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Luke 24:45–47
“[Jesus] said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem’” (vv. 46–47).
It was necessary that everything said about Jesus in the Old Testament be fulfilled, as our Savior noted in one of His postresurrection appearances to His disciples (Luke 24:44). During that same appearance, we read in today’s passage, our Lord “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” (v. 45). He gave them the understanding necessary to recognize what is said about the Savior both in direct prophecies (e.g., Isa. 53) and in the Old Testament themes that are taken up by Christ and reach their consummate fulfillment (e.g., His being the perfect Prophet, Priest, and King; see Heb. 1:1–4). This indicates that while we must point out the evidence for Jesus as the Messiah in the Old Testament, the evidence alone will not convince. Jesus must work in the hearer by His Holy Spirit. We must pray that those to whom we speak about Jesus will experience the regenerating work of God.
As Jesus revealed the truth about Himself from the Old Testament, He said that the old covenant Scriptures foresee Him not only in their predictions of His life, death, and resurrection. In pointing to Jesus, the Old Testament also says that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in [Jesus’] name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46–47). In prophesying the gospel, the Old Testament spoke of both the content of the gospel—the person and work of Jesus—and the church’s work of taking this gospel to the world. Consequently, the church’s gospel ministry is not plan B on the part of God but is integral to His saving purposes. The new covenant church is not a brand-new phase in the history of salvation discontinuous with the old covenant; rather, it is the next phase in salvation history that is continuous with what came before and fulfills God’s plan for His people from all eternity. When the Messiah came, the new covenant church was born to take the gospel to the nations because God intended for that to happen all along (e.g., Isa. 52:7; 60:1–3).
The church has been ordained from all eternity to take the gospel to the world in this phase of God’s redemptive work. Matthew Henry comments: “The prophets had preached repentance and remission to the Jews, but the apostles must preach them to all the world. None are exempted from the obligations the gospel lays upon men to repent, nor are any excluded from those inestimable benefits which are included in the remission of sins, but those that by their unbelief and impenitency put a bar in their own door.”
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Matthew Henry writes that “the great gospel privilege of the remission of sins must be proposed to all, and assured to all that repent, and believe the gospel.” The gospel is a message for all people to be preached during the phase of salvation history in which we live. As we are able, let us pray and give funds to the effort of making disciples of Jesus in every nation.
For further study
- Psalms 22:30–31; 68:11
- Nahum 1
- Matthew 28:18–20
- Mark 16:14–18
The bible in a year
- Zechariah 1–3
- Revelation 17