Christ in Tobit

Christ Connection - The Mercy That Pays Its Own Price

This chapter holds up a man whose works of mercy, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, burying the forsaken dead, are exactly the deeds the King will one day commend: "I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat... naked, and ye clothed me" (Matthew 25:35-36). Tobit lives that list before it is spoken. And his story carries a deeper echo. His goodness does not earn him reward in this life; it brings him loss, exile, and a death sentence. He shows what it looks like when right…

Christ Connection - The Hope That Outlasts the Grave

Tobit risks his life to honor the dead with burial, suffers undeservedly like holy Job, and clings to "that life which God will give to those that never change their faith from him." Each of these threads runs straight to Christ. He taught that mercy shown to the lowest and most unrepayable is mercy shown to Him: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matthew 25:40). He was the righteous One who suffered without c…

Christ Connection - The God Who Heals and Hears

This chapter shows a God who hears two hidden cries at once and sends a healer in answer, and every part of it reaches toward Christ. Sara confesses that God is "not delighted in our being lost," and Jesus says in His own voice that He came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10) and that it is not the will of His Father "that one of these little ones should perish" (Matthew 18:14). She prays that "after a storm thou makest a calm," and on the lake of Galilee Christ stan…

Christ Connection - The One Who Fulfilled This Wisdom

Almost every line of this chapter finds its echo on the lips of Jesus. Tobit’s rule, "never do to another what thou wouldst hate to have done to thee," Christ gave in its fullness: "all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets" (Matthew 7:12). Tobit’s "eat thy bread with the hungry... and with thy garments cover the naked" is the very measure Christ named for the day of judgment: "I was an hungred, an…

Christ Connection - The Companion Sent to Heal and Bring Us Home

A faithful companion is sent from God, walks an unknown and dangerous road beside the one who cannot make it alone, and promises to bring him safely home. The pattern points beyond itself. Where Raphael’s name means "God has healed," Jesus is the One in whom that healing fully comes; He opened the eyes of the blind with His own hands (John 9:7) and was named for salvation itself, "for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Where the angel hides his ident…

Christ Connection - The Bridegroom Who Conquers the Enemy

A faithful bridegroom comes from afar, walks a road of danger, overcomes the power that held his bride captive to fear, and takes her to himself in the fear of the Lord. It is hard to read this chapter and not hear, far ahead of it, the great marriage at the center of the gospel. The New Testament names Christ the Bridegroom who loves the Church and gives Himself for her, that He might present her to Himself without spot (Ephesians 5:25-27). Like Tobias, He does not flee t…

Christ Connection - The Bridegroom and the Joining of Hands

A father takes his child’s hand and places it into the hand of the one who has come from far to claim her, then prays the God of the fathers to join them and to bring His blessing to its fullness. The whole picture leans toward Christ. Scripture loves the image of marriage to speak of God’s love, and the New Testament names Jesus the Bridegroom who comes for His bride and gives Himself for her, that He might present her to Himself in glory (Ephesians 5:25-27). John the Bap…

Christ Connection - The Bridegroom Who Sanctifies the Bride

Tobias will not take his bride until the marriage is given to God, and that instinct reaches toward the heart of the gospel. Scripture calls Christ the Bridegroom and the Church His bride, and it says He "loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it... that he should present it to himself a glorious church" (Ephesians 5:25-27). What Tobias does in small, a man giving his marriage to God before he claims it, the Lord does in full: He sets…

Christ Connection - The Messenger Who Pays What We Could Not

A young man cannot make the journey himself, so a messenger sent from God goes in his place, settles the debt in full, and brings a stranger home to the feast. Read in the light of the New Testament, every line of that sentence leans toward Christ. Tobias confesses he can make no "worthy return" for the care he has received, and the gospel makes that confession universal, for "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Where Tobias sends a helper t…

Christ Connection - The Father Who Runs to Meet Us

A parent who cannot be comforted, who goes out daily to scan the horizon for a child far from home, is one of the tenderest images in all of Scripture, and it points straight to the heart of God. When Jesus wanted to show what the Father is like, He told of a father who sees his lost son "yet a great way off," and runs, and falls on his neck (Luke 15:20). Anna’s vigil at the window is a small human echo of that divine watchfulness, the love that keeps looking down the road…

Christ Connection - The One Who Opens Blind Eyes

A blind man receives his sight, and his first sight is the face of the son who came to him. The whole of Scripture leans toward this moment and beyond it. When the prophets foretold the coming of God’s salvation, they promised that "the eyes of the blind shall be opened" (Isaiah 35:5), and when Jesus came, He made that promise visible, restoring sight again and again and pointing to it as the very sign of who He was (Luke 7:22). In one such healing He even used a humble ph…

Christ Connection - The Healer Sent from the Father

Raphael’s name means "God heals," and his ministry is to carry prayers up to God and bring God’s healing down to a broken family. In this he points beyond himself to the One the New Testament calls greater than the angels. Hebrews opens by setting the Son above all the messengers of heaven, for to none of the angels did God ever say, "Thou art my Son" (Hebrews 1:4-5). Where Raphael offered Tobit’s prayers before the Lord, Christ is named the one Mediator between God and me…

Christ Connection - Mercy Held Out to Sinners

Tobit’s call - "Be converted therefore, ye sinners... believing that he will shew his mercy to you" - is the very note on which the Gospel opens. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel" (Mark 1:15) joins the same two commands Tobit joins: turn, and trust the mercy. And where Tobit can only point to a mercy he hopes for, Jesus brings that mercy near in person, eating with sinners, telling of a father who runs to meet a returning son while he is "yet a great way off" (Luke 15:20…

Christ Connection - The King the Nations Adore

Tobit dies seeing a day when the Gentiles forsake their idols, stream into the city of God, and the kings of the earth rejoice "adoring the King of Israel." The New Testament announces that this day has dawned in Jesus. He is called "King of the Jews" at His birth, when wise men from the East, the first of the Gentiles, come to worship Him (Matthew 2:2). Paul declares that in Christ the dividing wall is broken down, so that those who were once "strangers and foreigners" ar…