How does the Old Testament connect to Jesus? He lived thousands of years after most of it was written. Are we reading Jesus into texts that aren't really about him?
The answer is no — and we're not the ones who came up with this idea. Jesus himself, after his resurrection, walked two disciples through the entire Old Testament — "beginning with Moses and all the Prophets" — and showed them how it all pointed to him (Luke 24:27). The apostles followed his lead, insisting that the Scriptures "bear witness about me" (John 5:39).
But they had guardrails. They didn't find Jesus in random details — they followed real patterns God built into the story. Those patterns travel along seven distinct roads, mapped by Sidney Greidanus in Preaching Christ from the Old Testament. Across this site we call them Greidanus's Seven Ways, and this page walks you through each one.
The Bible tells one story, and that story moves toward Jesus. You don't need to find a coded "connection" in every text — some passages connect to Christ simply by being part of the narrative arc that climaxes in him. The book of Judges, for example, shows Israel spiraling into chaos with the refrain "there was no king in Israel." The story itself is crying out for the king only Jesus can be.
God makes specific verbal commitments in the Old Testament, and Jesus is the one in whom all of them find their "Yes" (2 Corinthians 1:20). A descendant will crush the serpent (Gen 3:15). All nations will be blessed through Abraham's offspring (Gen 12:3). A prophet like Moses will come (Deut 18:15). David's throne will last forever (2 Sam 7:16). A new covenant is coming (Jer 31:31). Jesus keeps them all.
God designed certain Old Testament people, events, and institutions as previews of what Jesus would do — movie trailers for the main event. The Passover lamb was a preview of Christ, "our Passover lamb" (1 Cor 5:7). Adam was "a pattern of the one to come" (Rom 5:14). The temple was a shadow of Christ's body (John 2:19-21). The key rule: the preview is always smaller than the real thing — what's called escalation. Every TT (Trajectory Table) link on this site traces one of these patterns.
What God did for Israel, he does for the church — through Christ. God guided Israel with a cloud; Jesus promises "I am with you always" (Matt 28:20). God was Israel's shepherd (Psalm 23); Jesus is the Good Shepherd (John 10:11). Analogy doesn't require that God designed the original as a preview — it simply observes that God acts consistently, and Christ connects us to Israel's story.
Major theological themes — temple, covenant, kingdom, sacrifice, God's presence — are introduced early, develop across the centuries, and reach their fullest expression in Christ. Take "God's dwelling with his people": from Eden (Gen 3:8) → the tabernacle (Exod 40:34) → Solomon's temple (1 Kings 8:10) → Jesus, in whom "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14) → the church as God's temple (1 Cor 3:16) → the new creation where "the dwelling place of God is with man" (Rev 21:3). Every LT (Longitudinal Theme) link traces one of these.
Sometimes the connection isn't a pattern you have to discern — the New Testament simply tells you. Jesus reads Isaiah 61 in the Nazareth synagogue and announces, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing" (Luke 4:21). Paul says of the wilderness rock, "that rock was Christ" (1 Cor 10:4). Hebrews opens by stringing together a chain of Old Testament quotations about the Son (Hebrews 1:5-13). When a New Testament author cites an Old Testament text and points it at Christ, that citation is itself inspired commentary — the Bible's own answer key. This road is the engine of this whole site: every one of the 1,334 NT-to-OT Intertextuality Pairs, and every colored † cross you see on an Old Testament chapter, is a Road 6 connection made clickable.
Some Old Testament realities point to Christ not by resembling him but by failing — showing that something better was needed. The old sacrifices required animals killed over and over because they could never fully deal with sin (Heb 10:1-4). The kings of Israel mostly failed, pointing to the need for a perfect king. The priests sinned and died, pointing to the need for an eternal priest. The law showed what was right but couldn't give the power to do it (Gal 3:24). The Old Testament says, "This isn't working." The New Testament says, "That's because Jesus is the real thing these were pointing to."
Most passages use several roads at once. Genesis 22 (Abraham and Isaac) uses at least five: it's part of the story, it's a typological preview (only son, sacrificed, "resurrected"), an analogy for God's gift of his Son, a promise fulfilled in "the Lamb of God" — and the New Testament cites it directly, when Hebrews says Abraham "reasoned that God could raise the dead" (Hebrews 11:17-19). The Passover uses typology, promise, theme, and story all at once.
On this site, every Intertextuality Pair and Trajectory Table identifies which road(s) the connection uses — look for the Connection Method(s) field.
Without these seven roads, you're stuck with only two bad options for reading the Old Testament: moralism ("David was brave, so you should be brave too") or forced allegory ("the scarlet cord represents the blood of Christ"). Greidanus's Seven Ways give you a disciplined framework — they let the text itself determine how it connects to Christ, instead of imposing a meaning on it.
For deeper study of these methods, see How We Read Scripture: Five Foundations, How We Identify a Type (the five tests of valid typology), and Reading Scripture's Use of Scripture (Schnittjer & Harmon's seven hermeneutical choices). For full theologian-level treatments, see the Scholarly Resources library.
Want to browse the roads in motion? The Greidanus's Seven Ways index classifies every Trajectory Table by the road(s) it travels.
→ Next: The five foundations beneath the seven roads →
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