Why does it seem that the New Testament often quotes the Old Testament out of context? This question is important because, as we answer it, we come to see Christ more fully in the Old Testament and we come to see how insightful the NT authors were in their reading of the Old Testament. As will become maybe a little too evident below, I have found much help on this issue in the following three articles: (1) Vern Poythress, “The Divine Meaning of Scripture,” in The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Text? Essays on the Use of the Old Testament in the New, edited by Greg Beale, reprinted from Westminster Theological Journal 48 (1986):241-279; (2) Greg Beale, “Did Jesus and His Followers Preach the Right Doctrine from the Wrong Texts? An Examination of the Presuppositions of Jesus’ and the Apostles’ Exegetical Method,” in The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Text, reprinted from Themelios 14 (1989): 89-96; (3) Moises Silva, “The New Testament Use of the Old Testament: Text Form and Authority,” in Scripture and Truth, ed. D.A. Carson and John Woodbridge.
Central to the answer to this question is understanding the implications of the dual-authorship of Scripture. In one sense, the Bible is not like any other document—for in it God speaks through human authors. God’s speaking does not obliterate the human element; but neither does the human element obliterate the divine. God so superintended the human authors such that they said exactly what He wanted them to say while, at the same time, making them speak in accord with their own personalities and intentions.
The dual-authorship of Scripture means that we cannot equate the meaning of Old Testament passages only with what the human author intended. For, as Vern Poythress notes, the “interpretation of a piece of writing interprets the words in the light of what is known of the author and his situation” (Poythress, 93). For example, if my wife says to me “I love you,” it means something different than when a co-worker says “I love you”—even though the same words are used. The reason is that proper interpretation of spoken or written discourse takes into account who is speaking, because the nature of the speaker affects the meaning of what is said.
Consequently, “If the same words happen to be said by two authors, there are two separate interpretations” (Poythress, 93). And so, in Scripture, there are sometimes “two levels” of meaning. If we completely equate the meaning of Scripture with what the human author intended, we are “dangerously akin to the neo-orthodox view that when God speaks, his attributes of majesty are somehow wholly hidden under human words” (Poythress, 94). In addition, Poythress points out that Deuteronomy 5:22-23, which describes God’s communication through Moses and thus illuminates all of God’s communication through human beings (since later Scripture builds on Moses), shows that in God’s speech “the human instrument is taken up into the divine message, rather than the divine message being ‘trimmed down’ to suit the human instrument” (Poythress, 94).
Does this mean that God and the human author can mean contradictory things? No, for “each [author] points to the other and affirms the presence and operation of the other” (Poythress, 96). Or, as Greg Beale explains it, the divine meaning “is fuller than the original human intention but does not contradict its contextual meaning” (Beale, 400).
God’s meaning in the Old Testament, then, goes beyond the original author’s intention, but does not go against that intention nor against the context. And so the NT authors did not have some sort of “special hermeneutic” which allowed them to go against contextual considerations in order to determine the divine meaning.
Rather, they simply understood earlier OT passages in relation to what God revealed later in the OT, and they understood the entire OT in light of what God had revealed in Christ’s teaching and work. In other words, God’s “later revelation” fills out and expands the meaning of his previous revelation by bringing to light relationships between the original text and the reality it discussed that would not otherwise have been plain. This does not mean that the understanding the original readers had of the OT was incorrect; it just means that it was incomplete. It is “quite like the difference between reading one chapter of a book and reading the whole of the book. After taking into account the whole book, we understand the one chapter as well as the whole book more deeply. But it does not mean that our understanding of the one chapter by itself was incorrect” (Poythress, 104).
Poythress gives an excellent example to further illustrate this:
Now consider a particular example of two people in communication over a long period of time. Suppose a father teaches his young son to sing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ Later on, he tells the story of the life of Christ from a children’s Bible story book. Still later, he explains how the OT sacrificial system depicted aspects of Christ’s purpose in dying for us. Finally, the son becomes an adult and does extended Bible study for himself. Suppose then that the son remembers how his father taught him ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ He asks, ‘What was my father saying in telling me the words of the song?’ At the time, did I understand what he was saying? The answer may well be yes. The son understood what the father expected that he would have capacity to understand at that point. But the father knew as well that the child’s initial understanding was not the end point. The father intended that the earlier words should be recalled later. He intended that the son should understand his father’s mind better and better by comparing those earlier words with later words that the father would share.
Now, suppose that there was no misunderstanding, no misjudgment at any point. There is still more than one level of understanding of the father’s words. There is what one may understand on the basis of those words more or less by themselves, when not supplemented by further words, and when seen as words adapted to the capacity of the young child. And there is what one may understand on the basis of comparing and relating those words to many later words (and actions) of the father. The first of those understandings is a legitimate one, an understanding not to be underestimated….But once the father has said a lot more, it throws more light on what he father intended all along that those words should do: they should contribute along with many other words to form and engender an enormously rich understanding of Christ’s love, an understanding capable of being evoked and alluded to by the words of the song….
