The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place In The Biblical Story

by Craig G. Bartholomew

By causing the creation to come into being by his word of power, God establishes it as his own vast kingdom. He thus establishes himself as the great King over all creation, without limits of any kind, and worthy to receive all glory, honor, and power in the worship of what he has created.

Autonomy means choosing oneself as the source for determining what is right and wrong, rather than relying on God’s word for direction.

The fall into sin remains a mystery, but the story of Genesis 3 illumines the fundamental nature of sin. It is a quest for autonomy, a desire to separate ourselves from God.

The fivefold repetition of the word bless is deliberately set in opposition to the fivefold occurrence of the word curse in Genesis 1–11.22

“Gen[esis] 12:1–3 is the rejoinder to the consequences of the fall and aims at the restoration of the purposes of God for the world to which Genesis 1–2 directed our attention. What is being offered in these few verses is a theological blueprint for the redemptive history of the world, now set in train by the call of Abram.”

The Lord intends that he should instruct Israel in every area of life. Only then will Israel truly become a light to the nations. “There is not a square inch of life of which he does not say, ‘That is mine!’”70 Religion is no merely private affair: the Lord wants his law (torah, “instruction”) to permeate every part of his people’s experience. His words should frame the personal life of each individual (being present in the mind and the heart, whether one is waking or lying down).71 They should shape the thoughts and actions of all his people, each day of their lives (being present on both the “forehead” and the “hand”).72 The Torah claims both family life and public life. Upon leaving the house, one sees God’s words of instruction written on the gate. Upon returning, one sees them again, written on the door of the house.

“In this covenant, religion and politics are one. Israel fulfils its political obligations by virtue of its loyalty to Yahweh, which has an integral social dimension. There is not only a theology of the gift of the land, but a vision, sketched in the laws, of how the land should be held. The laws bring the concept of the rule of Yahweh down to particular instances.”

In the book of Proverbs there is no area of life that wisdom does not reflect on, including family life, sexuality, politics, economics, business, and law. Indeed, Proverbs ends with a powerful portrait of wisdom incarnate in the “virtuous woman,” who manifests her fear of the Lord in a truly extraordinary variety of activities (Prov. 31).

In the cross, Jesus acts to accomplish his purposes for all of history—to save the creation. Too often we reduce the significance of the cross to the fact that “Jesus died for me.” Believers do share in the accomplishments of his death, and so we can say this with joy and confidence. Yet God’s purposes move beyond the salvation of individuals. In the death of Jesus, God acts to accomplish the salvation of the entire creation: Jesus dies for the world.

“Resurrection,” while focusing attention on the new embodiment of the individuals involved, retained its original sense of the restoration of Israel by her covenant god. As such, “resurrection” was not simply a pious hope about new life for dead people. It carried with it all that was associated with the return from exile itself: forgiveness of sins, the re-establishment of Israel as the true humanity of the covenant god, and the renewal of all creation… . Thus the Jews who believed in resurrection did so as one part of a larger belief in the renewal of the whole created order.

Bruce Winter shows that the New Testament church is to be involved in the public life of their nation and seek its welfare.

In his Gospel, Luke tells the story of “all that Jesus began to do and to teach” (Acts 1:1, italics added). In the book of Acts he tells how Jesus’s followers carry on that work in the early days of the church. In this story we too have a part, for we are invited—urged—to become a part of the story of the church, to follow Jesus and continue the kingdom mission in the steps of his earliest followers.

The world of the Bible is our world, and its story of redemption is also our story. This story is waiting for an ending—in part because we ourselves have a role to play before all is concluded. We must therefore pay attention to the continuing biblical story of redemption. We must resist the temptation to read the Scriptures as if they were a religious flea market, with a basket of history and old doctrines here, a shelf full of pious stories there, promises and commands scattered from one end to the other. Some readers of the Bible turn it into little more than an anthology of proof texts assembled to support a system of theology. Others seek only ethical guidance, ransacking the Old Testament for stories of moral instruction. Still others look just for inspirational or devotional messages, for comforting promises and lessons for daily living. The result may be that we lose sight of the Bible’s essential unity and instead find only those theological, moral, devotional, or historical fragments we are looking for.

