The Treasure Hidden in the Scriptures

So if anyone reads the Scriptures carefully, he will find in them an account of Christ and a foreshadowing of the new calling. For Christ is the treasure hidden in the field — that is, in this world, since “the field is the world” — but the treasure hidden in the Scriptures is Christ, since it was in figures and parables that he was pointed out there. That is why what he was as a man could not be understood until the things predicted had been carried out, that is, until Christ came. And so it was said to Daniel the prophet: “Shut up the words and seal the book until the time of completion, until many learn and knowledge is filled up. For at that time, when the scattering has been accomplished, they will know all these things.” And Jeremiah says the same: “In the last days they will understand these things.” [a]

For every prophecy, before it is fulfilled, is full of riddles and double meanings to people. But once the time has come and the thing foretold has happened, then the prophecies have a clear and certain explanation. That is why, when the law is read to the Jews at the present time, it sounds like a fable; they do not have the explanation of everything that belongs to the coming of the Son of God as a man. But when Christians read it, it is a treasure — hidden in a field, yes, but brought out into the light by the cross of Christ, and explained. It enriches human understanding. It displays the wisdom of God and makes known his arrangements for the human race. It shapes the kingdom of Christ in advance. It announces beforehand the inheritance of the holy Jerusalem. And it proclaims ahead of time that the person who loves God will come so far along that he will even see God and hear his word, and from hearing him speak will be glorified to such a degree that other people cannot look at the glory of his face. Daniel said as much: “Those who understand will shine like the brightness of the sky, and many of the righteous like the stars forever and ever.”

That, then, is what I have shown — if anyone will read the Scriptures. For this is how the Lord talked with the disciples after he rose from the dead: he proved to them, out of the Scriptures themselves, “that Christ had to suffer and enter into his glory, and that forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name throughout the whole world.” And so the disciple will be brought to completion, made like the householder “who brings out of his treasure things new and old.”

So we must obey the elders in the church — the ones who, as I have shown, hold the succession from the apostles, and who, along with the succession in the office of overseer, have received the sure gift of truth according to the Father’s good pleasure. And we must be suspicious of the others, who break away from the original succession and hold their meetings wherever they please. Take them either as heretics with twisted minds, or as men who split the church, swollen and pleased with themselves, or else as hypocrites doing it for money and a name. All of them have fallen away from the truth. The heretics bring strange fire to God’s altar — strange teachings, that is — and they will be burned up by fire from heaven, as Nadab and Abihu were. Those who rise up against the truth and urge other people on against the church of God will stay down among the dead, swallowed by an earthquake, like the men who sided with Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. And those who cut the church apart and break its unity will get from God the same punishment Jeroboam did.

Then there are men whom many take for elders, though they serve their own cravings and do not keep the fear of God uppermost in their hearts. They treat other people with contempt, they are swollen with pride at holding the chief seat, and they do evil in secret, saying, “No one sees us.” They will be convicted by the Word, who does not judge by appearances and does not look at the face, but at the heart. And they will hear the words that stand in Daniel the prophet: “You offspring of Canaan and not of Judah, beauty has misled you and craving has twisted your heart. You have grown old in wicked days, and now the sins you committed long ago have come to light — for you have handed down false verdicts, and you have made a habit of condemning the innocent and letting the guilty go, though the Lord says, ‘You shall not kill the innocent and the righteous.’” The Lord spoke of these men too: “But if that wicked servant says in his heart, ‘My master is taking his time,’ and starts beating the menservants and the maids, and eating and drinking and getting drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day he is not expecting and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in two and assign him his place with the unbelievers.”

So we ought to keep well away from people like that, and to hold instead to those who, as I said already, keep the teaching of the apostles, and who, along with their rank as elders, show sound speech and blameless conduct, which strengthens other people and puts them right. That is how Moses did it. Such leadership had been put into his hands, and with a good conscience he cleared himself before God: “I have not taken anything belonging to one of these men out of greed, and I have done wrong to none of them.” Samuel did the same. He judged the people for so many years and ruled Israel without any pride, and at the end he cleared himself: “I have walked in front of you from my childhood to this day. Answer me in the sight of God and before his Anointed: whose ox have I taken, or whose donkey? Whom have I lorded it over? Whom have I oppressed? Or if I have taken a bribe from anyone’s hand, even a pair of sandals, say so against me, and I will give it back.” And when the people had said to him, “You have not lorded it over us, and you have not oppressed us, and you have taken nothing from anyone’s hand,” he called the Lord to witness, saying, “The Lord is witness, and his Anointed is witness this day, that you have found nothing in my hand.” And they said to him, “He is witness.” Paul wrote in the same spirit to the Corinthians, since his conscience was clear: “For we are not like so many others, who adulterate the word of God; we speak in Christ out of sincerity, as from God, in the sight of God.” And: “We have wronged no one, corrupted no one, cheated no one.”

These are the kind of elders the church nourishes, the ones the prophet speaks of as well: “I will give your rulers in peace and your overseers in righteousness.” And the Lord said of them: “Who then will be a faithful steward, good and wise, whom the Lord sets over his household to give them their food at the right time? Blessed is that servant whom his Lord finds doing so when he comes.” Paul, teaching us where such men are to be found, says, “God has placed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers.” So where the Lord’s gifts have been placed, that is where we must learn the truth: from those who hold the church’s succession, which comes down from the apostles, and among whom there is conduct that is sound and blameless and speech that is unadulterated and uncorrupted. They are the ones who guard this faith of ours in the one God who made all things. They increase our love for the Son of God, who carried out such marvelous arrangements for our sake. And they explain the Scriptures to us without any danger, neither blaspheming God, nor dishonoring the patriarchs, nor treating the prophets with scorn.