By Jacob Nannie – Campus Pastor – Downtown
For many of us, the Bible can feel like an anthology—a library of 66 separate books written by dozens of authors over thousands of years. It’s easy to get lost in the details of a single book or verse, and forget the bigger picture. But if we miss the fact that these books are masterfully woven together to tell one coherent, unified story that culminates in Jesus, we’ll misread every part of it. Reading the Bible as one unified story is the fundamental framework that the biblical authors themselves, and even Jesus, used.
The Grand Narrative: From Image to King
The story of Scripture is not merely a collection of historical facts or moral lessons—it’s a single story arc about the relationship between God, humanity, and creation. If you trace the “melody” of this arc that plays from Genesis to Revelation, it follows four chapters:
- Creation: God creates human beings in his image, appointing them as his partners to rule, cultivate, and steward the world. This is how our world ought to be.
- Fall: Humanity rebels against God, choosing to rule their own way, which results in corruption, brokenness, and death. It’s how our world actually is now.
- Redemption: God sets in motion a plan of redemption to save his people from brokenness and death by sending his son, Jesus, to die for the sins of the world. Our world can be redeemed.
- Renewal: The world is being reconciled to God in Christ and will reach full reconciliation in the new heavens and earth. This is how the world will be when Christ returns.
Two Testaments, One Melody
This unified, four-chapter story is remarkable when you consider the scope of its production. The Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) was assembled over more than one thousand years into a literary whole, meticulously arranged to tell this story.
In contrast, the New Testament collection—the four gospels, Acts, the letters, and Revelation—was written and finalized in its written form within the first 50 years of the Jesus movement. While the Old Testament’s unity is “masterfully assembled” across centuries, the New Testament’s unity is “organically decentralized.”
Why does this matter? Because the New Testament authors saw themselves as continuing to write in the one coherent, unified story that points to Jesus. They were writing:
- The Gospels: four accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus and how he fulfilled what was written about him in the Old Testament.
- The Book of Acts: a detailed account of how the first followers of Jesus lived out the Christian life after the resurrection of Jesus.
- The Letters of the Apostles: letters written to the various churches or believers which apply the truth of God’s story and its climax (the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus) to real-life issues.
- The Book of Revelation: a projection of the themes of this one, unified story that finds its ultimate consummation in the New Heavens and Earth.
Application: Reading the Bible as One, Unified Story
When we fail to see the Bible as a unified story, we are prone to pull verses out of their narrative context and treat them as isolated nuggets of wisdom. We read a line of poetry from the book of Psalms, or an instruction from a New Testament letter, and immediately ask, “What does this mean for me right now?” We are tempted to shift into the dangerous paradigms of treating the Bible as a rulebook or a treasure chest.
The unified story becomes more apparent by asking questions such as: “What is this book, passage, or verse communicating about God’s plan to restore humanity and creation through Jesus?” Having this posture when reading the Bible changes everything.
- It transforms the Old Testament from being arbitrary commands and stories into reflections of God’s holiness and signposts that point forward to Jesus.
- It grounds the New Testament narrative and instruction by connecting them to the larger mission of God in reconciling the world through Christ
Reading the Bible as God’s one, long story allows us to not only find out how God is leading all of creation to a future new creation through Jesus, but points us to our individual journey within the context of that massive, unified, eternal story.
Going Deeper:
https://bibleproject.com/podcasts/series/paradigm/
