The reader must identify and comprehend the recurring themes that run across all of the books that make up the Bible to comprehend the unity of the Bible as a whole. It is crucial to understand the necessity for and purpose of the Bible. The length and intricacy of Scripture may need to be clarified to someone unfamiliar with its context. The primary lesson readers can draw from the Bible is that God is love. He inspired people with His Holy Spirit to get His oracles to His people, which were later written down and compiled into the Bible. From the beginning to the end, the Bible expresses all dimensions of God’s being, revealed to different characters in different places under different situations. The Bible is the most reliable explanation of God’s nature, reality and eternity (Etzel & Gutierrez, 2012). It takes its place as the most influential text ever written, forever altering human history.
In the first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning, God,” the reader is introduced to the story’s main character. The Godhead is the story’s overarching theme that frames and connects everything of Scripture. The creation of the first of the Bible’s four crucial plotlines. In the first book of the Bible, Genesis, all living creatures, including people, are revealed to be God’s creation, created in God’s holy and perfect image to rule the earth. After creation, the man falls, and God’s covenant with him is shattered. God had granted Adam and Eve the autonomy to do as they wanted and to eat anything other than the tree of the understanding of good and evil, along with rules for living in Eden.
The devil, coming as a snake, convinced Eve to eat from the forbidden tree, promising her that she would learn between good and evil. Convinced, she ate and took it to her husband, Adam. God casts them out of Eden so they and their descendants would not access the tree of life. Man’s only way to get right with God was now obeying His laws. Later, Jesus incarnated in human form through Mary’s virgin birth. Jesus made it clear that He was the Son of God and the world’s Savior. He died on the cross and was resurrected three days later. This was His way of justifying and redeeming man. Following this, Jesus proclaimed that belief in His death and resurrection was the only way to be saved (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Rom. 10:9). To spread this news, His apostles founded the Church. They began sharing the good news with everyone. From creation to the new creation, the Bible exhausts the entire span of humanity, referring to times before he was created, how he came to be, and lived and the set destiny for him using revelation and prophecy.
The four Biblical metanarratives can be used to derive several themes from the Bible. One of the most dominant themes in both testaments is Faith. The author of Hebrews describes Faith as the evidence of things that cannot be seen. Sin is an abstract concept that is quantified by the existence of Law. It has been a plague on humans since the fall and passed down to every human from our first parents. In the Old Covenant, people had to offer a lamb as atonement for sin. The old Law was abolished and replaced with the Faith once Jesus Christ died on the cross since it did not offer complete forgiveness and depended on works. Jesus taught the importance of Faith in Him from now on as the way to salvation, righteousness, and eternal life (Jernegan, 1896). Justification removes the result of sin from a man, which he gets by Faith, not merit.
The nature of redemption in the Bible is emphasized as a result of God’s grace and not human qualification. Apostle Paul states that Faith is God’s initiative to make people right with Himself (English Standard Version Bible, 2001, Rom. 3:21). This verse establishes the connection of all four Bible metanarratives and how they hinge on Faith. This is not seen with other world religions, though. Even with the other monotheistic religions, with Judaism being the closest to Christianity, none other shows Faith in Christ as the means of salvation but works (Etzel & Gutierrez, 2012). According to most of them, justification comes when good works outnumber wrongs which in Biblical terms would dismiss the need for Christ’s death and thus everything else in the past and future that gains its relevance from it.
Yet another prominent theme seen in the Bible is that of the Holy Trinity. It can be seen in the first Bible verses that explain creation, with the Holy Spirit and God the Father explicitly mentioned. God comprises three distinct faces: God the Father, His son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. The three are one, existing together and operating as one in infinite unity. None is greater than the other; the Father, Son, and Spirit are all equally God (Cunningham, 2003). Each of the three plays a distinct function illustrated in Scripture. For example, during creation, God the Father created all things through Jesus Christ and for Him. After man fell, God slayed a lamb and created a garment to cover Adam and Eve’s nakedness, foreshadowing Christ being slain for man’s sins. During the death of Jesus, He hung on the cross, the Father placed man’s sins on Him, and after His death, the Spirit raised Him to life (Lose, 2003). Elsewhere, the Bible states that the Holy Spirit reveals the Son, and the Son reveals the Father as the image of the invisible God. Lastly, Jesus pleads with the Father to give His disciples the Holy Spirit as a seal that they will receive eternal life.
The reader comprehends God’s enduring love and nature by reading and examining what the Bible is and what symbolizes and states about the circumstance in man’s life. The main story’s defining incidences are creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Throughout the storyline, Faith comes out as the only way to experience God’s superior plan that goes beyond the fall and the only way to interact and relate with Him. The Bible’s storyline is not shy of presenting the person of God as the Holy Trinity, rightly showing their distinctions and unity of will, plan, and action. The study of theological concepts and the Bible opens up the Bible’s seamlessness from creation to the fall to redemption into the new creation. It gives evidence for the case of God’s existence and charges readers to believe and come to Him, living in readiness and expectation of His eternal promise.
References
Cunningham, D. S. (2003). 11 The Trinity. The Cambridge companion to postmodern theology, 186.
Jernegan, P. F. (1896). The Faith of Jesus Christ. The Biblical World, 8(3), 198-202.
English Standard Version Bible. (2001). ESV Online. https://esv.literalword.com/
Lose, D. J. (2003). Confessing Jesus Christ: Preaching in a postmodern world. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.
Etzel, G. and Gutierrez, B., 2012. Theology Applied: A Living Faith. WordSeach
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