The Bible’s panoramic preoccupation.

Centering on what the Word is centered on.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

Although it might sound reductive, it is nonetheless true that nearly every major problem afflicting the church today can be traced back to a common problem. The underlying fallacy behind everything from the ills of the prosperity gospel to the errors of moralism and pietism that echo within far too many sanctuaries springs from a failure to understand and interpret what the Bible is saying. There is a dearth of faithful biblical theology being practiced and promoted, resulting in a plethora of misconceptions about the Scriptures themselves. For example, the 2022 State of Theology survey, published by Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research, found that 53% of U.S. adults were in agreement with the statement, “The Bible, like all sacred writings, contains helpful accounts of ancient myths but is not literally true.” To put it succinctly, the biggest problem facing the church today is that those in the pews don’t know what their Bible says.

It should go without saying that the Word of God is not merely a better or more spiritual version of Aesop’s Fables. It is not a compendium of morality tales that inspire us to live more virtuous lives. Indeed, rather, the whole Bible is connected to and concerned with one central truth — namely, the revelation of God’s glory as seen nowhere else than in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the point around which every narrative revolves, as is evident from Jesus’s words to Cleopas and his friend on the Emmaus Road in the wake of his resurrection (Luke 24:27). Likewise, this is the precise truth that finally opens the minds of the apostles “to understand the Scriptures” (Luke 24:44–49; cf. John 5:39, 46). The Lord spells it out for them: “I’m the point. This whole thing is about me.”

The testimony of Scripture is preoccupied with none other than the Christ of God himself. He is the center and climax of every single story. It is this announcement that led the apostles to “turn the world upside down” — namely, that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God (Acts 2:36; 3:18; 4:10–12; 5:42). Accordingly, I am convinced that the greatest need within the church today is a recovery of the truth that wherever one turns in the Bible, the Bible will be found whispering the name of Jesus. This is the story of Scripture, which everywhere reveals how God has purposed to “reconcile all things unto himself” from “before the foundation of the world” through his only begotten Son (Col. 1:20; Eph. 1:4; 1 Pet. 1:20; Rev. 13:8). The church does a disservice to themselves and those to whom they are ministering if they lead anyone to believe that God’s Word is about anything other than the Word incarnate.

This is unfortunately how many understand the Scriptures, though, especially the Old Testament, which is often regarded as a collection of old, outdated, and irrelevant stories that have little to no bearing on modern life. The first thirty-nine books of the Bible are often seen as stuffy, tedious, and less forgiving, with the New Testament balancing out the callousness of the Old by focusing on Jesus’s mercy and compassion. The colloquial understanding of Scripture says that the New Testament has Jesus whereas the Old Testament is brimming with nothing but weird, violent, and baffling stories of God’s mercilessness. This sentiment was made most explicit when a certain prominent pastor explained that the modern church needed to “unhitch” the Old Testament from its understanding of the faith. If the church was going to survive the tectonic shifts of modernity, then all of those antiquated and outmoded stories would have to be scrapped.

Needless to say, this was one of the worst opinions to ever come from a pulpit or a preacher. No one is denying that the Old Testament has more than a few stories that leave one with raised eyebrows. But, even still, it is brimming with hope, meaning, and relevance both because Jesus is everywhere in it and because it lets us see what happens whenever God’s words are forgotten, dismissed, or discarded. From Genesis 3 onward, the Old Testament gives us a window into the wreckage that follows mankind’s rebellion and egregious sense of independence and self-authority. By the same token, it also serves as a conclusive record of God’s patient intercession and gracious intervention on behalf of his people, even when they least deserved it. In short, the Old Testament is a long and winding story of God’s faithful love for sinners and sufferers.

We are told this story almost exclusively through the eyes of Israel, but it is a story for the whole world, too. “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction,” the apostle Paul says, “that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom. 15:4). When the church fails to keep Christ Jesus at the center of that instruction, God’s Word quickly becomes a breeding ground for all kinds of sermons and lessons that leave congregants without any hope. The church’s insatiable quest to go “hero hunting” through the Old Testament narratives castrates the Word’s poignancy and power. Extracting moral lessons from the lives of your favorite Bible “heroes” misses the point. This isn’t to say that there are no moral lessons to be gleaned from those pages. Rather, it’s to say that there is a truer and better meaning embedded in every story and on every page. Author and pastor Jeramie Linne once put it this way:

The Bible is not ultimately an instruction book for life or a moral encyclopedia of do’s and don’ts. It’s a great drama, an epic saga in which Jesus Christ is the heroic leading man whose death and resurrection enable us to know him and be like him.

This is why biblical theology is in such demand since, at its core, it offers the church a panoramic view of the Bible by tracing its overarching story. “The Bible,” says James M. Hamilton, Jr., “has a narrative arc that begins at creation, rises over all that has been and will be, and lands at the end of all things” (12). From Genesis to Revelation, faithful biblical theology understands and asserts that there is one story being sovereignly woven on every page. It is the stubborn discipline of noticing all the ways in which the Bible unfolds the plot of the world’s redemption and reconciliation through the person and work of the Son of God. Each of the Bible’s sixty-six books function as “mirrors,” says Lewis Allen, that are “held up by the Spirit of God so that you and I might see Jesus” (40).

Consequently, if the church endeavors to reverse the trend that looks at its “sacred writings” as little more ancient morality myths, then the Scriptures must be rightly divided so that Christ is always seen (2 Tim. 2:15). It is Christ and Christ alone who remains the abiding interpretive framework for every student of the Word. “The Scriptures are organized around God the Son,” R. Scott Clark once said. He is both the church’s hermeneutical paradigm and the homiletical point. He is the premier concern to which every story of the Bible converges. Accordingly, all of our sermons ought to be infused with this same Christological concern. Although there may well be other pertinent interests to which we could devote our time and energy explaining, these are all subsidiary to the primary inspired objective of Scripture itself (2 Pet. 1:20–21), which is, of course, Jesus himself. And this is why biblical theology is so essential, because it keeps us centered on what the Bible is centered on, that is, Christ alone.

Works cited:

Lewis Allen, The Preacher’s Catechism (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018).

James M. Hamilton Jr., What Is Biblical Theology? A Guide to the Bible’s Story, Symbolism, and Patterns (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014).