The Storyline of the Bible in a Nutshell

He was to honor God as King by loving and obeying him and was given the assignment to fill the earth with God’s joy by multiplying image-bearing children. As vice regents, Adam and his wife and royal partner, Eve, were to exercise God’s rule over his realm. In so doing they would expand the Garden of God’s Presence outward into Eden and then throughout the whole world. The Garden, then, was not just a place but was a project.

 

In the middle of the Garden were two trees, representing perhaps that at the heart of the matter there were two options for the man and the woman. God told them that they could eat from the tree of life any time they wished. It represented the divinely sanctioned path of permission. From the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they could not eat. It represented the fruit of presuming to live independently outside God’s permission and would result in certain death, like branch broken off from the vine. A crafty serpent tempted the woman, and then the man to eat from the forbidden tree. They suddenly found that they were cut off from God and from each other. They would, also, from that moment on, multiply the fractured image of God and Adam and his progeny would become the ruled rather than the rulers and the creation was subjected to the dominion of the devil. Sickness and death reigned. What was the sovereign King to do?

 

In a failsafe plan crafted before the dawn of time, God, as Trinity, organized himself into a rescue mission to redeem fallen creation. The Father would send the Son to the earth to become human and through the power of the Holy Spirit die the death coming to humankind. In triumph God would then raise the Son from the dead, initiating the breaking of Satan’s death-grip to give humanity a new start. God’s eternal purposes to share the joy of his own perfection would come to pass. God was King and nothing could stop it.

 

Much needed to be done to ready the world for the advent of the Son. As Adam’s seed also manifested its independence from God in an act of unified rebellion seen in the building of a tower to the heavens, God broke the world into different language groups in a divide-to-reach strategy. He then chose one man, Abraham, from among the language groups to obey by faith and multiply into a people that would reflect his image. Through Abraham’s seed, the nation called “Israel,” blessings would be mediated to all the other language groups of the earth. God then rescued this collective Adam, granting them a release from slavery in Egypt by defeating their gods and brought them to himself to worship him on the mountain of his Presence and to learn how to reflect his image to the nations. He gave his people a new Eden, a strategic land bridge connecting the nations that would receive Israel’s blessing. In time, God set yet another king/priest named David over his people who would rule them as God’s vice regent. David’s son, Solomon, built a temple as a picture of God’s empowering Presence lost in Eden that was being restored to the earth. Israel would share the good news of the sacrifice that could restore one’s relationship with God to the nations coming to visit glorious Israel. All looked hopeful.

 

But alas, even as the seed of the first Adam had failed, so also the seed of the collective Adam. And, like Adam, Israel asserted her independence from God and worshipped and served a temple made with hands rather than bowing before the Creator. Despite sending Israel into another period of slavery, this time in Babylon, God told Isaiah the prophet that his purpose would stand.

 

It was through God’s own Son, the last Adam, the true Israel, that God’s plan would be accomplished. This Adam would be the true King/Priest and do by the Spirit what neither broken humans nor sinful Israel could do for themselves. The salvation the Jews expected at the end of history suddenly burst in on them in the middle of history. It was Jesus, the true Temple not made with hands that would restore God’s empowering Presence. It was Jesus who would pay for the sins of Adam’s seed on the cross and rise as the new creation, thus inaugurating a fresh release from slavery to give humanity the promised new start. It was Jesus who would re-commission a new Israel who would obey him with the faith of Abraham to fulfill Israel’s mission to be a light to the nations. Simply put, in the Son the power of Satan over sin and death had been broken at the cross. Even though the full consummation of that which had been purchased by the Christ would not manifest fully until the new Israel’s mission to the nations was complete, heaven began to come to earth as the people of God’s presence prayed. The lost were won, the sick and demonized were healed and the good news was preached to the poor.

 

While the war would still wage until the end of history, Jesus, who had ascended to heaven in order to send the Spirit to indwell and empower his people, would one day return as the triumphant King to a beautiful and worshipping people gathered from all the nations of the earth. The new Israel would finally, in Jesus’ power, fulfill her vocation. Jesus, as the ultimate conquering Priest/King, will then finalize the defeat of Satan and vindicate God’s purposes for the earth through the dawning of a new heaven and new earth, the realm of God’s glorious Presence and Trinitarian joy. The project begun in Eden would come to completion because God said his purpose would stand and nothing could stop it.