There are some Bible stories that are well known, even to people who never read the Bible. One of these is the Old Testament story of Noah and the great flood. In 2014 there was even a movie made of this story, starring Russell Crown and Anthony Hopkins. I haven’t seen it and I don’t know how closely it follows the biblical story – it came out of Hollywood, so I don’t expect much. Nevertheless, if nothing else, the fact that the movie was made is enough to show that many people know, and are interested in, this story.
But even many of the people who do read the Bible miss the actual meaning of the flood story, which is not revealed in the Old Testament, but in the New. The Apostle Peter wrote:
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit. After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits – to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also – not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God (1 Peter 3:18-21).
There is some disagreement among New Testament scholars about what the “imprisoned spirits” in this passage are, but that’s not the point I want to look at in this article. Peter says that the water of the flood “symbolizes baptism.” Sit with that for a moment. Noah’s flood is not just a flood; it’s a symbol that represents baptism. I don’t think Christians many today pay as much attention to that statement as they should. In this article I want to dig deeper into this idea and see where it leads.
The Flood and Baptism
The story of the flood is found in Genesis, chapters 6 through 9. If you read it closely, one of the things you may notice is that the story really isn’t about a flood at all. The flood is just the setting. The story is about God rescuing Noah and his family. The outline is simple: God took Noah and his family out of a wicked, corrupt society, and brought them safely through the waters of death into a newly recreated world. After the flood, he established a covenant with them.
If that was the end of it, this story would still be worth reading; not because the historical details matter all that much, but because it shows how God rescues his people, while still dealing with sin. But there’s more. You see, Noah didn’t write this story. None of the people alive at that time did. Moses was the one who wrote it, and he lived many centuries after the flood. Now, this is not to say that Moses didn’t have access to an older written account. It’s possible that he did. In fact, I think it’s likely that he had some sort of source, whether it was oral or written. But whatever sources Moses used have vanished. His account is the one the Holy Spirit chose to preserve.
But Moses didn’t aim the book of Genesis at us; his intended audience was the people he was leading through the desert, the Israelites. Their story is recorded in the Bible too. The book of Exodus tells how God took the Israelites out of a wicked, corrupt society and brought them safely through the waters of death at the Red Sea1 into a new land. After they crossed the sea, God established a covenant with them. So Noah’s story, as told by Moses, was also, in a way, the story of the very people that Moses was leading. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that the two stories are parallel.
Which brings us back to baptism and 1 Peter. What Peter meant about the flood symbolizing baptism is this: God took you, and me, and all of us who are followers of Jesus, out of a wicked, corrupt society. He brought us safely through the waters of death – we read in Romans:
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (Romans 6:3-4).
Water here represents death, and in the two previous examples, water caused the death of the people who were outside of God’s protection. But God brought us safely through death into a new life. We have been created again:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Finally, as new creations, God has also made us a part of a new covenant. When Jesus instituted communion at the last supper he said:
“This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20).
So the stories of Noah and of ancient Israel also parallel our stories. The details are different but the pattern is still the same; God takes people, including you and me, out of a corrupt, wicked society, brings us safely though death into a new life, and establishes his covenant with us. The flood story in Genesis isn’t just about something God a long time ago. It’s also about something that God still does today.
As in the Days of Noah
Jesus spoke about the flood as well, but he drew a different parallel:
As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away (Matthew 24:37-39, compare with Luke 17:26-27).
In this passage, the parallel is not about how God saves his people, but about the behavior of the people who are not saved. When Jesus says here that they “knew nothing about what would happen,” that doesn’t mean they hadn’t been told. Scripture tells us, after all, that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness” (2 Peter 2:5). But nobody paid attention to his warnings except the members of Noah’s own family. In the same way, when Christ returns there will be many who heard the gospel but paid no attention. Like the people in Noah’s time, they will be taken away to destruction.
