If I asked you to summarise the story of the Bible, I wonder what you’d say?
I do often ask this in classroom settings with Christians and there are a whole host of frequently given answers. Typically, people tell some version of the story of redemption from sin involving the fall and then Jesus’ incarnation and death on the cross. Sometimes this is more textured but among the evangelicals I’d typically talk with this is the most commonly expressed version of the story.
It has the great benefit of being right. The curse of sin and the redemption earned at the cross by Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf and in our place, which is then freely available to all who trust him: this is the story of the Bible.
This can be greatly textured. I’ve missed out a host of vital things in this telling of the story that would fit within its broad structure.
Except if we know the text well, we will perhaps notice that not all of the Bible fits into this paradigm. There are other stories at play, other stories we could call the ‘good news.’
Peter Leithart, in his On Earth as in Heaven, outlines what he considers to be the three stories of the Bible.
- Sin and Redemption. The story we’re familiar with and I briefly outlined. Adam & Eve condemn us to death with their sin and Jesus rescues us from both sin and death on the cross.
- Holy War. God permits the snake to tempt Eve so Adam can crush his head, but Adam fails. History is the war of God against the Satan. Jesus comes as the Seed of the Woman to conquer and teach his people to conquer.
- Maturation. Adam and Eve are children, they’re supposed to grow up into monarchs and prophets. Their sin impedes their education. Jesus is the mature man who restores the Church to path of maturity.
The first is common. The second isn’t uncommon, but I suspect we talk about it too little. The third is a story I learned from Jordan and Leithart that’s present throughout the Bible, but I think we rarely hear much teaching or preaching expounding the theme.
If you’re a preacher a good evaluation question would be how long was it since you last touched each one in your preaching. I don’t think ‘balance’ is what we’re aiming for, I think you should preach the text in front of you. However, it can be very easy to force the text into a familiar frame: is that actually what it’s saying?
If you’re not a preacher you can ask the same question of your preaching in your church, but that’s not something that’s in your gift to do anything much about. Instead, ask yourself about your own reading of the Bible. Can you see these themes? Ask yourself about your own life in Christ, can you see these themes?
While I am thinking primarily of how we read the Bible, turning the question to our own lives is helpful too. We learn to read both history and our own stories as we grasp the contours and textures of the Bible’s story. My life comes into sharper focus as I understand Jesus better, so does the world. I’ve met people who are trapped in the sin and redemption story so much that the only lesson they can get from the Old Testament is that these characters are idiots who need Jesus (sometimes true, of course) and read their own lives the same way. Of course, I am an idiot who needs Jesus. My sin is a serious problem and I need to repent of it when I recognise it, or others point it out for me. But I’m also maturing into the likeness of Christ (slowly, but it’s happening) and my life and world is a battlefield and I’m a soldier. Thinking of all of these helps me read events in a more textured way.
This sort of summarising is by its nature reductionist. Anything short of the entire Bible is going to have that failure. I think its power is in highlighting where we’ve missed dominant themes in our own reading.
As a good charismatic I want to include a fourth story around the presence of God and the inclusion or exclusion from his presence that climaxes at Pentecost and in the Church. I’ve taught on the ‘stories’ or patterns of the Bible before by using seven of them. I told them as Redemption; Ascension; Resurrection; Exodus; Wisdom; Completion; and Communion. I actually told them as Boat, Mountain, Goose, Wave, Tree, Week, and Table—but that’s another story.
Even that framing from me though fits within the first and third of Leithart’s, while missing the second.
We should give ourselves to reading the Bible carefully, in its fullness. The summaries people give me are, typically, true. That’s a glorious thing and that story is enough to make my soul thrum and heart sing. It’s just that, shockingly, there’s more too. Jesus came not just to save us for heaven but to conquer the world and remake both us and it into his image.
That’s good news.
Photo by Jack Hunter on Unsplash
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