My wife thinks I have an internal GPS. Now, I usually know where I’m going, but the truth is I’ve cultivated my sense of direction by trial and error. While a teenager, with lots of time to kill, I would poke my nose down roads to see where they led. Sometimes they led to dead ends, but other times I discovered delightful winding paths up and down the hills or through valleys I didn’t know were there.
But trial and error are not usually the best way to learn. Most of us don’t have time just to poke around, and too many dead-end roads can lead to frustration. In spite of my internal GPS, I once got myself turned around in Chicago, and I finally had to admit defeat and ask for directions.
Many people feel frustrated when they try to navigate through the Scriptures. How wonderful it would’ve been to be able to say to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray,” as the disciples did in Luke 11:1. Perhaps they also ought to have said to him, “Lord, teach us to read.” Brian Tabb’s book After Emmaus: How the Church Fulfills the Mission of Christ argues that Jesus did, in fact, answer the question the disciples never asked. He argues that Luke-Acts demonstrates just how the suffering, resurrection, and mission of Jesus and then the church provide both an interpretive key to understand the Bible and a roadmap for the church.
On the Road with Jesus
The book begins with the post-resurrection discussion between Jesus and two disciples on the road to Emmaus. These disciples reveal their utter incomprehension about the meaning of Jesus’s recent death, so Jesus chastises them for being “slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25). Then, “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he [interprets] to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Later in the chapter, Jesus says, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:46–47). Based on these latter two verses Tabb, a professor and the editor of Themelios, summarizes three themes that constitute the Old Testament expectation for the Christ: suffering, resurrection, and mission.
Three themes constitute the Old Testament expectation for the Christ: suffering, resurrection, and mission.
As Tabb notes, Christians disagree over how much content about Jesus we can identify in “all the Scriptures.” Tabb himself asserts that “the full range of the Scriptures, from beginning to end, has a singular focus on Christ himself” (23). He sets his view in contrast to Daniel Block’s Christotelic approach, which limits references to Jesus to a subset of Old Testament texts (especially messianic prophecies) without allowing for other ways (such “patterns and prefigurements,” 24) the Old Testament anticipates the coming of Christ.
Christians often wonder how to relate the Old Testament to Jesus. On the one hand, maximalists see “Jesus on every page” and sometimes make biblical-theological connections that dazzle the mind yet don’t pass the common-sense test. On the other hand, minimalists seem to run the risk of reading much of the Old Testament as if Jesus never came. Would that Luke had recorded for us just how much of the Old Testament Jesus opened up to those original disciples. But perhaps he did, and that is what Tabb would like to show.
On the Road with Brian Tabb
Lest we think Tabb begins as if he wants to squeeze every verse in the Old Testament for something about Jesus, he is in fact a much more careful guide than a quick reading of his first paragraphs would suggest. He consciously focuses on quotations of and allusions to the Old Testament in the New, applying the approach described in G. K. Beale’s Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. As a result, Tabb limits himself to Old Testament texts where he can demonstrate a connection. For Tabb, Jesus’s remarks about the Old Testament in Luke 24 are not so much a blank canvas on which to paint anything one wants but rather a hint about how Luke-Acts draws from the Old Testament to explain Jesus’s mission and ours.
This discipline explains why Tabb refrains from making merely thematic connections within the Bible. For example, in describing the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost as a reversal of Babel (Gen. 11), Tabb notes the list of nations in Acts 2:9–11. These nations are anticipated in the sending of the 72 in Luke 10:1 and correspond to the Table of Nations in Genesis 10, of which there are 72 in the Septuagint (145–46). Sticking to connections he can demonstrate, Tabb doesn’t relate Pentecost to Zephaniah 3:9, in which the Lord promises “I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the LORD and serve him with one accord,” which likewise anticipates a reversal of Babel.
Also, on the theme of Jesus’s followers carrying on his mission, Tabb doesn’t discuss Colossians 1:24–29, in which Paul discusses “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” through his mission to the Gentiles. This shows how laser-focused Tabb is on the New Testament use of the Old. For those who are cautious about finding demonstrable textual warrants to justify seeing references to Jesus in the Old Testament, Tabb is a reliable guide.
After Emmaus includes eight chapters in which Tabb demonstrates how Jesus’s last instruction to the disciples in Luke 24:46–47 is reflected throughout Luke-Acts in particular and the New Testament in general. Although most of the book is focused on Luke-Acts, chapter 7 takes key “soundings” from passages in John, Paul, and 1 Peter that likewise draw from the Old Testament regarding Christ and mission. Chapter 8 provides a detailed summary of the argument and offers several reflections on implications for mission.
Why Join Jesus and Brian Tabb on the Journey?
Life is too short to spend on dead-end roads. While an occasional lark may prove valuable, most of us need help not only getting started but also continuing to greater understanding of the Bible. If you want someone to point you down a road that has plenty of rich scenery to explore, reading just one chapter in this book will give you a great start. This book is for those who want greater depth. It will help you see more clearly how Jesus’s lens for interpreting the Old Testament filtered down to the apostles and emerged in Luke-Acts.
Most of us need help not only getting started but also continuing to greater understanding of the Bible.
Tabb is an effective teacher, but he offers more than just a guide to familiar themes. He makes a fresh connections between the Messiah and mission as Old Testament themes fulfilled in Jesus and the church. This perspective strikes a good balance between knowing the gospel and living it out. This is not just a question of balance but of the integral connection between theology and life. As Tabb summarizes, “Examining Jesus’s mission in the Scriptures . . . supplies us with a powerful motivation to proclaim Christ with clarity and courage, and to pray with confidence for the advance of God’s word in the world” (210).
I highly recommend After Emmaus for pastors or teachers preparing to teach Luke or Acts and for anyone who wants to see how Jesus’s instruction to the disciples can guide our reading of the Bible and energize our efforts in mission. You may think you have an internal GPS when it comes to the Messiah and mission in the Bible, but Tabb will save you some time lost following dead-end roads and take you down scenic routes that will refresh and motivate you along the way with Jesus.
The Gospel Coalition