A few articles back I started a thematic series called “Our Blessed Hope”, exploring the subject of eschatology (the study of “last things”). In the first installment, I examined the binding of Satan and Christ’s victory over the Devil and His plundering of Satan’s house.
As we look to the Bible and read what it has to say about the “last things” we should be filled with hope. This “blessed hope” comes from Titus 2:13 where Paul describes it as referring to “the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ”.
But eschatology is about far more than just the second coming of Jesus Christ. And as I have dug deeper into these subjects over the last few months I’ve come to realize just how entirely eschatological the Bible really is, from Genesis to Revelation. God is telling a story, a unified story with many strands and many characters. But this complex story nonetheless shares a narrative progression. It is one story. And the same themes keep being developed over and over again. Understanding this reality helps us to avoid viewing the Bible as a moralistic book full of rules or moral lessons akin to Aesop’s fables. Many of Jesus’ parables and Old Testament stories are read this way.
What’s the Bible All About, Anyway?
For a long time I approached the Bible this way: Genesis was the beginning of the story, Revelation was the end, the Gospels were the part about Jesus, and the rest was relevant somehow but almost seemed to veer off into unrelated territory at points. There was always something to learn from these rabbit trails of course, but the continuity from page one to the last page of the Bible was interrupted on many occasions.
But the story of the Bible is not like that. It does hold together. It is a tapestry that communicates one picture, albeit through many threads. We can better understand the Gospel of John when we understand the book of Genesis. We find great significance in the book of Revelation when we study Exodus. And on and on the examples go. The Old and New Testaments are distinct but connected. The purpose of the Old is to point to the New. And there is danger in falling into either of two extremes: rejecting the distinction of the Testaments (see Paul’s point in the book of Galatians) and rejecting the continuity of the Testaments. One extreme ends in legalism that neglects the newness of the New Covenant. The other extreme strips the Old Testament of its significance and relegates it to moralistic stories with no point but to teach us lessons on how to be good.
The Bible is a unified, progressive revelation from God. This means that it tells one story but it tells it in a progressive way. We start with a garden in Genesis and end with a garden-temple-city in Revelation. The theme is unified but it has been developed. We would expect the same from great literature. Characters that don’t develop through a story are badly-written characters. Plot points and themes that don’t develop through a story are, well, pointless.
I say all of this to make a foundational point about the eschatological nature of the Bible. It is not just Revelation that has something to say about eschatology. The entire Bible is saturated with a forward-looking perspective, looking ahead to the eschatological fulfillment of the story.
Many summaries of the Biblical story have been given. One I particularly like is Jonathan Gibson’s: “God’s kingdom in a new creation, under his Son and bride, awaiting a sabbath rest.” I like this summary but if I had to condense it even further I would summarize the story of the Bible in five words: “God dwells with His people“. That is the climax of the Biblical story and what it is all moving towards.
The story begins in Eden where Adam and his wife walked with God in the cool of the day. Because of their sin, they are exiled and cast out from God’s garden. One day, humanity will return and live with God in His “tabernacle” (John 1:14, Rev. 21:3). The story will be complete.
Creation, Salvation, and New Creation
If we look at the Bible in this way we see that salvation is not just a random point in the plot of God’s great story. Jesus did not come simply because God loved us too much and He couldn’t bear to torment us in Hell forever, but you know, rules are rules. This understanding of salvation (i.e. as a ticket out of Hell) is akin to the understanding we might have of The Lord of the Rings if we parachuted into the story when Frodo and Sam reach Mt. Doom and destroy the ring (with help from Gollum). We have come to the climax of the story but we’ve missed the grand significance of it because we’ve neglected the setting and context that tells s where the story came from and where it’s going.
I admit that I had this isolated view of salvation for many years. Jesus’ death on the cross “saved me from my sins” (just exactly how I wasn’t sure) and meant that I would go to Heaven when I died, not Hell. I also knew that He was resurrected which was just a really cool part of the story that showed that death was less powerful than Jesus (which had some sort of implication for my life I figured).
