The Story We Find Ourselves In

Everyone loves a good story. Whether it is kids begging for Dad to read them a book at bedtime or friends gathering to watch a movie, people enjoy hearing (and telling) stories. Think for a minute about the last time you caught up with an old friend you had not seen in a while. No doubt that conversation included a story or two.

But stories are for more than entertainment or providing information. They shape our understanding of who we are, why we exist, what kind of person we should be, and what kind of world we live in. Whether we realize it or not, we automatically connect everything we experience to what we believe to be the true story of the world. Our view of the world is inherently story shaped.

The Bible tells us the true story of the world, the way things truly are and should be. But because we are sinful, we are blind to this reality. Left to ourselves, we will default to understanding our lives within the false stories promoted by our culture or our own self-made stories. But when we are born again, the Spirit of God opens our hearts and minds to understand what the Bible says about God, us, and the world around us. So if we are going to rightly understand who we are, why we exist, what kind of people we should be, and what kind of world we live in, the starting place is understanding the story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

Now that can sound intimidating; after all, the Bible is a huge book! So in what follows I want to give you a brief overview of the story of the Bible. To help you remember the big picture, I have divided the story into six segments, each one beginning with the letter c: creation, crisis, covenants, Christ, church, and consummation.

Creation

The opening sentence of the Bible sets the stage for understanding the nature of the world around us: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1). As the Creator, God has complete authority over all that exists. He has created the world to reflect his wisdom and beauty. Out of all that God has made, his masterpiece is humanity. Only human beings are said to be made in God's image. To make sure we don't miss this crucial point, the text says it four times in just two verses (Gen. 1:26–27)! God has created us as image bearers to reflect his character. We are made to be mirrors of his beauty and glory. What people think, believe, desire, and do should display who God is as we interact with him, each other, and creation.

As image bearers our first parents, Adam and Eve, are given a mission. God commands them to rule over creation under his authority, in essence making them kings (Gen. 1:28). God places them in the garden of Eden, which is his sanctuary on earth. They are to serve as priests in this sanctuary, maintaining its purity (Gen. 2:15–17). Through humanity God intends to mediate his presence to the world.

God has not designed us to live as isolated beings. He made us to experience community with each other. This is seen most clearly in the marriage relationship, where a man and a woman become one flesh (Gen. 2:18–25). But even aside from the marriage relationship, God has designed human beings to display his perfections more fully together than any one individual possibly could.

Crisis

The peaceful picture of Genesis 1–2 does not last long. God warned Adam and Eve that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die (Gen. 2:15–17). But Satan, masquerading as a serpent, convinces Adam and Eve to rebel against God by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 3:1–6). Instead of "being like God" as Satan promised, Adam and Eve experience the shame and guilt of disobeying their Creator (Gen. 3:7). Instead of harmony with God and each other, guilt and shame enter in. Instead of running to God, they try to hide from him (Gen. 3:8).

When God confronts them, he announces judgment. The Serpent is cursed to crawl and eat dust. But more importantly, God makes this promise to the Serpent (in the presence of Adam and Eve):

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Gen. 3:15)

In effect God is saying to the Serpent, "You may have defeated Adam and Eve, but there will come a day when a descendant of Eve will deal you a fatal blow. Yes, you will inflict a wound upon him, but in the end you will be crushed under his feet. My Serpent-crusher will ensure that I accomplish everything I have planned."

For Adam and Eve, judgment falls swiftly as well: increased pain in childbirth for the woman, as well a desire to undermine her husband's leadership in the marriage; increased difficulty in work for the man. Even creation itself is affected, as God places it under a curse. And when the time to die comes, humanity will return to the dust from which they were made.

Speaking of death, why don't Adam and Eve die immediately? Actually, they do — just not in the way we might expect. The ultimate kind of death is spiritual in nature; it is the kind of death that is the result of sin breaking a person's relationship with God. In the moment Adam and Eve rebel against God, they die spiritually. The physical death that follows hundreds of years later is simply the final outworking of their sin.

But judgment is not the final word for Adam and Eve. Although God has every right to end the whole program right there and destroy Adam and Eve for their rebellion, instead he shows mercy. God sacrifices some animals and uses their skins to clothe them, which is symbolic of covering their sin (Gen. 3:21). But the damage to creation has been done. Their sin has opened the floodgates for death to ravage creation, leaving it a pale reflection of its original glory.

From that point forward, sin and death spread through creation like wildfire. Things eventually become so bad that God brings judgment in a massive flood that wipes out the entire human race, except Noah and his family (Genesis 6–9). But even though God scrubs the earth clean, the flood does not change the human heart or its inclination toward sin and evil. Not long after Noah and his family emerge from the ark, they too show themselves to be just like Adam by disobeying God's purpose to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (Gen....