Creation, Sin, Covenant, and Salvation: A Primer for Biblical Theology

Creation, Sin, Covenant, and Salvation:

A Primer for Biblical Theology

•

Edward P. Meadors

CREATION, SIN, COVENANT, AND SALVATION

A Primer for Biblical Theology

Copyright © 2011 Edward P. Meadors. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org)

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

isbn 13: 978-1-61097-072-3

eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-418-6

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Meadors, Edward P.

Creation, sin, covenant, and salvation : a primer for biblical theology / Edward P. Meadors.

xiv + 126 p. ; 23 cm. Includes bibliographical references.

isbn 13: 978-1-61097-072-3

1. Covenant theology—Biblical teaching. 2. Creation—Biblical teaching. 3. Sin—Biblical teaching. 4. Atonement. 5. Bible—Evidences, authority, etc. I. Title.

bs1199.c6 m46 2011

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

This book is dedicated to the administration, faculty, and staff of Taylor University.

All author royalties from the sales of this book will be donated to the Taylor Fund, which provides financial aid to worthy students of need.

these things have been written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in his name.

(John 20:31)

from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

(2 Tim 3:15)

Preface

Creation, Sin, Covenant, and Salvation is a primer in biblical theology that is accessible to lay readers of all ages. Sprinkled with anecdotes and illustrations, the book eases readers into theological discussion of the four interrelated topics that constitute the title—creation, sin, covenant, and salvation. The book closes with a final chapter that explains the authority, practical value, and intended purpose of Scripture. While not intimidating, the book challenges readers to think critically about the real life believability of the Christian faith, especially its intellectual coherence.

The understanding of the Bible as able to give the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (2 Tim 3:15) is a control and corrective throughout, as the author explains why the Scriptures were written, how they interrelate, and for what ultimate purpose. In keeping with biblical theology, the book affirms the continuity of biblical revelation as it climaxes in God’s consummation of his original creative plan.

After finishing Creation, Sin, Covenant, and Salvation, readers will:

• Understand the wisdom of all Scripture that leads to salvation in Jesus Christ.

• Understand how the Bible’s many parts interrelate to tell the epic story of God’s revelation in Scripture.

• Encounter relevant topics for the contemporary world including the Bible’s stance toward pop culture, pornography, movies, video games, marriage, pluralism, and the exclusivity of the Christian faith.

• Gain an understanding of how scriptural truth relates to comprehensive reality.

• Gain a better understanding of why some people reject the Christian faith.

Experience has taught me that the instruction of Creation, Sin, Covenant, and Salvation is accessible and enlightening to high school youth groups, college students, and Christian adults. While theological tomes are impressive collectibles for the shelf, what most Christians today need is a short readable primer that explains the thought world of the Bible in comprehensible terms.

I have discovered that many Christians today are intimidated by theological sophistication. Technical terms, references to Greek and Hebrew, and foreign ancient cultures make what began as a personal encounter with God into a sophisticated intellectual headache. This intimidation is unfortunate and not necessary. In truth, biblical theology is simple and related to the everyday realities of our contemporary world. The most important truths of Scripture are accessible to us all. We only have to see them to understand.

I have also discovered that there is a disconnect in the minds of many Christians between faith and reality. Reality is the world of science and cold hard fact. Faith is the world of religion, mystical experience, and cultural tradition. Like separate compartments, both serve their purposes—the one practical, the other spiritual.

The casualty of this disconnect, however, is the truth of reality where authentic objects of faith are real—creation really does exist; sin is a reality that has real destructive consequences; responsible loving relationships are really possible in our fractured world; forgiveness really works, and, yes, reconciliation after sin can really happen.

Similarly, as simple and sloppy science has undesirable consequences, so too does irresponsible and thoughtless theology. To get biblical theology wrong is to get reality wrong—to live with a faulty, contorted worldview. Understanding of scriptural truth is understanding of real truth that aids human beings in understanding reality as it really is. It’s the distortion of Scripture that disturbs intelligent people.

