What is an antitype in the Bible?

The word antitype does not occur in the A.V., but the Greek word ἀντίτυπον occurs in Heb. 9:24, translated 'figures,' and in 1 Peter 3:21, translated 'like figure.' It is that which answers to a type, as a wax impression answers to a seal: if the device is sunk, the impression will be raised, or vice versa. To take a simple but beautiful example, a lamb was offered up for a burnt offering both morning and evening under the law; and in the N.T. we read, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." It is plain that the morning and evening lamb in Israel were types and the death of the Lord Jesus was the antitype. In Heb. 9:23, the 'heavenly things' are the type, and 'holy places,' Heb. 9:24, the antitype, or what corresponded to the pattern. In 1 Peter 3:21, eight souls were saved through water, of which baptism is the figure, or what answers to it. Doubtless there are many other antitypes in the N.T., but every antitype must have a type to which it corresponds, though the correspondence may not lie on its surface. Where scripture is silent as to types and antitypes the teaching of the Holy Spirit is needed, or grievous error may result in associating two things together which have no spiritual connection, though names and words may seem to correspond.

The word rendered "examples" in the first of these scriptures is really "types," and that given in the second as "figures" is more exactly "antitypes." Attention to the teaching of each will readily enable us to understand the difference. The journey of the children of Israel through the wilderness, divinely sustained as they were by the manna from heaven and by the water which flowed out of the smitten rock, was typical of, and shadowed out, the Christian's passage through this world, which has become morally a wilderness to him, because his home is in the Father's house, where Christ has gone to prepare a place for him. A type therefore is a thing, an event, which is taken up by the Spirit of God to adumbrate something in the future. And there are typical personages, such as Isaac, Joseph, Benjamin, Moses, Aaron, David, and Solomon, who are selected to prefigure Christ in some special character or office. An "antitype," as in the second scripture, is a correspondence with something already existing. Thus the tabernacle, a figure (image) for the time then present, made after the pattern shown to. Moses in the mount, was a revelation of heavenly things. It was not intended so much to point to the future, although it be true that it is only in Christianity that the things revealed by the tabernacle can be understood and inherited, as to display what belonged to heaven. Hence the apostle says: "Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands" (that is, into the holy places of the tabernacle, where only the priests could enter), which are the figures (the antitypes) of the true, "but into heaven itself," etc.; for indeed it was "heaven itself," of which the "holy places" were the antitypes. A symbol again is different. For example, the sun, moon and stars, in Matt. 24, as also in Revelation, are used in a symbolic sense, as symbolizing governing authorities - the sun as supreme, the moon as derived (she receives her light from the sun), and the stars as subordinate, authority. So the new moon was, to borrow language, "the symbol of the reappearance of Israel in the sun's light, hailed with joy by the people, and connected with redemption in the thought of faith." Then also there are figures and illustrations. When, for instance, our blessed Lord says, "I am the door," He uses a figure to teach that it is through Him we enter into the possession and enjoyment of heavenly things. The spiritual mind, guided by the Holy Spirit, will have but little difficulty in comprehending these distinctions, and in seizing their significance, when studying the Scriptures.

That which is prefigured in a type is seen in the 'antitype,' ἀντίτυπον, translated 'like figure,' 1 Peter 3:21; and 'figure,' Heb. 9:24. If the tabernacle be taken as an illustration, the type or pattern was seen in the mount, that is, figuratively in heaven, and the tabernacle itself was the antitype. Heb. 9:24. Then again, the tabernacle may be taken as a type, and the saints now, as forming the house of God, the antitype. Christ is "Son over his own house, whose house are we." Heb. 3:6. Many things in the O.T. are typical of those in the N.T., as seen in 1 Cor. 10:11; but, as in all else, the teaching of the Holy Spirit is needed, or there is danger of adopting connections which are merely fanciful.

A few examples of types are here appended: the student of scripture will find it profitable to search out (in dependence upon the Holy Spirit) the numerous types of the O.T. with their antitypes in the N.T. They may be found in 1, persons; 2, places; 3, things; 4, events.