But all human communities, including our own, live out of some comprehensive story that suggests the meaning and goal of history and gives shape and direction to human life. We may neglect the biblical story, God’s comprehensive account of the shape and direction of cosmic history and the meaning of all that he has done in our world. If we do so, the fragments of the Bible that we do preserve are in danger of being absorbed piecemeal into the dominant stories of our own cultures. And the dominant story of modern culture is rooted in idolatry: an ultimate confidence in humanity to achieve its own salvation. Thus, instead of allowing the Bible to shape us, we may in fact be allowing our culture to shape the Bible for us. Our view of the world and even our faith will be molded by one or the other: either the biblical story is our foundation, or the Bible itself becomes subsumed within the modern story of the secular Western world. If our lives are to be shaped and formed by Scripture, we need to know the biblical story well, to feel it in our bones. To do this, we must also know our own place within it—where we are in the story.

From the beginning God’s redemptive work aims at recovering and restoring his good creation. Thus, the people who seek to be obedient to him must seek a redemption as wide as creation itself. Insofar as Israel was obedient to this calling, it would be a light to the world. The attractiveness of its life would draw nations to God.

Though today some Christians believe that Jesus came to enable us to escape this creation and live eternally in an otherworldly and heavenly dwelling, such an understanding of salvation would have been entirely foreign to Old Testament prophets, to first-century Jews—and to Jesus himself. Salvation is not an escape from creational life into “spiritual” existence: it is the restoration of God’s rule over all of creation and all of human life. Neither is salvation merely the restoration of a personal relationship with God, important as that is. Salvation goes further: it is the restoration of the whole life of humankind and ultimately of the nonhuman creation as well.

We follow in Jesus’s mission, but our own cultural situation is quite different from that of first-century Palestine. Thus, we need to carry out the mission of Jesus with imagination and creativity. “Jesus did not set up a rigid model for action but, rather, inspired his disciples to prolong the logic of his own action in a creative way amid the new and different historical circumstances in which the community would have to proclaim the gospel of the kingdom in word and deed.”

By any standard recognized in the business world, Gary Ginter’s work has been successful. And yet Gary himself refuses to define success by the traditional measures of profit and power. For him, success in business, as in all of life, is defined in relation to the coming of God’s kingdom.

Kingdom Professionals do not define success in terms of money, job or status. They do not seek to maximize their income or their security or their status, or to advance their careers. Instead they seek to maximize their impact on the people and places to which God has called them. They measure success by their contribution to what God is up to in their neck of His woods. They see themselves as successful to the extent they are doing what God has called them to do, in the place to which He has led them, in such a manner that their giftedness can be well utilized. Nothing less will suffice; not the shallowness of status, not the ephemeral illusions of wealth, not the corrosive effects of power. What matters to Kingdom Professionals is that there is congruence between their daily lives and the further in-breaking of God’s Kingdom where they live and work.

Gary says that God has called him to make money, live on as little of it as possible, and then give the rest away. Acting on these principles, he has been able to establish a number of “kingdom companies,” missionary corporations, especially in cross-cultural settings. These companies are in business not so much for the sake of generating profit as for the sake of providing employment and producing important goods and services where they are most needed.

Central to his witness is his faithfulness to God’s creational purposes in the world of business. Gary understands business to be a good part of God’s creation, developed in response to God’s first command

Business enterprises can play an important and positive role in God’s world. One loves one’s neighbor by providing necessary goods and services in a stewardly way. Gary witnesses to God’s good intention for business by placing love for neighbor, stewardship of God’s resources, and justice ahead of profit. He strives toward the ideal of a “kingdom company,” a business enterprise shaped by the biblical story that will bless the lives of its own employees and their families, its suppliers, and its customers. Such a goal is difficult at a time when idolatrous profit motive drives much of the traditional world of business.

A comprehensive redemption also means that human cultural development and work will continue. The cultural achievements of history will be purified and will reappear on the new earth (Rev. 21:24–26).12 There will be opportunity for humankind to continue to work and develop the creation—but now released from the burden of sin.

Bruce Winter, Seek the Welfare of the City: Christians as Benefactors and Citizens (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994). Winter has an extensive discussion of Peter’s treatment of this theme. He sees parallels between the book of 1 Peter and the command of Jeremiah to an exiled people. Jeremiah says, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which [the Lord has] carried you into exile” (29:7). Peter urges the church to do good, seek peace, and bless the unbelieving world (1 Pet. 3:9–11) where they live as exiles (1:1; 2:11; plausibly exiled from Rome). They are to resist the evil in the culture of their day. But at the same time they are to “live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us” (2:12). Winter follows this by explaining the task of believers in various social realms in the public life of the Roman Empire. They were to be holy in all they did (1:15).