Jesus arrived, those with eyes to see would recognize the shape.

Start with the Passover lamb. On the night Israel left Egypt, God said, "the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you" (Exodus 12:13). Not "when I see your good behavior" — when I see the blood. Fifteen centuries later, John the Baptist sees Jesus and cries, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). The details line up with startling precision: without blemish, killed at Passover, not a bone broken. The blood on the doorposts in Egypt was always a portrait of a cross outside Jerusalem.

Then there's the Tabernacle. God gave Moses exact blueprints for a portable tent and said why: "let them make me a sanctuary; that I may dwell among them" (Exodus 25:8). The God of the burning mountain wanted to camp in the middle of His people's camp. Every piece of furniture preached — one entrance, one altar of sacrifice, the veil, the ark. And then John 1:14 makes the shadow snap into focus: "the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." The Greek word for "dwelt" literally means "tabernacled" — He pitched His tent among us. The tent in the wilderness was the sketch; Jesus is the building.

The Day of Atonement gave Israel the two-sided picture of forgiveness. Two goats: one slain, its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat — sin requires death, blood pays the debt. The other led into the wilderness, carrying the people's confessed sins "unto a land not inhabited" — sin removed, carried away, gone. Payment and removal, acted out in a single ceremony: "that ye may be clean from all your sins before the LORD" (Leviticus 16:30). All. Not most. All.

But the shadows had a built-in ache: they had to be repeated. Every year, the Day of Atonement came around again — a confession that last year's atonement hadn't held. "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" (Hebrews 10:4). The priests never sat down, because the work was never done.

Until the day the veil tore. At the moment Jesus died, "the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom" (Matthew 27:51). Top to bottom — God's doing, not man's. Hebrews tells us what it means: the veil was His flesh, and through it we now have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus" (Hebrews 10:19). The barrier God commanded was removed by God Himself, because the blood it had been waiting for had finally been shed.

And the proof the Substance had arrived? "He... sat down on the right hand of God" (Hebrews 10:12). Priests stand because the work continues. Jesus sat because the work was finished. "By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14).

The Old Testament isn't God's rough draft. It's the shadow-gallery — and the New Testament is walking into the room where the Substance is standing. Learn to see the shadows, and Jesus gets bigger on every page.

If you want to walk through this thread day by day, the study The Shadows is in the Twenty Threads collection.