Chapter by chapter, Creation, Sin, Covenant, and Salvation prompts the reader to consider the reality of biblical revelation in our contemporary world. Intellectually, I’m convinced that Christianity is coherent, rational, and fully compatible with all of reality as we know it. The world is just what we would expect it to be based on Scripture. Belief is not a pipe dream; it’s an understanding of things as they really are.

But that’s my frank opinion. Readers are encouraged to read with critical minds and discriminating judgment to reach their own conclusions about God. A belief that results from persuasion or indoctrination is neither authentic nor stable. Such is the imposter that so often misrepresents authentic Christian faith.

The goal of Creation, Sin, Covenant, and Salvation is the understanding of true Christianity as revealed in Scripture. We will discover that if we appraise God for who he reveals himself to be, he far exceeds human limitations and what we would find naturally believable—if God were a human being. But Scripture does not call us to believe in God as another human being. Humanity is not the benchmark for God. It’s God’s infinite superiority that defines God as God and makes believable the humanly impossible. In this thought world, miracles are not magic but things God can do that human beings can’t. The Creator can control creation in ways that created beings can’t.

To this awareness, the Bible takes us. God’s truth makes sense of our reality, but his reality extends far beyond. Creation, Sin, Covenant, and Salvation prompts readers to consider not only the realities of sin but also the greater and more powerful realities of God’s re-creative power, which explains the realities of joy and eternal hope amidst the degenerating realities of physical deterioration and death. God’s re-creative power is a higher dimension of reality that does more than pacify the fears of the human heart. It inspires the confident peace that God’s creative love will defeat evil at its hellish worst and restore abundant life in a new heavens, a new earth, and a people composed of resurrected, newly created bodies. No, it’s not a pipedream. If God is God, it’s reality—if he loves us and chooses to exercise his creative power once more in our behalf.

But that if is a barrier that many today find insurmountable. Many, of course, have eyes but cannot see God and have minds but cannot comprehend him. Are you such a person? If so, I would encourage you to think about the God of biblical revelation before you reject his existence. Perhaps the god you reject isn’t God at all but only his misrepresentation. Perhaps what you reject is the god of your tradition, the god of your culture, the god of someone else’s imagination, or the prefabricated straw god of a misinformed influence—someone reacting to the disillusion of their own false god or false Christianity. If that’s the case, you are wise to reject the gods and Christianities you don’t believe in.

But don’t give up on God prematurely. Agnostic and atheistic rejections of God are expectations of biblical revelation. The Bible leads us to expect intellectual cynicism. For such is the expected countenance of those who consider God not worth thinking about (Rom 1:28), who readily endorse the cynic’s spin, who refuse to genuinely call upon God in prayer, who stand aloof from genuine communion with the people of God, who disassociate from God when it’s to their professional advantage, and who detach themselves from devotion to God in times of intellectual, emotional, or relational challenge. If people choose to go their own way, God allows them to do so.

According to the Bible, God has given human beings over to the freedoms of their own devices (Rom 1:18–32). If people do not want God, he does not violate their wills. If people do not want relationship with God, God does not force himself upon them (Rev 3:20). If people don’t want to think about God, they are free to discover the consequences of life apart from him. Such is the reality of the mortal world we live in. God is not a Juggernaut; he doesn’t desire blind devotion. He desires true worship from the heart in spirit and truth. He desires intimate relationship characterized by faith, forgiveness, relational faithfulness, responsible love, and eternal commitment. Salvation is a relationship, not a command or imposition.

According to the Bible, God is an infinitely superior being, but his sovereignty is not impersonal. To the contrary, his sovereignty perfects the virtues of justice, mercy, grace, forgiveness, purity, faithfulness, patience, holiness, compassion, and sacrificial love. These truths are a problem for the atheist. From where do they come? . . . the evolution of unthinking, unfeeling inanimate matter? Is that conjecture really persuasive?

