The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story

by Craig G. Bartholomew

In other words, the Bible provides us with the basic story that we need in order to understand our world and to live in it as God's people.

We know that it is one thing to confess the Bible to be the Word of God, but often quite another thing to know how to read the Bible in a way that lets it influence the whole of our lives.

In our opinion, "covenant" (in the Old Testament) and "the kingdom of God" (in the New Testament) present a strong claim to be the main door through which we can begin to enter the Bible and to see it as one whole and vast structure.

The kingdom of God, as we explain below, is all about the reign of God over his people and eventually over all of creation. Covenant is particularly about the special relationship that God makes with his people as he works out his plans in history.

"Culture" is the name we give to organized activities within society, such as making things like music or building houses or founding economic or political structures. Genesis 1:26-28 is sometimes described as the cultural mandate because the human task there commanded, to exercise royal stewardship over God's good creation, involves developing the hidden potentials of God's creation. Then the whole of creation may more and more declare God's glory, like a great symphony. Royal stewardship thus includes exploring and developing what can be achieved in architecture, farming, art, and family life. God has always intended that we should be involved in this kind of work. In Genesis 4 we read about Cain (who built a city called Enoch), Jabal (the ancestor of those who live in tents and keep livestock), Jubal (the ancestor of those who play the lyre and pipe), Tubal-Cain (who made all kinds of bronze and iron tools), and Lamech (who wrote poetry). We thus must not assume that all this cultural activity is a result of sin. On the contrary, these cultural achievements come about when men and women develop the potentials that God has built into his creation. Such pursuits are essentially good, not evil.

Indeed, it is possible that what God does on Mount Sinai is not to give his people a wholly new law, but to take what they know already of law and reshape it, rejecting some parts of it and developing others. The law God gives to Moses for the Israelites bears all the marks of being genuine ancient Near Eastern law. God is not calling his people to live in an eccentric, unhistorical fashion: they are to be genuine people of their own historical time and place.

so important to remember in biblical studies.

The Ten Commandments are good news. They tell Israel how to live so as to please God and display to the nations God's creational purposes for humanity. Because the LORD is the Creator, his instructions fit with the way he has made the world.

the lives of his people are to mirror his own life. The commandments are thus the keys to living fully human lives; they are certainly not intended as horrible constraints to make life difficult.