The understanding we achieve from listening arises not only from individual words or sentences in the discourse but from the complex relations that they gave to one another and to the larger situation, including what we know of the author himself. In particular, the song, ‘Jesus Loves Me,’ conveys meaning not simply in virtue of the internal arrangement of the words, but also in virtue of the context of who is saying it, what else is being said by way of explanation, and so on (Poythress, 101).
This analogy helps illustrate how God indeed is “saying more” to us (and the apostles) now than He said to the Old Testament readers. As Poythress goes on to explain, “The ‘more’ arises from the stage of fuller revelation, and consequent fuller illumination of the Holy Spirit, in which we live. All this is true without any need to postulate an extra, ‘mystical’ sense. That is, we do not postulate an extra meaning which requires some esoteric hermeneuetical method to uncover. Rather, our understanding is analogous to the way that a son’s understanding of ‘Jesus Loves Me’ arises and grows. At the end of a long period of reading and digesting a rich communication, we see each particular part of the communication through the eyes of knowledge that have been enlightened by the whole. Through that enlightenment, each part of the whole is enriched” (Poythress, 110).
How does this resolve the problem of the New Testament authors apparently using the Old Testament contrary to its original context? It shows that, in many instances, the reason it looks like they are violating the Old Testament context is because they are understanding and explaining it not in light of the “initial meaning” that is apparent if we limit ourselves to that text alone, but rather they are understanding and explaining it in light of the “fuller meaning” that God has brought to light upon it through the relationship it has to further things that he has said.
As Poythress writes, “Both they and their readers typically presuppose the context of later revelation. Hence, what they say using an Old Testament passage may not always be based on the Old Testament text alone, but on relations that he text has with this greater context” (Poythress, 111). Consequently, if we look at the Old Testament text alone, it may appear that the apostles are using it contrary to the original context. But God does not intend for us to simply interpret His word in that way. Like all people who communicate things over a period of time, He intends His later statements to bring to light things that are in His earlier statements, but which cannot be seen apart from the “light” further revelation casts on it.
To use the analogy cited above, often times the New Testament authors appear to be using “Jesus Loves Me” out of context because they are expressing a “fifty-year-old understanding” while we think that the “five-year-old understanding” of that song is all there is. In other words, if we limit ourselves to the Old Testament meaning that would have been apparent to the original audience with their limited knowledge, we will think that the New Testament authors are taking the Old Testament out of context. In reality, they simply are “seeing more” in it because God intended later revelation to shed light on previous revelation, thereby revealing more meaning.
A few examples of this might be helpful. The first is fairly straightforward, but is helpful because it illustrates these things very clearly. In 1 Corinthians 9:3-10 Paul argues that full-time workers in Christian ministry have a right to be supported by those they minister to. For our purposes, the relevant part of his argument is found in verses 8-10: “I am not speaking these things according to human judgment, am I? Or does not the Law also say these things? For it is written in the Law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing’ [Deuteronomy 25:4].” So Paul uses a text about oxen to support the truth that full-time Christian workers can raise support.
Would the original readers in Moses’ day have understood Deuteronomy 25:4 in this way? Probably not! They probably would have taken it to mean: “When an ox is threshing, don’t muzzle him.” And they would have been right; it does mean that. But it also means more. The “more” couldn’t have been seen to them, I don’t think—and if so, then God intended it that way. But in light of God’s actions in Christ, the increased understanding He gave with Christ’s coming, the new roles he instituted for the propagation of the gospel (i.e., missionaries, elders, apostles, etc.), and the realization that even the Old Testament Scriptures were ultimately written for New Testament saints (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:6, 11; Romans 15:4), it becomes clear that God’s instruction concerning oxen was intended to model some greater principles that apply to Christian ministry. And so as a result of progress in revelation, the “fuller meaning” becomes evident as something intended by God all along concerning the new covenant era. And this is exactly what Paul says: “God is not concerned about oxen, is He? Or is He speaking altogether for our sake? Yes, for our sake it was written, because the plowman ought to plow in hope, and the thresher to thresh in hope of sharing the crops.”
If Paul had not explained himself—if he had only said “I have a right to refrain from working because Deuteronomy says you shouldn’t muzzle an ox while it is threshing”—then this would probably be a major example of the New Testament allegedly contradicting the meaning of the Old Testament. But since he explained himself, we are blessed with the insight that God intended many things in the Old Testament to be literally true at that time, but to ultimately model particular principles that apply and become clear in the New Covenant era.