Proving the necessity
The account is familiar. On the day of his resurrection, Jesus talked with two followers as they walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They didn’t recognize him—exactly how he looked different we aren’t told. They told him of their crushing disappointment due to Jesus’s death. His response was to give probably the greatest Bible class ever.
And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27)
After Jesus revealed himself to them, “They said to each other, ‘Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?’ ” (verse 32)
The class was repeated that evening to the apostles:
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.” (Luke 24:44-46)
Later on, the apostle Paul would conduct similar classes. Probably almost identical classes:
And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” (Acts 17:2-3)
So, where are those passages in the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms which tell us point blank, “The Christ must be killed and then be resurrected?” You are correct—there aren’t any. So where did Jesus and Paul (and no doubt all the other apostles) get this “proof”? I suggest they got it in two different ways.
Jesus himself points out the first one, while he’s hanging on the cross. He quotes the first verse of Psalm 22, undoubtedly directing: pay attention to the whole psalm. Which turns out to be an exact prophecy of what was happening at that very moment. The pointer Jesus is giving: Treat the Psalms as prophecies of Messiah.
When we do this, we start seeing pictures everywhere of the Christ’s suffering, and also pictures of his glorification. Often separately, but occasionally together, such as Psalm 31:5, which Jesus also quoted on the cross as he died: “Into your hand I commit my spirit.” But we must go on to the second half of the verse: “You have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God!” In one verse, Jesus’s last thought as he died, and his first thought upon being brought back to life.
Similarly, Isaiah 53 is very clearly a prophecy of the Christ suffering in order to save people. Yet the last two verses are clear that this same suffering one will be alive and able to look back and be satisfied, and will rule. How can that be? Only possible if he’s raised from the dead.
So lesson one is, open your eyes to the prophetic aspect of the Psalms as well as the Prophets themselves—and pay close attention to the details and the implications. There isn’t a bald statement of the Christ dying and being raised, but it’s implied all over. Take a look at Peter’s Pentecost speech in Acts 2. He clearly got the lesson, and applied it.
The second avenue is that the scriptures (our Old Testament) are filled with types, that is foreshadowings of Christ. Jesus gets us started on this approach too, pointing out that Jonah’s experience was a type of his own death and resurrection. (Matthew 12:40) The writer to the Hebrews gives us an additional push in this direction, pointing out that Abraham’s almost-completed offering of Isaac pointed out the necessity of resurrection. (Hebrews 11:17-19) And look at Joseph, Jeremiah and Daniel—all of them thrown into a pit and then rescued out of it, all of them strong types of what the Christ would endure, going into the grave and then being saved out of it.
So we need to be on the lookout for these things: prophetic implications of the necessity of death and resurrection, and types lived out by people to foreshadow the Christ. It’s not just me saying it. It’s Jesus, it’s the apostles, and surely it’s the prophets and psalmists and those who lived the types.
Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. (1 Peter 1:10-11)
Love, Paul