Alford reads also, "which, the antitype [of that] doth now save you also, even baptism." This makes the water of baptism the antitype of the flood, which is out of all scriptural proportion. The word used (though the original of our word "antitype") is applied in the only other place in which it occurs in Scripture to the "holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true" (Heb. 9:24) — types in contrast with antitypes. If any thing more than figure, then, be needed to explain the word, the rendering of the common version, a "like figure," is certainly right. Water in each case, with a like significance; the water of death, in the flood, yet salvation to those whom it upbore in the ark; the baptismal water similarly death, and saving because His death.

They pointed on to the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, His Deity, His Manhood, His great efficacious atoning sacrifice on the cross, when all the types should be fulfilled in Him, the glorious Antitype.

The burnt offering, the sin offering, the peace offering, the ashes of the red heifer, the meat offering (including the dying, but excluding the death itself), the great day of atonement—all these in various ways typify the wondrous death of Christ. The Passover, in type the blood shed for deliverance from judgment; the passage of the Red Sea, in type deliverance from Satan’s power and the world; the uplifting of the brazen serpent, in type deliverance from sin and self; the passage of the Jordan, in type entrance into the purposes of God. All these take each their proper place in prophetic witness to His death.

The typical teaching of the former had especially for its object truth about the Lord Jesus Christ, but that teaching was but the shadow of things to come, the body of which was of Christ. So when He came it was seen that the shadows, all correct as they were, did not fully delineate all that would be seen in Christ. Types they were of Him, and of no one else; but as types they could not fully represent all that would be set forth in connection with His person, and the sacrifice of Himself, which we learn by them was ever present to the eye of God. Headship of race, typified in Adam; heirship in resurrection, typified in Isaac; the firstborn, with the privileges connected with it, portrayed in Joseph, David, and Solomon — these and other types delineated something of Him that was to come, who, as Son of God, born in time, and conceived of the Holy Ghost, was a man different from all who preceded, or ever will come after Him. For none of those men who are types of Him were, what He was, holy, spotless, and undefiled. If we turn to the sacrifices we find the same thing. Bulls, goats, lambs, birds — all were types of Him as the sacrificial victim, yet none of these could depict that the true and only, but all-sufficient, sacrifice would be a man born of a woman; nor could they shadow forth that the true sacrifice would come from heaven.

In seeking to interpret the beautiful types of the Old Testament we must always apply this necessary safeguard, "Types are illustrative of truths, not expressive of them." The propriety of this will be seen when we consider how infinitely greater is the substance — Christ, of which they are but shadows. How immeasurably superior is the fulfilment — Christ — to that which is but the figure. How soft and subdued is the light that emanates from those types. It is not yet the noonday splendour of the full revelation of God the Father, as made known in the Son; it is still the starlight of types, symbols and shadows; but the eye of faith can penetrate these shadows and contemplate with ever increasing delight the glorious Substance of whom they speak.

And this leads us to remind readers that no type is perfect in all its particulars. Hebrews 10:1 would lead us to expect this, for what it states is as true of patriarchal days as of the time of the law. We have not the very image of the Antitype but only the shadow of Him or it. Now a shadow gives us but little in the way of detail. We get an outline and can discern, for instance, whether a shadow is that of a house or a tree, without knowing where are the windows in the former or the branches in the latter. If we recognise this limitation in the types we shall be saved from the effort to force meanings into small details connected with the person or incident forming the type, which so often ends in what is fanciful and imaginary.

We must remember that types are not intended to teach truths, their purpose is to illustrate them. They are but the shadows and not the very image of that which they are used to typify. This is perfectly understandable when we realise that Christ is the great substance of these shadows, the full image of all that was partial. In none of these types can we find the full truth of Christ and His work, yet they are the means God has used to convey to our hearts and understandings the knowledge and enjoyment of those things which in their intrinsic character are infinite, and which find their full and perfect expression in the Christ of God, and in no other.