A Great Story - Pt. 2

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:1-8 ESV).

 

Yesterday I said the Gospel was a great story. Unfortunately so many people miss most of the “story” because they misunderstand the Bible. The Bible is not simply a book that includes a lot of stories, but it is itself is one big story. It’s the story of what God has done in creation, what we did to sabotage his efforts, and what God is doing now in his vast, eternal plan to fix what we ruined. The main character is always God. And we are the beneficiaries of His perfect work.

 

This is so important. Christianity is the only faith in which God is the one who does the heavy lifting. Every other religion, in­clud­ing atheism, ultimately comes down to a set of instructions for what people need to do to make things better. In the history-spanning drama that brings the Christian gospel to the world, however, God is the main actor, and we play only supporting roles. Jesus Christ entered our world and carried the burden of everything that had gone wrong.

 

That is the glorious message tucked away in our reading today. The Apostle Paul makes this incredible declaration when he writes: For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly (v. 8). It is such a tragedy that we so often miss what God has already done in favor of all we are so often told to do for ourselves.

 

So the Bible is the account of what God has done. It’s a grand story with supporting materials. While it includes plenty of foundational doctrines and important ethical teachings, the most important thing about the Bible is that it tells us what God has done. That makes it a story, the greatest story of all time. When you read the Bible, I encourage you to read it as a book of what God has done, not a book about what you should do. That the truth that will set you free!