Typology
Christ in the Old Testament • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Definition
Definition
We have seen that the biblical authors traced real, God-ordained historical patterns shaped by God's promises.
“Typology is the God-ordained, author-intended historical correspondence and escalation in significance between people, events, and institutions across the Bible’s redemptive-historical timeline.” James Hamilton, Typology, Understanding the Bible’s Promise-Shaped Patterns.
The Typological Framework
The Typological Framework
Archetype / Prototype: The original model or pattern (Adam)
Ectypes: The intervening "new Adams" who repeat the pattern in the Old Testament (e.g., Noah, Abraham, David)
Antitype: The ultimate fulfillment who surpasses the original pattern (Jesus Christ)
Adam as the Prototypical Man
Adam as the Prototypical Man
The Original Commission (Genesis 1:26–28; 2:15)
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Man was created in the image and likeness of God to reflect His character and authority.
Tasked as a king-priest: called to "work" and "keep" the Garden Sanctuary—the exact terms later used for Levitical priests.
Given dominion over creation to rule righteously.
The Fall & Broken Pattern (Genesis 3)
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
Adam fails to guard the sanctuary from the serpent.
He fails under testing, bringing sin, death, and exile upon humanity.
The Promise-Shaped Pattern Begins (Genesis 3:15)
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
God promises that the "seed of the woman" will crush the serpent's head, establishing a future expectation for a victorious Adamic figure.
III. The "Ectypal" Adams in the Old Testament
III. The "Ectypal" Adams in the Old Testament
The Pattern Repeats: After Adam, God repeatedly raises up figures who function as "new Adams" to restore what was lost, yet each ultimately fails:
Noah: Saved from judgment, given the mandate to "be fruitful and multiply," falls into sin in a vineyard (Genesis 9).
And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
And you, be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it.”
Abraham: Called out of Babylon to a new Eden-like land, promised seed and blessing, yet struggles with faith.
Israel (The Corporate Adam): Planted in a land flowing with milk and honey (Edenic language), given God's law, but exiled due to disobedience like Adam.
and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
"Flowing" with milk and honey imagery signifies overflowing abundance. It describes land so fertile that livestock find endless pasture (yielding abundant milk) and vegetation blooms continuously for pollinators and fruit production (yielding honey). It signals a local, prefiguring reversal of the Edenic curse.
David: Chosen king ruling over God's people, but falls to temptation in his own royal garden setting (2 Samuel 11).
It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
Key Takeaway: The Old Testament intentionally creates an escalating pattern of failed Adams, leaving the reader asking: When will the true, obedient Adam arrive?
Christ the Antitype: The Last Adam
Christ the Antitype: The Last Adam
Paul’s Explicit Connection:
Paul’s Explicit Connection:
Romans 5:14 calls Adam a "type of the One who was to come."
Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.
1 Corinthians 15:45 contrasts the "first Adam" (became a living soul) with the "last Adam" (a life-giving spirit).
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
