Untitled Sermon (7)

But the gospel did not so supplant the entire law as to bring forward a different way of salvation. Rather, it confirmed and satisfied whatever the law had promised, and gave substance to the shadows.

John Calvin

11499 Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

Aesop

Christ is the fulfiller and fulfilment of all the promises of God because he is the sum and substance of them.

N.G. Wilson

Envy will merit as its shade pursue,

But like a shadow proves the substance true.

Line 266.

Alexander Pope

2164“All fulness.” It tells us that Christ is substance and not shadow, fulness and not foretaste. This is good news for us, for nothing but realities will meet our case. What joy these words give to us when we remember that our vast necessities demand a fulness—“all fulness”—before they can be supplied!—17.122, 123

Charles Spurgeon

Judaism was a religion of shadows. The substance of those shadows is Christ. How silly to go back to the shadows of Christ revealed in the Old Testament types and rituals when we now have Him!

John Phillips

There’s nothing like the real thing. To embrace the Old Testament alone is to embrace the shadow. To embrace Jesus Christ is to embrace the substance of the shadow, the reality behind the type.

Tony Evans

The religion of the Jew would have been very emptiness if it had not been for Christ, who is the substance of the former shadows.

Charles Spurgeon

A “shadow” (skia) is only an image cast by an object which represents its form. Once one finds Christ, he no longer needs to follow the old shadow.

Norman Geisler

The ceremonial law has not been destroyed by Christ, but the substance now fills the place of its shadows.

Arthur Walkington Pink

To the Greeks, the writer to the Hebrews said: ‘All your lives, you have been trying to get from the shadows to the truth. That is just what Jesus Christ can enable you to do.’

William Barclay

Viewed as a shadow and type of things to come, the law disappears in Christ; but as to its substance, it is part of the word of God, and as such it abideth for ever, even in heaven.

Johann Peter Lange; Philip Schaff

He was the substance of the shadow—the reality of the type.

Charles Spurgeon

To forsake Christ for the world is to leave a treasure for a trifle … eternity for a moment, reality for a shadow, all things for nothing.

William Jenkyn

Adam is the shadow; Christ is the substance.

William Greathouse; George Lyons

The type is only the representation or shadow of the thing, but the antitype is the very substance, and is the true thing.

Jonathan Edwards

In the inaugurated age of fulfillment, it is idolatry to substitute the “shadows” for Christ, who is their eschatological substance (see further on 2:17)

G. K. Beale

The two words here used to express the idea—copy (hypodeigma) and shadow (skia)—both imply a deeper reality behind what is seen. A copy of a great master-work of art is not the real thing but gives some idea of what the original is like. The resemblance is incomplete and not until the original is seen is the full glory recognized. Similarly a shadow cannot in fact exist unless there is an object to cast it. There is some correspondence, but the shadow is inevitably a distorted and somewhat featureless picture of the real. The writer’s purpose is not to reduce the glory of the shadow, but to enhance the glory of its substance.

Donald Guthrie

Today we have much more than the shadow. We have the actual substance—Christ Himself—and He lives in us!

David Wilkerson