A concluding summary of the New Testament
A concluding summary of the New Testament
The New Testament contends that what was promised in the Old Testament is fulfilled in the New. In Matthew, God’s highly anticipated Messiah arrives on the historical scene and, true to prophetic form, inaugurates the kingdom that awaits its consummation in the new earth. Thus the themes associated with land in the Old Testament are now connected to Jesus, fulfilled in the light of him and, as seen in John, enjoyed in relation to him. He performs a new exodus and saves his people out of sin and into the place of redemptive blessing – now centred in him. Moreover, he gives rest to those who come to him. Life that once abounded in the land now abounds in him, for he is the vine, the resurrection and the life. Additionally, all the nations are his and he summons his disciples to go and gather those whom he already possesses.
The fulfilment of the land theme continues throughout Hebrews, 1 and 2 Peter and Revelation. People enter God’s rest through faith in the true and greater Son, Jesus Christ, and look for a better country. Though Old Testament believers looked through the land of promise to God’s greater eschatological rest and city, by virtue of Christ and his work, new covenant believers now look to Jesus and confidently await their arrival in the new Jerusalem, homeland, unshakeable kingdom and abiding city that is to come, which is described in the letters of Peter and Revelation as the new heaven and new earth. In short, the land, which served as a type of this greater reality, now reaches its telos. And the covenant relationship for which we were created is realized in the new heaven and new earth, where our glorious triune God will dwell with us, and we will be his people, and God himself will be with us as our God (Rev. 21:3).