But Jesus’ death and resurrection was a climactic moment in a much longer story. The wider context of the story clarifies the Gospel’s glorious good news. Jesus didn’t just come to give us a ticket off the “Hell bus” and onto the “Heaven bus”. The Gospel certainly saves us from the wrath of God (Rom. 5:9) and it does hold the promise of Heaven, but what exactly does that promise entail?
In Genesis 1 and 2 we read about God’s creation of the world, His creation of Adam and Eve, and the start of His relationship with humanity. Genesis 3 introduces the destructive reality of sin which corrupts this creation, leads to death for Adam and Eve, and most fundamentally, introduces separation between God and man. But Genesis 3 also introduces the first hope of restoration.
“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.”
Genesis 3:15
And so the adventure begins. The rest of Genesis doesn’t just tell moralistic stories about faith (although they are great examples to us). The story immediately jumps into the means by which God is going to fulfill His promise. A son is born to Eve, Cain. But Cain is not the promised seed. He kills his brother Abel. Then another son is born: Seth. And on and on the genealogies go, marching the promise of God forward through early history.
Luke recounts Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to the very beginning of the world (Lk. 3:38). This genealogy seems oddly placed between two accounts in the life of Jesus. Matthew does the “logical” thing and places Jesus’ genealogy at the very beginning of his Gospel account. Why doesn’t Luke follow this straightforward convention?
We must regard the context of Luke’s genealogy. It begins in v. 23. We read this in the immediately preceding verse:
“and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Luke 3:22
So the question is introduced: who’s voice is this? Whose son is Jesus? And verse 23 seems to reinforce this question and ambiguity by describing Jesus as “being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph”. Luke does not say that Joseph was Jesus’ father. He only notes that this was “supposed” by the people of that day. Therefore, he traces Jesus’ roots all the way back to Adam, adding that Adam was himself “the son of God”. Therefore, Jesus is the divine-human Son of God.
From there, Luke 4 describes how this new “Adam” follows in the narrative of His human forefather. Jesus is taken to the wilderness to be tempted by the Devil. Except, this time, things end differently. The last Adam does not fall like the first.
And from there, the ministry of Jesus begins. We can also note that this ministry begins by Jesus declaring the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of messianic salvation for the whole world (Lk. 4:24-27).
So why did Jesus come to earth? The Bible gives many reasons but I think they can all be summarized in the theme of New Creation. God is restoring creation through Jesus Christ, the better Adam. The fifth chapter of Romans makes this connection very clear:
“Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.“
v. 14 (emphasis added)
“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.”
v. 17
“For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
v. 19
And so Christ’s death and resurrection fulfill the eschatological essence of the Biblical story. And Christ, as our better Adam, leads us in reigning in the New Creation. He is described as the “firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18), the “firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20), the “firstfruits” of the Resurrection (1 Cor. 15:23), and the “firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29). As Christians (those in Christ), we also are described in similar terms (James 1:18, 2 Thes. 2:13) and we have the Holy Spirit who is the “firstfruits” of our Resurrection (“adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies”, Rom. 8:23). He (the Spirit) is the arrabōn (guarantee, down payment) of our inheritance (see 2 Cor. 1:22 and Eph. 1:13-14).
Where It’s All Heading
So, let’s review.
The Bible is one story, which, like all good stories, has a beginning and an ending. The ending doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere. It is being foreshadowed constantly throughout the story. The whole story is building up to it. The climactic moment of the story of the Bible is Jesus’ incarnation, life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. And from there, the story marches on steadfastly to final resolution. Christ is the better Adam and He reigns over a New Creation. This brings resolution to the problem presented at the beginning in Genesis 3: God and humanity separated.
We are building up to a New Eden. We are coming full circle. We started with God, a man and a woman in a garden. How does it all end?
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
Revelation 21:1-3
“Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.”
Revelation 22:1-2
That’s right: God, a man (Jesus Christ), a woman (the Church, the bride of Jesus Christ), in a city that also happens to be a garden. The New Heavens and New Earth is the place that ties up all the other place themes in Scripture. It’s the new Eden, the new Jerusalem, the new Tabernacle, the new dwelling place of God with humanity.
This is our blessed hope. This is the hopeful consummation to which all of history is running. This is the ocean towards which all the rivers of time flow.