The Story of the Bible in Six Words

Many people have heard Bible stories, but few know the story of the Bible.

It is often noted that the Bible is a collection of 66 books of multiple genres, written by 40 authors over 1,500 years in three languages, telling one great story.

The Bible is not a story in the fictional sense. It is the history of God and his plan and purpose for humanity. All history is his story.

Perhaps the best way to explain the unified story of the Bible is through six milestones in biblical history: creation, condemnation, anticipation, salvation, evangelization, and exaltation.

Creation

In the beginning, God created everything (Gen 1:1). As the eternal, all-powerful Lord of all, he spoke the world into existence. Every plant, cell, atom, and living thing in all of the universe is his design.

On the sixth day of creation, God created man in his image and likeness to exercise dominion over the earth (Gen 1:26). The Lord put Adam in the Garden of Eden, and because it was “not good that the man should be alone” God created his wife, Eve, to be “a helper fit for him” (Gen 2:18). 

God told them they could eat from every tree except for one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:17). And as long as Adam and Eve obeyed the Lord’s command, they lived in perfect peace with God in the garden.

Condemnation 

One fateful day, Adam and Eve gave into the serpent’s temptation to eat the forbidden fruit and received condemnation for their sin. In that moment, everything changed. Sin, rebellion against God, shattered the world.

When God asked Adam and Eve about it, they tried to shift the blame, but it was too late. They had broken the Lord’s command and would suffer the consequences.

No longer could they live in perfect peace with God in the Garden of Eden. No longer would they live forever. Death and sin were now a tragic reality for Adam and Eve and all of their descendants. All people would now die. All people would now be born in sin inherited from Adam (1 Cor 15:22).

And we see the curse of sin immediately in Adam and Eve’s shame, guilt, and deception, and soon after as their son, Cain, murders his brother, Abel (Gen 4:8).

Humanity had fallen from the light of God’s grace and plunged headlong into darkness. We are all now born enemies of God, continually rebelling against our creator in our attitudes and actions, and we will ultimately face his righteous judgment upon our death. This is the bad news.

Anticipation

Praise God, there is also good news. God is not only righteous and just, but he is also loving and merciful. God had a plan from the beginning to redeem humanity.

We see a glimpse of God’s grace immediately after the curse of sin when he clothes Adam and Eve with animal skins (Gen 3:21). This is one of many examples foreshadowing God’s ultimate plan that one day the death of one might cover the sin of many.

We also see the first glimpse of this promise of God when he promises that the woman’s male offspring would one day crush the serpent’s head as the serpent would only strike the son’s heal (Gen 3:15). This is the first hint of God’s covenant promise to redeem humanity.

Later, as the entire world has fallen into great sin, God decides to wipe out all people and start over through Noah, the one righteous man God found on earth, and his family (Gen 6:9). After God spared Noah and his family the flood, he made a covenant promise with Noah that he would never again destroy every living creature like this again (Gen 8:21).

Then, God would bring his plan into greater focus with the covenant promise he made to Abraham that he would make him into a great nation and that in him “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen 12:3). This promise continued through Abraham’s son Isaac, and Isaac’s son Jacob. One day, through their descendants, the promised son would be born who would crush the servant’s head and redeem humanity from the curse of sin.

The rest of the Old Testament is generations of anticipation for God’s covenant promise to be fulfilled. God helps us further see his plan when he rescues the nation of Israel from slavery in Egypt and brings them to the promised land.

God’s holiness and our depravity comes into better understanding when God gives his law to Moses. No matter how hard people try to keep the law, because of the sin in their hearts, they continually miss the mark.

However, we see how the sacrifice of animals for the forgiveness of sins foreshadows a greater sacrifice that God would provide once and for all. When God established David as the great king of Israel and made a covenant promise that the reign of one of his descendants would never end (1 Chr 17:11-12), we again catch a better understanding that the promised son of Eve would be a descendent of David.

However, time and again, people sin, reject God, and receive the consequences they deserve. Eventually, they come to their senses, repent, and God rescues them. This is the cyclical history of Israel until the coming of the promised king.

Salvation

The prophesied birth of Jesus changed everything. It began the fulfillment of God’s covenant promise that had been anticipated since Eden.

Jesus’ name means “The Lord is Salvation”. He is the sinless son of God, who has eternally existed as the second person of the Trinity. He was with God in the beginning of creation (Col 1:15-20).

Jesus left heaven and was born of a virgin, Mary. He is the new Adam, born without sin and without sin’s curse (Rom 5:12-17). He lived a perfect life, taught great things about God and his kingdom, and ultimately laid down his life on the cross as a substitutionary atonement once and for all for the sins of all who repent and believe in him (John 3:16).

Jesus conquered sin and death by rising from the grave three days later, and then ascended to sit on the throne at the right hand of God in heaven where he will rule until the day he will return.

The serpent has been defeated, and the Kingdom of God under the rule of Christ is now here.

Where before people could only know God’s plan in part, we now can see how his redemptive plan unfolded through Christ. Everything written about Jesus in the Old Testament has been fulfilled (Lk 24:44). It was a brilliant work from the beginning that has been progressively revealed through history. And the plan continues today. 

Evangelization

Today, we live in the church age, a time of evangelization to the world. After the death and resurrection of Jesus, he commissioned all of his disciples with the great commission to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19).

Jesus then sent the Holy Spirit to indwell and empower believers to spread the gospel, the good news of salvation through Christ to all who repent and believe.

Over hundreds of years, against all odds and severe persecution, Christianity spread rapidly across the world. Today, we continue the mission of following Jesus and making disciples according to Scripture until we either die or Christ returns.

We live in a new era of anticipation for our ultimate reward in heaven and the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to come again.

Exaltation

One day, Christ will fulfill his promise to return (Acts 1:11). When he comes, he will come to judge the living and the dead. He will open the Lamb’s Book of Life with the names written of all who have trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins.

Everyone whose name is not written in the book will be cast into eternal condemnation, and all whose name is written in the book will be welcomed into the reward of eternal life with our Lord and Savior in the new heavens and new earth where the curse of sin will be no more (Rev 21:27).

There will be no more pain, suffering, sickness, or death (Rev 21:4). And to that, we echo the anticipation of Revelation 22:20, “Amen, come Lord Jesus.”