What Is Typology, and How Do We Identify Types?

Question 1039.

Biblical typology is the study of persons, events, and institutions in the Old Testament that God designed in advance to prefigure greater realities fulfilled in Christ and the new covenant. It is one of the most rewarding areas of biblical study once its rules are properly understood, and one of the most abused once those rules are ignored, so identifying a genuine type carefully matters a great deal.

I want to define what makes something a type rather than a coincidental similarity, work through several clear examples Scripture itself identifies, and set out the safeguards that keep biblical typology from collapsing into the kind of undisciplined allegorising it can easily resemble if handled carelessly.

Defining a Biblical Type

The Greek word typos, from which we get our English word type, originally described a mark left by a stamp or die, an impression that corresponds precisely to the pattern that produced it. Applied to Scripture, a type is a person, event, or institution in the Old Testament, historically real in its own right, that God designed in advance as a pattern corresponding to and anticipating a greater reality, the antitype, revealed later in Christ or the new covenant.

Three features distinguish a genuine biblical type from a simply interesting parallel a preacher notices. The historical reality of the type must be affirmed, not treated as dispensable once its symbolic value is extracted. The correspondence between type and antitype must be one that Scripture itself, usually the New Testament, actually draws, rather than one a later interpreter invents. And the antitype must genuinely exceed the type, since typology moves from a lesser, preliminary picture toward a greater fulfilled reality, not sideways between two roughly equal realities.

Adam as a Type of Christ

Romans 5:14 explicitly calls Adam a type of the one who was to come, using the word typos directly. Adam was a genuine historical individual whose disobedience brought sin and death into the human race. Christ, the second Adam, brought righteousness and life through His obedience. The correspondence is real, explicitly drawn by Paul, and moves from a lesser figure whose act brought catastrophe to a far greater figure whose act brought salvation, exactly the pattern genuine typology requires.

The Passover Lamb as a Type of Christ

The Passover lamb, whose blood protected Israel’s firstborn from the judgement that fell on Egypt in Exodus 12, is identified as a type of Christ by Paul himself, who writes plainly in 1 Corinthians 5:7 that Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. The historical event was genuinely real, a specific lamb, slaughtered on a specific night, its blood applied to specific doorposts. The New Testament explicitly identifies the pattern this event anticipated, and the fulfilment in Christ, whose blood delivers believers from a judgement far greater than the plague that struck Egypt, plainly exceeds the type that pictured it.

The Tabernacle and Sacrificial System

Hebrews devotes extensive argument to the tabernacle and its sacrificial system as types of Christ’s priestly work, describing the earthly sanctuary in Hebrews 9:24 as a copy of the true things, with Christ having entered not a sanctuary made by hands but heaven itself. The Levitical priesthood, the sacrifices offered repeatedly, the Day of Atonement ritual, all of it historically real and instituted by God for genuine use under the old covenant, is shown by Hebrews to have anticipated Christ’s single, sufficient, once for all sacrifice and His ongoing priestly intercession. This is perhaps the most extensively developed typology in the New Testament, and it demonstrates the pattern with unusual clarity: real historical institutions, an explicit New Testament correspondence, and a fulfilment that vastly exceeds what the earthly types could ever accomplish, since Hebrews 10:4 states plainly that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins.

Jonah as a Type of the Resurrection

Jesus Himself identifies Jonah’s three days in the belly of the great fish as a sign pointing forward to His own three days in the earth before His resurrection, in Matthew 12:40. This example is worth including because it shows Jesus, not simply later interpreters, treating an Old Testament narrative as a genuine, historically real type of His own experience, affirming rather than denying the historicity of Jonah’s account in the very act of identifying its typological significance.

Safeguards Against Undisciplined Biblical Typology

The safeguard that keeps biblical typology distinct from allegorical guesswork, a method I address more fully in relation to whether allegorical interpretation should be used, is restraint. I hold that a type should be identified with confidence only where Scripture itself, usually through explicit New Testament commentary, draws the correspondence. Where a preacher notices what looks like a suggestive pattern, three items in a story, a repeated number, a colour mentioned in passing, without any New Testament text drawing out a typological significance, the responsible course is to treat it as an interesting observation at most, not to preach it with the same confidence as a type Scripture itself identifies.

This restraint matters because typology, unlike allegory, claims that God Himself designed the historical pattern in advance, which is a strong claim requiring real textual warrant. Overreaching, finding types everywhere a coincidental similarity appears, cheapens the genuine types Scripture does identify and trains a congregation to treat the Old Testament as a puzzle to be decoded rather than a historically reliable record whose events God, in His own wisdom, ordered to anticipate the greater realities fulfilled in Christ.

Types Distinguished From Mere Illustrations

It helps to distinguish a genuine biblical type from a preacher’s illustration, since the two are often confused in practice. An illustration draws a helpful comparison between something in Scripture and a spiritual truth without claiming that God designed the earlier event specifically to prefigure the later reality. A sermon might illustrate perseverance by comparing a believer’s endurance to a marathon runner, without suggesting Scripture teaches that marathon running was divinely designed to picture Christian perseverance. Typology makes a stronger claim than illustration does: that God, in His own wise ordering of history, actually shaped the earlier person, event, or institution with the later fulfilment in view.

This is precisely why typology requires firmer textual warrant than illustration does. An illustration only needs to be apt and clear to serve its purpose. A claimed type needs to meet the fuller standard already set out, historical reality, a correspondence Scripture itself draws, and a fulfilment that exceeds what came before, because it is making a claim about God’s own design across redemptive history, not simply offering a helpful comparison for a congregation to remember.

David as king also functions as a type of Christ in a more general, pattern-based sense, though this example is worth handling with a little more care than the explicit cases already discussed, since the New Testament identifies Christ as the fulfilment of the Davidic covenant more through direct promise, in texts like 2 Samuel 7:12-16 and Luke 1:32-33, than through the specific vocabulary of typos. This is a useful reminder that not every genuine Old Testament anticipation of Christ takes the strict form of typology as narrowly defined. Some anticipations come through explicit covenant promise, others through typological pattern, and careful interpretation distinguishes which category a given Old Testament figure or institution actually belongs to rather than flattening every anticipation of Christ into the single category of type.

The bronze serpent Moses raised in the wilderness, recorded in Numbers 21:8-9, offers one further clear example worth including, since Jesus Himself draws the typological connection explicitly in John 3:14-15, comparing His own being lifted up on the cross to the serpent Moses lifted up so that everyone who looked upon it would live. The historical event, a real bronze serpent raised on a pole during a real plague of venomous snakes in Israel’s wilderness wanderings, is affirmed rather than treated as simply symbolic, and Jesus Himself supplies the New Testament warrant connecting it to His own crucifixion, exactly the pattern genuine typology requires throughout.

Approaching biblical typology with this kind of disciplined restraint has served preachers well across the history of the church, and it will serve you well in your own reading too, whether you are preparing a sermon or simply reading Scripture devotionally on your own.

So, now what?

When you notice what seems like a striking parallel between an Old Testament person or event and Christ, check first whether the New Testament itself draws that connection explicitly. Where it does, teach the type with full confidence, since it reveals God’s own careful design across the whole sweep of redemptive history. Where it does not, hold the observation more loosely, and let the genuine, Scripture-attested types you have studied deepen your appreciation for how consistently God was preparing His people, long before Christ arrived, for exactly who He would turn out to be.

For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Matthew 12:40, ESV