Finding Jesus in the Old Testament

By Gwen Frangs / Cambridge, UK / January 2021

The pre-existent Jesus appears throughout the Old Testament.

When translating Colossians 1:16, the Bible Hub interlinear Bible translates the word εἰς as ‘unto’. That is a mistranslation of this Greek word. If you click on the number above the word, you will see that it means ‘into’. It is shocking to see that most of the English Bibles do not translate the word correctly. The NIV, the English Standard Version and the New King James translates it as ‘for’. However, the Greek word means ‘into’. Therefore, when speaking about Jesus in Colossians 1:16 Paul says:

‘Because in Him were created all things in the heavens and upon the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities. All things through Him and into Him have been created.’
Colossians 1:16

Paul had grasped an extraordinary truth, which was that before Jesus was a man, He was the Holy Spirit. We know that there are three members of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In John 6: 46, Jesus says, “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. “ This means that none of the appearances of God in the Old Testament were God the Father. Jesus did not exist yet as Jesus in the Old Testament. He existed as the Holy Spirit. Therefore, every appearance of God in the Old Testament was an appearance by the Holy Spirit

Paul also recognized that as a man, Jesus is still the Holy Spirit. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 3:17 that the Lord is the Spirit and in 2 Corinthians 3:18 Paul calls Jesus: ‘the Lord the Spirit’. In Philippians, Paul says: ‘For I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance’ (Philippians 1:19 NRSV). In Galatians, Paul says: ‘And because you Gentiles have become his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, and now you can call God your dear Father’ (Galatians 4:6 NLT). In Romans, Paul says: ‘But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.’ (Romans 8:9, 10 NRSV).

The apostle John also grasped this truth. In John 1:1-3 we are told: ‘ In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and God was the Word. He was in the beginning with God. All things through Him came into being and without Him came into being not even one thing that has come into being.’ It is clear that John is referring to Jesus as the Spirit of God, Who is spoken of at the creation event in Genesis 1:2 and Who created everything. Colossians 1:16 and John 1:1-3 both make it clear that Jesus was present, in a pre-existent form, at the time of the creation and that everything was created through Him.

John describes how Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into the disciples: ‘Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” ‘(John 20:22 CEV). Luke the author of the book of Acts also recognized that the Spirit of Jesus, was the Holy Spirit. He says in Acts 16: ‘ And after they came to Mysia, they were trying to go into Bithynia, and the Spirit of Jesus did not permit them (Acts 16:7 NASB).

The Holy Spirit appears prolifically throughout the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit appears in the Old Testament as:

The Spirit of God

The Breath of God

The visible Yahweh (God the Father is the invisible Yahweh)

The Angel of Yahweh

The Word of Yahweh

The Pillar of Cloud

The Ancient of Days

The Cloud Rider

The torch and furnace during the creation of the Abrahamic covenant.

The Commander of the Lord’s army

The flame in the burning bush

The Word of God who came to the prophets

The Rainbow of Promise after the flood of Noah

How was it that the Holy Spirit could appear in so many different forms? The reason for this is that He is a spirit and spirits can change their form.

A particularly significant form in which the Holy Spirit appeared to people is the Angel of Yahweh or the Angel of the Lord. The only candidate for the Angel of Yahweh is the Holy Spirit. We know that they are the same Being by means of a process of elimination. If no one had ever seen the Father and Jesus was yet to be born, the Angel of Yahweh had to have been the Holy Spirit. Hebrews 1:7 shows that a connection exists between angel and spirit:

7 In speaking of the angels he says,
“He makes his angels spirits,
and his servants flames of fire.”

This explains how the Holy Spirit can be both a Spirit and the Angel. It also explains how the Holy Spirit was able to appear as a flame in the burning bush. However, this is not to say that the Holy Spirit is a mere angel. The Bible makes it clear that the Holy Spirit is God:

In Exodus 3 verse 2 the angel of the Lord appears as fire in a bush and is referred to as God both in verse 4 and 6:

1 “Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. 3 So Moses said, “I must turn aside now and see this marvellous sight, why the bush is not burned up.” 4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then He said, “Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 He said also, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.” (NIV)

In Genesis 16:13 Hagar calls the Angel of the Lord, God:

7 “Now the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring on the way to Shur. 8 He said, “Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from and where are you going?” And she said, “I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.” 9 Then the angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority.” 10 Moreover, the angel of the Lord said to her, “I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count.” 11 The angel of the Lord said to her further, “Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, Because the Lord has given heed to your affliction. 12 “He will be a wild donkey of a man, His hand will be against everyone, And everyone’s hand will be against him; And he will live to the east of all his brothers.” 13 Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God who sees”; for she said, “Have I even remained alive here after seeing Him?” 14 Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; behold, it is between Kadesh and Bered.” (NIV)

In Genesis 22:12 the Angel of the Lord calls Himself God:

1 “But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
…
12 He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
…
15 Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, 16 and said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. 18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” (NIV)

In Judges 13:22 Manoah calls the Angel of the Lord, God:

16 The angel of the Lord replied, “Even though you detain me, I will not eat any of your food. But if you prepare a burnt offering, offer it to the Lord.” (Manoah did not realize that it was the angel of the Lord.)
17 Then Manoah inquired of the angel of the Lord, “What is your name, so that we may honor you when your word comes true?”
18 He replied, “Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding.[a]” 19 Then Manoah took a young goat, together with the grain offering, and sacrificed it on a rock to the Lord. And the Lord did an amazing thing while Manoah and his wife watched: 20 As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground. 21 When the angel of the Lord did not show himself again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah realized that it was the angel of the Lord.
22 “We are doomed to die!” he said to his wife. “We have seen God!” (NIV)

The word “angel” means messenger. A messenger is one who is sent from someone else to deliver a message. As the Angel of the Lord, the Holy Spirit came and communicated messages to various people in the Old Testament. However, the Angel of the Lord was not merely a messenger. The Angel of the Lord was the Message itself. The Greek word which John used in John 1 when calling Jesus, the Word, is logos which means ‘message’ in Greek. God is an invisible Spirit, therefore, He created an Angel to be an intermediary between Himself and His creation. Revelations 3:14, Colossians 1:15 and Hebrews 1:6 make it clear that God created the Holy Spirit before He created the rest of the creation. God created the Angel as the beginning of His creation, the firstborn of creation, so that He would be able to relate to His creation. The Angel is His Message to His creation. When the Angel became flesh as Jesus Christ, the Message became even clearer for human beings.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus describes Himself as being the Light of the world (John 8:12). Light can exist as both a particle and a wave. The Holy Spirit now exists as both a Spirit and as Jesus. Jesus was acknowledging this difference when He referred to the Holy Spirit as a person different to Himself. As Jesus, the Holy Spirit is now fixed in form. When He chose to become a man, He chose to remain in this fixed form for eternity.

When the Holy Spirit became Jesus, He became different to what He was before because Jesus is also a man with a human personality, human emotions and a human body. He now has a deep understanding of what it means to be human and can be an empathetic Advocate to the Father on our behalf.

However, if the Holy Spirit existed before Jesus, why is it the case that when the Trinity is referenced in the New Testament that the Holy Spirit is placed in third place after the Father and the Son? I believe that this is to signify a shift in the power dynamics between mankind and angels which has come about because of the fall of Satan and his angels and because of Jesus, the Man, dying on the cross to restore all things to God. The apostle Paul makes it clear that as a result of what Jesus accomplished that God has now placed mankind in a position that is superior to angels and that one day we will judge angels (1 Corinthians 6:3). Therefore, God as a Man is placed before God as an Angel when the Trinity is referenced in scripture.

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