Lutheran pastors are familiar with the law-gospel model of interpreting and preaching Scripture; they may not be as familiar with the redemptive-historical model. This model emphasizes God’s act of redemption throughout history. It is traced in four phases—creation, fall, redemption, restoration—and it sees how Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is the grand climax of all redemptive history. In fact, Christ is what the entire story is about. While this model is more common in Reformed exegesis and preaching, there is plenty about this model that Lutherans can appreciate and use. While many Lutherans have heard of Bryan Chapell, Sidney Greidanus, or Timothy Keller, all of whom fall into this model, the most comprehensive text on the subject is not by them. It’s by Dennis Johnson, who recently retired as a professor of New Testament and homiletics at Westminster Seminary California. If Christ is what the entire story is about, then it quickly becomes apparent that this book is not just about preaching. It’s about hermeneutics. So this model is really a hermeneutic-homiletic model. It is a way of interpreting (and preaching) all of Scripture Christocentrically.  

That is easier said than done. When studied in its scholarly form, prophecy and typology are way more complex than we may first have thought.. The perennial issue is: When is it legitimate to see Christ in interpreting (and preaching) a text? When is it not? Some have stated it is only valid when the NT directly states that Christ is the fulfillment. The problem is that this view essentially ignores the phenomenon of allusion. Many NT authors allude to things from the OT, without necessarily using a convenient fulfillment formula, “This happened so that the Scriptures would be fulfilled….” Sophisticated authors (and preachers) may not explicitly say themes or words or concepts are fulfilled in Christ in so many words, but by using those things, they are implying it. This shows that Christocentric hermeneutics and preaching takes careful consideration across multiple disciplines. 

Him We Proclaim by Dennis E. Johnson finds just such a wonderful synthesis of exegesis, hermeneutics, and homiletics. Johnson laments that “in theological scholarship … exegesis … stops short of biblical interpretation’s ultimate aim, proclamation” (13). He speaks of apostolic hermeneutics and apostolic preaching, and his basic premise is that we should preach Christ the way the early apostles preached Christ. Simply put, Peter and Paul found Christ everywhere in Scripture. They proved to be students of Jesus on the road to Emmaus, who explained “what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Modern critics often complain that the NT apostles illegitimately took OT passages out of context to make them “fit” Christ. Instead, Johnson wants to reunite the OT and the NT, and so he bases his preaching model on how the NT apostles found Christ in places we might not anticipate. This does not mean, however, that there are no boundaries for proper interpretation. As he says, “There is a distinctively apostolic way of being Christ-centered, and it is this hermeneutic that places appropriate checks on the preacher’s hyperactive imagination, thereby assuring listeners that the message is revealed by God, not merely generated by human creativity.… Reading and preaching the Bible redemptive-historically is more than drawing lines to connect Old Testament types in ‘Promise Column A’ with New Testament antitypes in ‘Fulfillment Column B.’ It is recognizing that Adam’s, Abraham’s, and Israel’s experiences were designed from the beginning to foreshadow the end” (16-17).  

Johnson’s book is divided into two basic parts. In chapters 2–5, he makes the case for apostolic, Christocentric preaching. In chapter 2, he highlights the strengths and weaknesses of current trends in homiletics that tend to separate preaching as having as its goal either to convert, to edify, or to instruct. Johnson contends preaching can do it all. In chapter 3, he exegetes Colossians 1:24–2:7 as Paul’s theology of preaching—giving way to the title of the book, Him We Proclaim (based on the ESV translation of that passage). He explores how Paul defines seven things: the purpose of proclamation, the needs of the listeners, the content of the message, the communicative tasks, the price paid by preachers, the divine power given to preachers, and the office of the preacher. In chapter 4, he overviews the recovery and criticisms of Christocentric preaching throughout church history, noting the early church’s penchant for allegory and the Reformation’s correction, but also the Enlightenment’s rejection of the very notion of prophecy and typology. Chapter 5 is particularly interesting, since he interacts with critics of his view, who “may wonder whether the path is really ‘there’ between every text of the Old Testament and the work of the Savior in the New. Is it, perhaps, only the figment of a well-meaning expositor’s hyperactive imagination, ingenuity, and creativity?” (129). He distills that the central issue revolves around which context(s) to consider—the immediate context, an author’s entire corpus, allusions in other biblical literature, or the entire canon. He believes the last should have the greatest precedence. One critique he interacts with is called “commendable humility” (l40-41). This view states that we are not inspired apostles, and so we need to be guarded and humble in stating what connects to Christ when the NT does not say so. Johnson counters by saying it is not only not humble but “sub-apostolic” to posit a methodology which the apostles did not use (141). In other words, we need to be guided not merely by the apostles’ explicit citations of the OT but by their general method.  

Chapters 6–10 provide a framework for putting this into practice. In chapter 6, he examines the hermeneutical, covenantal framework of Scripture as espoused in Hebrews—which explicitly claims to be a sermonic “word of exhortation” (13:22). In chapter 7, he goes through hermeneutic methodology, emphasizing that there is both continuity and discontinuity between an OT type and NT antitype, because the Messiah is “something greater” than the OT types that were limited by sin (202). A very helpful section is the spectrum from explicit typology (e.g., Rom 5:12; 1 Cor 10:6; 1 Pet 3:21; Heb 8:5) and explicit OT quotations (e.g., Matt 2:15, Ps 22:1), to clear allusions to the OT (e.g., John 1:17–18, 3:14–15, 10:11), to subtle or debatable allusions to the OT (e.g., Matt 17:5, Luke 1:35). He then shows how general OT patterns are fulfilled in Christ, for example, how every lament psalm and every prophet, priest, and king ultimately reflect (or fails to reflect) Christ (215-6). Building off Edmund Clowney’s “triangle of typology,” Johnson provides a very helpful “redemptive-historical hermeneutical map” that leads from an OT event/institution, through its fulfillment in Christ, to our preaching today, without falling into the traps of allegory or moralism (230-1). Chapter 8 explores preaching Christ through a covenantal framework (for example, the offices of prophet, priest, and king, or the roles of lord and servant). Chapter 9 gets into more specifics and examples of preaching Christ from various OT genres, while Chapter 10 gets into more specifics and examples about preaching Christ from various NT genres. 

Christ-centered preachers must utilize as many biblically appropriate avenues as possible to proclaim Christ. If you thought you had already considered them all, you will consider more in this book. This book is not for the faint of heart; it is exhaustive yet insightful. To summarize my analysis of Johnson’s thesis as simply as I can, I fall into the “commendable humility” position above. I find it helpful to divide things into three basic categories. There are certain cases we can clearly and confidently connect to Christ. There are certain cases that are illegitimate allegorical stretches to Christ. In the middle are many cases where we use inter-canonical allusions to say (with various degrees of certainty) to what degree they connect to Christ. When we are in this messy, gray middle, we need to preach how general themes point to Christ, without saying that we know for sure that specific details point to Christ. When there are absolutely no allusions to Christ, we need to be humble and reserved in saying this may be a connection, but we don’t know for sure. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to study with Dennis Johnson for a doctoral class. I expressed my reservations for where I feared this hermeneutic-homiletic model could lead. Nevertheless, I now see how it can be a rather deprived hermeneutic to say, “It’s only fulfilled in Christ when the NT explicitly says so.” (Even Matt 27:46/Mark 15:34 don’t use a fulfillment formula.) Johnson led me to see (and preach) Christ from more of the Scriptures, and for that I am grateful. Reading with discernment, you will come away with an enriched understanding of reading, interpreting, and preaching Christ from all Scripture.