And you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power. In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it. So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ. Colossians 2:10–17
Throughout the pages of the OT there are shadows of things to come. We may say that the long shadows of redemption were cast by our Savior’s cross over the ages of the prophets who wrote in rapturous strains of the divine work to be accomplished by the Christ. The shadows stretch even to the gates of Eden, where God promised the first sinners that the woman’s Seed would bring a remedy. Just as the shape of the moon can be discerned when it eclipses the sun without betraying even a hint of the details of its barren landscape, so did the prophecies of the cross speak of some glorious event without leaving the faintest impression of how heaven would do it. When the ancients saw the moon blot out the sun’s rays, they perceived it an omen of some impending catastrophe, but when they saw the same rays reflected off the same familiar satellite, they thought nothing of it. It is little marvel then that man failed to recognize the image of the cross, even though its shadow had been seen in Israel for centuries.
The shadows of redemption are seen in numerous OT events. As mentioned above, at the very gates of Paradise Lost, God promised that the Seed of woman would ultimately win the struggle against the serpent (Genesis 3:15). Later we find the patriarch offering his own son on the very same mountain where God would later offer His (Genesis 22:1–10). When God called His son out of Egypt, Israel cast aside the chains of the master who had robbed him of his children, and when he left with the riches of Egypt in tow, he left behind the blood of the first Paschal lamb on the frame of his door (Exodus 12:12–13).
The shadows of redemption are seen also in various aspects of Jewish worship. We see them in every burnt offering laid upon the altar “without blemish.” We see the shadows on the Day of Atonement, when the high priest sprinkled the blood of the bull upon the Mercy Seat for his own sins and the blood of the ram for the sins of the people. Coffman once wrote, “The pre-Christian Jew could not look in any direction without beholding some vivid symbol of the Christ.”
We see the shadows also in God’s forbearance. When God “put away” David’s sin in the matter of Uriah (2 Samuel 12:13), one might wonder how He could justify such a pardon. When faithful Abel fell at his brother’s hand, even he was certainly not free from the guilt of sin, and yet God sent His angels to carry him to a place of comfort. Moses was not allowed to enter Canaan because of sin, but his spirit entered a greater land as soon as his eyes closed on the sight from Mount Nebo.
As we look back at the cross as it radiates with the sunlight from on high, we must allow the love that it symbolizes to provoke obedience to the God who paid the ultimate price to reconcile us to Him!