The flood story serves two different purposes, then. On the one hand, it illustrates how God saves his people. He doesn’t rescue us from death; he brings us safely through it, into a new life. And with the new life there is a new covenant. But the flood story also serves as a warning that we must pay attention to what God is saying or risk being caught outside his protection when judgment lands. God’s patience is great, but eventually it will run out (2 Peter 3:9-10).
God Remembered Abraham.
There are other parallels in the Bible as well. Genesis 19 records the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. God rained burning sulfur down on those sinful cities and the surrounding country, but two angels rescued Abraham’s nephew Lot, as well as Lot’s daughters, from the destruction. Scripture tells us:
So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, he remembered Abraham, and he brought Lot out of the catastrophe that overthrew the cities where Lot had lived (Genesis 19:29).
In the New Testament, we’re told that Lot was a righteous man (2 Peter 2:7-8), yet he and his children were not spared because of his righteousness, but because God “remembered Abraham.” I’ll say that again, because it’s not at all what most people expect: the Scripture says that Lot was protected from the outpouring of God’s judgment because he was related to Abraham, not because he himself was righteous.
And as with the flood, this is a message, first of all, to the Israelites of Moses time. In Deuteronomy, as the people were getting ready to enter the promised land, God told them:
It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people (Deuteronomy 9:5-6).
Lot was righteous; the Israelite people were not. But the Israelites were nevertheless protected from God’s judgment. More than that, they would be the very instrument through which God would judge the inhabitants of Canaan. Why? Because of God’s promise to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. As with Lot, it’s their connection to Abraham, not their own righteousness (or lack thereof), that matters.
Two examples; one is called righteous and the other is not, but both are saved because of their relationship with Abraham, not because they had earned it. If you’re thinking that sounds a little bit like the way we are saved through faith in Jesus, you’re exactly right. The Apostle Paul makes this parallel clear:
The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ (Galatians 3:16).
Christ, who saves us, is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. And every one of us who is in Christ is included in that promise as well (Galatians 3:29). Not by natural descent – Scripture says that God can turn rocks into children of Abraham (Matthew 3:9, Luke 3:8), but because we share in Abraham’s faith (Romans 4:16, Galatians 3:9). So once again, we see that Lot’s story is also, in a way, our story. Equally, Christ is part of the stories of Lot and of the ancient Israelites, even though they didn’t know it.
Type and Antitype
These kinds of parallel are found all through the Bible; many of the stories and passages in Scripture point to later passages that are parallels with them. Bible scholars refer to the earlier events as types, which point to later events called antitypes. So the flood is a type of the exodus, and both the flood and the exodus are types of baptism. Baptism in this example is the antitype. These terms, type and antitype, are not in the Bible; rather, they are words scholars use to describe something the Scriptures do. (And the prefix “anti” at the beginning of the world antitype doesn’t mean “against” like it does in words like “antitheft.” It simply identifies which event is the later one.)
People can be types as well. The author of Hebrews draws a parallel between Melchizedek, the priest that Abraham met in Genesis 14:18-20, and Jesus (Hebrews 7:1-28). We can say, then, that Melchizedek is a type of Jesus, and Jesus is an antitype of Melchizedek.
These parallels matter because the Bible is not a history book, although it does contain history. Rather, it’s a book of theology. It’s God’s revelation of himself. Repetition is one way the Holy Spirit calls attention to patterns so that we don’t overlook them. These patterns help us to understand who God is. And the better we understand who God is, the better we’ll understand who we are.
The point I’d like you to take away from this article is this: Whenever you read the Scriptures, look for patterns, and for things that seem to repeat. The details don’t necessarily have to match – think of Noah’s flood, the exodus, and baptism. Rather, it’s in the underlying pattern that the parallels are found. And don’t expect to see all the connections the first time you read through the Bible. But you can expect that the more you read, and the more you study, the more parallels you’ll see. And we should always keep in mind that studying the Bible is not an end in itself. We don’t study just to know the Scriptures, but to know the one whom the Scriptures reveal, who is Christ.
1. The Hebrew actually translates literally as “Sea of Reeds.” It’s almost certainly not the same body of water as the one we call the Red Sea today.