“Hey Preacher, can you give me a brief summary of the Bible?”
That’s a tall order. Is it possible to take those 66 books (1,189 chapters) and condense their subject matter into something – anything – brief? What do I include? What do I leave out? Understanding the difficulty of the task coupled with the realization that I have not mastered the entire Biblical text (who has?), here is my three-point summary of the Bible.
The Bible is about a problem. The problem is sin. Not long after God created the first couple and placed them in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 1-2), they disobeyed Him and sin became a reality (Rom. 5:12). Each person who has come after them has eventually followed in their sinful steps (Rom. 3:9-10, 23), with the exception of one (and we’ll speak of Him momentarily). Sin is not merely a generic problem. It is YOUR problem, and mine. The tragedy of sin is that it severs one’s relationship with God (Isa. 59:1-2), and if that separation is not restored, it will last throughout eternity (John 8:24; Rev. 20:11-15) in “a lake that burns with fire and brimstone” (Rev. 21:8).
The Bible is about a person. The person is Jesus, the one sent into the world to “save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). He is the Son of God (Luke 1:35), who “emptied Himself” (Phil. 2:7), came down from heaven (John 6:51), “and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8). He came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He “came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). This He accomplished in His sinless life (1 Pet. 1:22), vicarious death (Heb. 2:9), and bodily resurrection from the dead (1 Cor. 15:1-4; Rom. 4:25). Through these selfless acts He paid the price for man’s redemption (Titus 2:14; Matt. 26:28; Isa. 53:1-12).
The Bible is about a plan. Before sin ever became a reality, God in His foreknowledge created the plan that would bring Jesus to earth so He could live a sinless life (Heb. 4:15) and die for all (2 Cor. 5:14). This plan included the establishing of an entity called, among other things, the “church” or “body” of Christ (Matt. 16:18; Eph. 3:10-11; Rom. 16:16; Eph. 1:22-23; Col. 1:18). This church saw its beginning in the events of Acts 2. It is God’s plan to save eternally in heaven all those who are found in that body (Acts 2:47; Eph. 5:23). To enter the church today one must believe in and trust Jesus as the divine Son of God (John 8:24), repent of one’s sins (Acts 17:30), confess one’s faith in Jesus (Rom. 10:9-10), and be immersed in water (Acts 2:38; 22:16). When one obeys that plan from the heart (Rom. 6:17-18), he is saved by the grace of God (Eph. 2:8-9), indwelled by the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 6:19), added to the body (church) of Christ (Gal. 3:27), and placed on the path to eternal reward. When one’s life comes to an end, if he has been “faithful unto death” (Rev. 2:10), he will receive a victorious crown of life (2 Tim. 4:7-8).
The Bible. What a thrilling volume!
Thanks for the plug!