We can’t say these truths don’t exist, because we innately sense their reality and we order our world around them. We have emotions. We have judicial systems. We have poetry. We have music. We have art. We laugh. We cry. We mourn. We grieve. We rejoice. We imagine. We love. We give sacrificially to those in need.

These truths take us beyond the explanations of secular Darwinism. Survival of the fittest logic has no explanation for sacrificial agape love. Darwinism may explain the Holocaust, but it doesn’t have an answer for the cross. The cross is a problem.

Wanting to be known, God has created a world that bears his fingerprints. Thus he has revealed within Scripture his true character—a character of supreme love that desires reconciliation and atonement. According to the Bible, if you search for him, you will find him, and when you find him, you will not be disappointed (Deut 4:29; Rom 9:33). You will find fulfillment and satisfaction where it can actually be found—not in competitive self-promotion, but in things of eternal value—in responsible relationship with the human family, pleasure in God’s creation, pleasure in doing God’s work, and in eternal intimate relationship with God himself. Considering the stakes, why not look into the matter with seeing eyes and an open mind?

1

Eden: Fact or Fairy Tale?

Do you understand the Bible? Do you understand how the Bible’s many parts interrelate to tell the epic story of God’s revelation in Scripture? Can you go beyond facts, figures, dates, memory verses, lists, and scholarly words to express the Bible’s comprehensive message? Do you really know the wisdom of all Scripture that leads to salvation in Jesus Christ? Can you articulate why the Bible is a trustworthy guide for living in our multifaceted contemporary world? Is your understanding of the Bible really yours, or is it what you’ve inherited with conviction and passion but never really thought through in depth on your own?

These big questions cannot be answered in a class, a degree, or in a flashy monograph. Biblical theology is a journey of daily thought that spans one’s entire lifetime. It involves daily meditation over Scripture attended by prayer and worship in the body of Christ, the church. It involves conversation with the thoughts of other theologians, past and present, celebrated and obscure, as well as modest lay persons who genuinely desire knowledge of the truth.

Biblical theology seeks to understand reality as it is revealed in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Working from the awareness that the Bible reveals a diverse yet coherent message, biblical theology confronts the contemporary world with a radical and countercultural worldview—that God really does exist, that he created us, loves us, has a design for how we should live, wants to rescue us, and will in the end determine our eternal fate. Biblical theology is about God’s kingship, his plan, and his work within history and within humanity to achieve his ultimate end. Biblical theology is a coherent story and a worldview.

Biblical theology is also evangelical. It professes to be the truth and to be good news to those who receive it in obedient, active faith, and as a result are transformed by the renewing of their minds. God’s goodness surpasses the capacity of words as he defeats evil with good right up to the creation of the resurrected body and the new heavens and the new earth. His glory has no end. Nothing is impossible with God.

This little book may be rightly categorized as a primer—a primer on biblical theology. Like a primer on a small gasoline engine, it is my hope that these pages will successfully ignite thoughts and conversations that will lead to productive reading of Scripture and a deeper understanding of God’s story and humanity’s place within it. Functioning as a primer, we will discuss the contemporary relevance of Scripture in non-academic terms and incorporate illustrations and anecdotes here and there to keep the engine going. However, creation, sin, covenant, and salvation will remain our constant focus as they are the vital organs of Scripture—overlapping themes essential to an understanding of every book of the Bible. It all begins with God and his creation of reality.

Surprised by Reality

Kathy and I had no business being there. But I was a struggling young professor, and the prospect of an affordable vacation was irresistible. So two days before, we loaded up the kids for an all expenses paid vacation in Beckley, West Virginia—a luxurious holiday in exchange for enduring a sales pitch for a once in a lifetime investment opportunity.

In truth the sales pitch was not nearly the hard sell that I’d suffered the summer before in Branson, Missouri, or the summer before that in Crossville, Tennessee. There was no arm-twisting or seductive coercion, just a short painless presentation. When that was over and my VISA card and bank account were secure from danger, I felt tremendous relief—like I’d slipped through customs unnoticed or dodged a speeding ticket with a mere reprimand. Out