The Bible As Redemptive History

What is the Bible about? It’s a question you may have heard asked before or even asked for yourself. Depending on whom you ask you may get differing answers. “The Bible is God’s handbook for living,” is one popular answer. Another goes like this: “The Bible is God’s love letter to you.” Someone once told me it was just an old book “written by a bunch of ignorant shepherds.” Others have referred to the Bible as a book recording the ancient Hebrew people’s encounters with God. More fundamentalist-types would simply answer: “It is God’s word.”

There’s some truth in all of that. Yes, the Bible is God’s word, but that doesn’t really tell us what it is about. Yes, the Bible records some of the encounters the Hebrew people had with God (take Moses for example). Sure, at least one of the authors of the Bible was a shepherd. He was also a king. And anyone who could read and write in that era could hardly be called ignorant by the standards of the day. For that matter I’m not sure what the modern world has added of any substance to the subject matter (God) or our ability to understand him, that our “ignorant” shepherd friend didn’t have a better grasp of. And, yes, I suppose the Bible could be called God’s love letter to his people, but a mere letter is not exactly what we find when we open it up, is it? Is it just a handbook for living?

The best answer to the question is that the Bible is the record God has given us of his great acts of redemption. The Bible is redemptive history and redemption is its theme. When we learn to look at it that way it becomes more intelligible to us. This comes into play in both the books of the Bible we are currently passing through on Sundays—Galatians and Genesis.

In Galatians it helps us to see the root of the problem. The false teachers that Paul is arguing against are stuck in the Mosaic covenant and their misunderstanding of it, so much so that they’re missing the point of the covenant of grace as a whole. They missed the point of Moses and so they are missing the point of the coming of Jesus. They would reverse redemptive history and take it back to the types and shadows of the old, that which was done away with in Christ.

In the prologue of Genesis (1:1-2:3) we are seeing the foundations of redemptive history being laid. A pattern is being traced which will be repeated throughout all of Scripture, with more added on each time. To put it another way, Genesis is the bones of redemptive history. Exodus-Deuteronomy will be the flesh. Joshua-Song of Solomon will add organs. Isaiah through Malachi is skin. In Matthew the body of redemptive history comes to life and walks before us. The Bible builds on itself and repeats itself over and over until we see the very embodiment of redemption in the person of Jesus Christ. The apostles recount for us his words and deeds and explain them in the light of the Old Testament.

Viewing the Bible as the history of redemption helps us to see the gradual unfolding of that redemption and to appreciate each part in its place. The Bible is about Christ. It points forward to him. It describes him. Then it explains him and looks forward to the finality of redemption at his return. The focal point of redemption, of course, is the cross of Christ, and this helps explain what Paul means when he tells the Corinthians “I decided not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” There was a time when I would have thought this different from his words to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, to whom he said: “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” It’s not that the gospel is all there is to “the whole counsel of God,” but the gospel is certainly its sum.

What is he Bible about? The Bible is the great record of God’s redemptive acts in history. What is the Bible about? The Bible is the history of redemption. What is the Bible about? The Bible is about Jesus Christ—his life, his death, his resurrection, and his soon return. So let’s get into the Bible more and more. Read it. Ask questions. Make it a priority to come learn it with us in worship on Sundays!