Did Jesus Fulfill Prophecy?

Many of my friends are Christians because they believe Jesus was the fulfillment of prophecy. In their system, Jesus matches up to all the old predictions in scripture about the messiah. It proves Christianity is true. I’m not here to criticize. I’m a Christian because I believe I’ve had direct experiences of the living Christ, so in that regard I probably seem less tethered to reality to the average non-Christian.

Didn’t Jesus say He was the fulfillment of prophecy?

Luke 24:25-27

Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

Let’s set aside the usual two questions I bring up about these things. Did Jesus actually say any of these things? Did Jesus actually do the things that are attested to Him in order to show He fulfilled prophecy? Instead, let’s ask two more interesting questions. What is prophecy? What is fulfillment?

In the biblical sense, prophecy is not a prediction of future events. Because so many Christians, much like my friends I mention above, have become convinced of the faith based on what they’ve been taught about prophesy, it is natural they think that prophesy means prediction. But in the Bible, prophesy is a message from God that is delivered by, you know, a prophet. Its function is not a prediction like some kind of magician’s parlor trick. Its function is to call God’s people to greater faithfulness. Prophets wrote about events and situations in their time; their purpose was not to divine future events. A prophet would look at current events in light of what they felt they were hearing of the divine will. They would warn about the consequences of straying too far from God. They would remind their people about God’s love and promises. Most importantly, prophets very frequently called for social and economic justice. Do prophets’ words have meaning and relevance today? Most certainly, because we have a lot of social and economic justice issues today. Were they thinking about modern Americans when they wrote? Of course not.

If you can set aside this unspoken bias that “prophesy,” means, “prediction of future events,” then you can see the more common and frankly more interesting shape of prophesy.

• These authors intended to address the issues of their time. The prophets are responding to very real political, social and religious circumstances in their own day. They cry out for justice, critique forms of unfaithfulness and idolatry, and warn of exile and collapse.
• Prophets give a voice to the divine. Prophets intend you to understand their words and portraying God’s perspective and will.
• Many prophesies are conditional, and the outcome depends on human response. Humans can change the outcome depending on what they do. That is hardly the hallmark of a great prediction. It’s like that parlor magician saying, “your card is the three of clubs, unless it is the ace of diamonds or some other card, who could know, it depends on you.”
• Prophesies are filled with hope, promise and symbolism. Hope takes time. Symbolism has layers of meaning for readers well into the future. These qualities of prophesy mean that we see a reverberation of themes in our own times. It can seem like a prediction even though it’s really a poetic understanding of the human condition.

If prophesy isn’t a prediction of future events, then fulfillment of prophesy cannot mean somehow realizing those future events. Instead, fulfillment represents a continuity and a deeper realization. When the early church insisted that Jesus fulfilled prophesy, they meant that Jesus’ life fit a pattern and a theological purpose that they recognized in their scriptural tradition. Jesus brought these prophesies to life in purpose and fuller expression. The earlier divine words spoken through the prophets of love, suffering and salvation had a new meaning in Jesus.

There are times when a warning or prediction is baked into the prophesy as well. Some prophesies contain predictions, but not all prophesy is prediction. A kingdom might fall as spoken of in a prophesy. Of course, we have no exact way of knowing when each scripture was written or edited or appended, so we cannot say for certain if a prediction was realized or if the scripture was written after the realization as a way of explaining what happened.

For example, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus predicts the fall of the temple in Jerusalem. Many scholars say this means that part of the story must have been written sometime after 70 CE when the temple actually fell. The authors of Mark put in the prediction to explain the fall. On the other hand, Jesus was a theological and political genius, so he might have predicted the fall of the temple because He was so in tune to the cultural dynamics of His day. Read that way, the fall of the temple fulfilled prophesy and realized a prediction. So a warning about something that then actually happens is one form of fulfillment but unfortunately the only form most Christians think about.

It is much more helpful to think about fulfillment of prophesy as a pattern. You might see the Garden of Eden story as another way to tell the story of exile. The stories follow a pattern. There are archetypes in these stories of servants and kings, exile and redemption and older patterns prefigure newer ones by means of shape not prediction. Importantly, later readers can reinterpret earlier texts to help make sense of new things in their lives. I wish we did a lot more of this today. In Judaism, the reinterpretation is also called midrash. It’s a way of interpreting and expanding upon scripture by exploring the layers of meaning and symbolism to find significance for today. You read, you discuss and comment and you reimagine what these passages could be saying to bring out new insights and interpretations. It is the way scripture remains relevant.

I believe that the early Christian community was shocked by the resurrection of Jesus and went searching through their old scriptures to make sense of it all. It in no way means that those old stories were predictions. What it means is that they were able to fit stories of Jesus into a theological shape. When Isaiah gave comfort and instruction using the suffering servant theme, he was not predicting Jesus. But Jesus was indeed a suffering servant, and the early Christian community couldn’t help but realize a deeper reading of Isaiah’s themes of sufferings, service, vindication and restoration. Fulfillment of prophesy by Jesus in this sense in no way requires Isaiah to be a prognosticator.

Here is what fulfillment of prophesy does mean: Jesus embodied, and in a very real way completed, the theological intentions and covenantal promises expressed in Isaiah and elsewhere. To me, that is much greater than the magic trick of making a prediction come true. It means the largest and most important patterns and shapes of God’s story are true.

In some cases, if a story didn’t exist yet, why not fashion one to fit? Jesus was not born of a virgin, it was a mistranslation the authors of Matthew had where they read the words, “young woman, “as, “virgin.” Jesus was likely not born in Bethlehem. There isn’t a lot of evidence to support it beyond the birth narratives that were written to align with Micah’s mention of a ruler from Bethlehem.

And this is why I get fewer invitations to holiday parties than you do.

Speaking of which, would you like me to spoil some more Christmas story assumptions you might have? ’Tis the season to be jolly! Here are some posts from last year around this time you might be interested in revisiting:

• Christmas is More Than a Story
• A Very Unbiblical Christmas
• The Word Became Flesh
• The Humble Birth of God

Fa la la la laaaaaaaah, la la, la laaaaaaaah.

If you pressed me, and you wouldn’t have to press to hard, I would say that Jesus really does fulfill prophesy. I might mean something different than the typical evangelical believer means. Jesus embodied the promises made in those earlier scriptures even if the facts were a little different or we even had to make up some stories to emphasize what is important about Jesus. I’m completely unbothered by this kind of reading and reinterpretation, and frankly, I wish we had more creative thinkers who carried out that kind of midrash for us today.