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There are dozens of New Testament passages that tell us about the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies. When most Christians read these passages, they assume that the prophecies must have been predicting the precise people and events that we find in the New Testament. While some prophecies do directly anticipate future realities, many originally referred to events and individuals in the Old Testament but took on a deeper meaning in the New Testament. How can we make sense of this?
The Greek words we normally translate “fulfill” can also mean “fill up,” “make full,” “finish,” “bring to completion,” or even “keep,” as in “keep the law.” In each case, fulfillment builds on something that went before: a partial meaning, a series of events, a life of obedience. Biblical fulfillment does not require that prophecy predict singular, specific events. Instead, it suggests that previous meanings were expanded or completed by later developments.
As a helpful analogy, think about the way we describe ourselves as feeling personally “fulfilled.” We don’t mean that life was meaningless before. Rather, we mean that we now experience greater depth or completeness compared to previous times. And something similar is true when the New Testament talks about the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. It tends to use “fulfill” to indicate that the meaning of the Old Testament has become richer and deeper.
what counts as prophecy?
Another factor in understanding fulfillment is recognizing the broad meaning of “prophecy.” Most modern readers tend to equate prophecy with predictions about the future. Biblical prophecy does contain some predictions. But it also contains records of historical events, reminders of God’s law, calls to repentance and obedience, praise to God, laments, descriptions of prophetic visions, and many other things. Essentially, prophecy is whatever a prophet said or wrote as God’s representative.
Corresponding to this, when the New Testament talks about the fulfillment of prophecy, it generally has in mind the fulfillment of God’s plan, regardless of the form the prophecy took. To put it another way, many fulfillments of prophecy are not fulfillments of predictions. Instead, they simply bring extra, fuller meaning to the prophet’s message.
For example, in Hosea 11:1, the prophet recalled how God had rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt. Then in Matthew 2:15, we read that Hosea’s prophecy was fulfilled when Jesus moved from Egypt to Galilee after Herod’s death. Hosea referred to the past to encourage his original audience that God would save them, too. Likely neither Hosea nor his original readers could have guessed how this pattern or type would be fulfilled in the future. But Matthew, writing after the time of Christ, saw the parallels between what God had done in the exodus and what He did in Jesus’ life. So he rightly said that Jesus had expanded or completed the meaning of Hosea’s words.
typology
Fulfillments such as the one we’ve just mentioned are often described as typological. This word refers to the idea that the thing that happened in the past was of the same kind or type as the thing that happened later. It’s a convenient way to say that the people and things in the Old Testament foreshadowed or pointed toward the greater thing that happens in the future. For instance, in Romans 5:14, Paul wrote that Adam was a “type” of Christ because he had a parallel role as the covenant head over God’s people.
Typology is extremely common in prophetic fulfillments. It’s especially characteristic of the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament. For instance, Matthew 2:17 says that the weeping of mothers in Bethlehem after Herod slaughtered their children was a fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:15. That verse originally referred to Israelite exiles who had been taken from the promised land in the eighth and seventh centuries BC. As another example, in John 13:18, Jesus said that He washed His disciples’ feet partly to fulfill the words of Psalm 41:9, where David lamented being mistreated and betrayed by his friends. Similarly, in John 19:28, Jesus thirsted and drank sour wine to fill up the meaning of Psalm 69:21, where David had lamented his suffering and called for rescue.
newly fulfilled and unfulfilled predictions
While many fulfillments mentioned in the New Testament are typological, some directly fulfill predictions for the first time. For instance, John 12:38 says that the Jews rejected Jesus in order to fulfill Isaiah 53:1. That passage says that the Christ’s own people would reject Him and His message. Like many other messianic predictions, this one could not have been fulfilled before the incarnation. It could be fulfilled only through Jesus.
Now, even in cases in which Old Testament predictions had no immediate fulfillment, they were still valuable to their original audiences. Ancient Israelites and Judahites would have drawn hope from the prediction that God would send a Redeemer to restore their lives and to bless them. This promise had sustained God’s people since the garden of Eden (Gen. 3:15), and it continued to sustain them throughout their history. This encouraged them to remain faithful to God despite the hardships they encountered, knowing that their faithfulness would be rewarded with the foretold blessing.
Oddly enough, this is largely the same position that believers find ourselves in today. For example, Isaiah 65–66 says that God will create new heavens and a new earth for us to inhabit. But according to 2 Peter 3:13, we won’t get them until Jesus returns. Years after Peter, John recorded his vision in Revelation 21:1–22:5, where he reaffirmed Isaiah’s words and gave us further hope. These are predictions about our future—perhaps our distant future. But does that make them irrelevant? Of course not. They motivate us to persevere so that we will receive our final reward.
Old Testament prophecy can be challenging. But understanding the variety of ways in which it was interpreted in the New Testament can equip us to read it hopefully, interpret it carefully, and apply it consistently with the rest of Scripture.