How can exactly the same gospel that be said, on the one hand, to have been prophesied and now fulfilled, and on the other hand, to be have been hidden and now revealed? The question is not an easy one...I do note that in one remarkable passage Paul dares to bring both of these themes together. At the end of Romans, he writes,
"Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him— to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen" (Rom. 16:25-27)
This is astonishing. At one and the same time, Paul says that the gospel has been “hidden for long ages past,” yet now that it has been revealed and made known this act of disclosure is through the prophetic writings! So is it hidden or not? If it has been hidden, how can it be made known through the Scriptures? If it is made known through the Scriptures, how can one reasonably say that it has been hidden, when the Old Testament Scriptures have been around for a long time?
Paul’s point, I think, is that believing the OT Scriptures are true is not enough. After all, until he became a Chrsitian, Paul himself passionately believed in what we would today call the OT—but that did not ensure that he found there the message of the crucified Messiah…
The point is that however much the OT points to Jesus, much of this prophesy is in veiled terms—in types and shadows and structures of thought. The sacrificial system prepares the way for the supreme sacrifice; the office of high priest anticipates the supreme intermediary between God and sinful human beings, the man Christ Jesus; the Passover displays God’s wrath and provides a picture of the ultimate Passover lamb whose blood averts that wrath; the announcement of a new covenant (Jer. 31) and a new priesthood (Ps. 110) pronounce the obsolescence in principle of the old covenant and priesthood. Hypothetically, if there had been some perfect people around to observe what was going on, people with an unblemished heart for God, they might well have observed the patterns and understood the plan. But the world has been peopled with sinners since the fall, and the OT Scriptures God gave were often in some measure misunderstood. That there was human fault in this misunderstanding was presupposed by Jesus himself when he berates his followers: “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:25-26). Yet at the same time, matters had to be veiled. If the prophesies about Jesus had all been crystal clear and absolutely univocal, one could not imagine how the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate and Herod could have so radically misunderstood what they were doing. True, they should have understood anyway. But Paul says, empirically, none of them did: “None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). Thus, it was God’s wise plan to have wicked human beings effect his own good purposes of redemption; it was his matchless grace and wisdom that provided revelation clear enough to be understood after the events to which pointed had occurred, but veiled enough that rebellious sinners would in some measure misinterpret it and put it together in wrong ways.”
--D.A. Carson, The Cross and Chrsitian Ministry
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