The Bible tells a story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation.
At the very beginning of the Bible’s story in the Book of Genesis, God is the creator of all that is.
Human beings are the capstone of God’s creative activity in the Genesis creation stories.
In the reformed theological tradition, the first man, Adam, is the representative of all his posterity. God creates the first woman to live as a beloved companion to Adam.
God provides all that Adam and Eve require. God gives only one commandment to humanity’s first parents. They are not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The rest of the garden is theirs to use and enjoy. Only one tree is set apart and its fruit proscribed.
The serpent questions God’s directive and the relationship of human beings to God. Eve is persuaded by the serpent. In consequence, Adam and Eve violate the one commandment given to them by God and lapse into sin. The Westminster Shorter Catechism defines sin as any ‘want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.”
Sin is introduced into the human condition. Adam and Eve’s relationship with God and one another is affected. The first couple experience a sense of estrangement from God. They accuse one another. They are aware of the guilt of their sin and hide from God.
Mercifully, God does not leave them in what the Westminster Shorter Catechism calls their ‘estate of sin and misery.’
God is holy and just.
Sin cannot finally exist in God’s creation or creatures. God announces a curse on sin. He clothes Adam and Eve with animal skins, and offers the first promise of the gospel in Genesis 3:15. “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.” (ESV)
Nonetheless, death has been introduced by sin into creation, along with all the other vicissitudes of life in a fallen world. Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden and destined to live ever after ‘east of Eden.’
From the Christian perspective, God’s covenant with Adam and Eve, first made in Genesis 3:15, works itself out in the remainder of the Hebrew scriptures, coming to a happy climax in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
In the unfolding stories of the Old Testament, the promise of God’s grace is made good. The culmination of this progressive unfolding of God’s promise is located in the life of Jesus who is born to a betrothed couple: Joseph, and the virgin Mary.
The New Testament explains that in Jesus of Nazareth, divinity and humanity met in a particular human life. In John’s Gospel, Jesus inaugurates a new creation. For John, Jesus is God’s Word who exegetes or interprets God for the human family.
The Apostle Paul tells us that Jesus is the second Adam, who set everything right. Jesus took upon himself the perfect fulfillment of God’s law and the conditions of the covenant on behalf of God’s people and the world. The Westminster Shorter Catechism explains: “God, having out of his mere good pleasure, from all eternity, elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace, to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery, and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a Redeemer.”
The gospel, the good news, is that what went wrong in human life has been set right by Christ for all people (Romans 5).
The New Testament Letter to the Ephesians 2:8,9 tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, which is itself a gift given to human beings by God.
We engage in worship, prayer, and good works not to save ourselves, but as that for which we were saved. Good works are a result of our salvation, not its cause.
Colossians 1:15-20 explains that all creation is caught up in God’s saving work in Jesus Christ.
The consistent message of the New Testament is the call to human beings to turn to God in Christ, trusting that his death and resurrection are the means of restoring a right relationship between God and man.
“Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:13)
Our response to the good news of the scriptures then is to entrust as much of who we are to as much of Jesus Christ as we can understand. Resting in God’s grace and mercy is the only ground for our salvation.