A Study in Intertextuality: Seeing Jesus in All of Scripture
One of my favorite texts is Acts 13:38-39. It’s a simple gospel text that is part of Paul’s sermon to a Jewish synagogue situated in the gentile region of Pisidia. Paul is speaking to both Jews and gentile God-fearers. Verses 38-39 are a wrap up to the sermon and they go like this, “Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses.” Immediately after saying these words, he issued a warning from Habakkuk 1:5.
This is straightforward. There are no ambiguities. The law could not free us from the consequences of sin and death and the fear that accompanies the properly penal end to a life lived in Adam. But, in Christ, we are free in a forensic or legal sense. In Christ God declares us not guilty. It’s not simplistic, but it is simple. It is so simple that a young disciple can be encouraged by it. In fact, it is so simple one might wonder if there is depth to the passage beyond the obvious.
I wondered that myself when looking at this passage not long ago. In fact, before reading the passage in the Greek I expected to find something that would lead me back to the Old Testament. For example, in John 19:6 when Pilate presents Jesus, the second Adam, to the crowd, he said, “Behold the man!” Somone wading in the deeper end of the pool of Scripture might be thrilled to discover that God used these very words to describe the first Adam after his fall in the Garden, “Behold, the man has become like one of us…” (Gen. 3:22). That is what I expected, but instead I found two little words, a preposition and a demonstrative pronoun, translated “through this” (dia toutou). That was all.
Admittedly, there was a bit of surprise on my part. I didn’t expect “through this (One)” to be the phrase used to describe the Lord who sets us free from all that we could not be freed from by relying on the law. But rather than allowing my understanding to rest with that I decided to dig a little more deeply. Separately, I wondered why Paul had chosen Habakkuk 1:5 as his concluding challenge. Habakkuk was telling the people of Judah that God was about ready to do something so surprising that they would not believe it even if he told them! What was he going to do?
He was going to send the Babylonians to enslave the Judaeans. And yet, Paul’s point was the very opposite, Jesus had come to free those who would believe. As a warning, Paul’s choice made sense. But thinking that it might be from the Greek version of the Hebrew, I decided to examine the text and what I found gave me a delightful surprise.
Knowing that a Biblical author often does not simply quote a text but has the context in mind, I wondered if the same was true here. I was not disappointed. When I looked up at Habakkuk 1:4 (“So the law is paralyzed”), I immediately noticed that it began with a preposition and a demonstrative pronoun, the very two words in Acts 13:38, dia toutou. But this word combination did not refer to the coming Messiah. It referred to the law! The contrast was striking. This law is paralyzed and unable to bring freedom, but this man, Jesus, is able to free us.
This textual discovery caused me no little joy. However, there was something else in the text that drew my attention. The law was paralyzed because it was being perverted by wicked men. In fact, Habakkuk 1:4 says, “For the wicked surround the righteous.” Righteous, in this sentence, is a substantival adjective and it is in the singular not the plural, which means that the sentence is to be translated, “For the wicked surround the righteous one.” Now, it is hard not to see this as a shadow of Christ in the text. The Christ was surrounded by wicked men who had perverted justice so that He might be crucified.
There might even be a third textual correspondence between Acts and Habakkuk. When Paul quoted Habakkuk in the Greek text we discover an emphasis on work. Habakkuk reads, “I am working a work in your days, a work that you will not believe…” (Acts 13:41 citing Hab. 1:5). Many think that the corresponding work is that of the resurrection and so it may well be. However, if we go back to Acts 13:2 we find that the Spirit said to the Antiochian church, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Here the work would refer to the proclamation of the gospel. This is the work God was doing in the present moment, a work which was denied by the Jews.
And with all of these connections the message is beautiful. Through this Righteous One we have freedom from everything from which we could not be freed by the law of Moses. But despite the beauty of the text, Paul ends with a warning, which he introduced with these words, “Beware, therefore, lest what is said in the prophets should come about…” Notice the words, “what is said (eipon).” In the Greek there are two tenses for the past, the aorist and the imperfect. Neither of those tenses are used here. This word is in the perfect tense. Now, it’s true that the perfect tense describes an action that occurred in the past, but the emphasis of this tense is not on the past action so much as it is on the present state of affairs arising from the action.
Therefore, Acts 13:40 is not translated, “what was said by the prophets.” Instead, we read, “what is said by the prophets,” as if what these prophets said in the past was actually said in Paul’s own day! In other words, the prophets long ago, immediately inspired by God, spoke a word that outlived them! But notice what that means. The words of the prophets are just as living and active now as they were then (Heb. 4:11-13) because they are the words of the living God! Consequently, the warning is a living warning meant for us today. Beware lest you remain paralyzed by the law and miss the freedom that is held out to you in Christ.
