“Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:45-47).

If you have never heard the term “sensus plenior,” you’ve most assuredly heard it being taught somewhere. Sensus plenior is a Latin phrase which means “a fuller meaning.” It’s a concept which came into being within the church which resulted from the challenges of explaining the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament. Since the NT sometimes sees Yeshua in passages of the OT which do not appear to be Messianic in their original context, sensus plenior was used to explain how Yeshua’s not so obvious presence in the OT passage was still really there: the New Testament authors provide the fuller (Christological) meaning of OT passages, meanings which were not intended by the original authors, and are typically quite foreign to their original contexts.

The NT writers never entertain the notion that the OT requires a fuller explanation to prove that Yeshua is the promised Messiah.

No “sensus plenior” in the NT

But as much as we may struggle at times to explain the NT’s use of the OT, one thing is quite clear from reading the NT itself. When it comes to Messianic prophecy, Yeshua and the authors of the NT DID NOT BELIEVE in sensus plenior. In John 5, for example, Yeshua insists that Moses wrote so clearly about him that he alone, without any additional witnesses, would be their judge. The NT writers never entertain the notion that the OT requires a fuller explanation to prove that Yeshua is the promised Messiah. Rather, they constantly appeal to the OT (without reference to an additional spiritual interpretation) as sufficient proof that people ought to believe Yeshua’s Messianic claims about himself are accurate and real.

Some Examples

Let’s consider a small sampling of passages in the NT which insist the OT authors’ witness is sufficient evidence for believing in Yeshua, and require no additional spiritual interpretations by the NT authors:

“But he said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31).

“And so, because he [David] was a prophet and knew that GOD HAD SWORN TO HIM WITH AN OATH TO SEAT one OF HIS DESCENDANTS ON HIS THRONE, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that HE WAS NEITHER ABANDONED TO HADES, NOR DID His flesh SUFFER DECAY” (Acts 2:30-31).

“So, having obtained help from God, I stand to this day testifying both to small and great, stating nothing but what the Prophets and Moses said was going to take place; that the Christ was to suffer, and that by reason of His resurrection from the dead He would be the first to proclaim light both to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles” (Acts 26:22-23).

Careful Studying

Let me suggest, therefore, a different solution to the “problem” of the NT’s use of the OT. Rather than appealing to a “sensus plenior,” let’s renew our personal commitment to engage far more seriously with a close, careful, literary reading of the Hebrew Bible. In my own personal experience, the more time I spend carefully studying the Hebrew Scriptures, the more I am convinced the NT authors were correct in their certainty that Moses and the Prophets knowingly and intentionally wrote about the Messiah. And the more I am convinced by the NT authors’ testimony that they had indeed “found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote” (John 1:45).

“Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so” (Acts 17:11).