Study 2. What’s the point of the Bible?

For me, the Bible has a lot of themes and angles that can be explored but they all flow from one main place and that is to tell us about the most amazing rescue mission the world has ever seen, and why this rescue had to happen. 

Right at the start of the Bible we can read about Adam and Eve and how something called ‘sin’ founds its way into very fabric of humanity. It wasn’t there by design! Sin, or disobedience towards God was a choice that was made, and the consequences have been devastating. 

Sin is maybe not such a common word in society for us anymore, but the Bible has no issue with using it to describe the breakdown of the relationship between God and his creation, us. So much of the Bible is the gradual revealing of God’s master plan to win back his creation from the consequences of that disobedience. You see, the Bible says that sadly, we have all been infected by that original sin, the breakdown was so ultimate, like a virus on your PC, it spread and fast.  The Bible shows how for so many years people wrestled with this and tried to jump across the chasm between us and God, a chasm made because of sin, but it is just something we can’t do on our own. So instead of sitting light years away watching this all unfold and pan out, God sets in motion a rescue mission, and that is what the Bible clearly reveals to us. 

In the Old Testament there was a leaning into this hope and promise, that one day God would set things right and provide a way for us to cross that chasm to him again. Then in the New Testament we finally see this revealed, God’s, one and only, son enters the world through the man, Jesus Christ. (The Christ bit means Messiah, or Saviour, or Lord) 

It is worth mentioning that the Bible isn’t the only place that documents the life of Jesus, he was a real man, elements of his life, teaching, influence and death are documented, so this isn’t like Father Christmas, by that I mean a nice pretend story!  The reality is that Jesus just doesn’t give us any space to sit on the fence about who he was. He didn’t claim to be a good teacher or noble man, he claimed to be God by telling people that their sins were forgiven! That is something only God has the power to do, so this real man was either utterly mad, or he was who he said he was. 

The Bible verse I have included is from the New Testament and was written by one of the men who spent a lot of time with Jesus.