Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Reducing the Bible to One Sentence

Dane Ortlund had a really neat post over at his blog today.  He asked a number of prominent pastors and theologians an interesting question and compiled their answers for our perusal.  The question: "What's the message of the Bible in one sentence?"

Among the answers I really enjoyed were the following:
Kevin DeYoung: A holy God sends his righteous Son to die for unrighteous sinners so we can be holy and live happily with God forever.
George Robertson: The Bible is the record of God's promise of and deliverance through Jesus Christ.
Jay Sklar: The first sentence that comes to mind is that of my colleague Michael D. Williams, who describes the Bible's story about the world as follows: God made it, we broke it, Jesus fixes it!
Erik Thoennes: The main message of the Bible is that the one true God is displaying his glory primarily in redeeming and restoring his fallen creation by fulfilling his covenant promises and commands through the glorious person and atoning work of Christ.

Doug Wilson: Scripture tells us the story of how a Garden is transformed into a Garden City, but only after a dragon had turned that Garden into a howling wilderness, a haunt of owls and jackals, which lasted until an appointed warrior came to slay the dragon, giving up his life in the process, but with his blood effecting the transformation of the wilderness into the Garden City.
You can read the whole post here.

3 comments:

Jeff B. said...

Pete
Your challenge is tougher than playing golf in frozen South Carolina, but here is what I came up with.
"Walk perfect and sinless before God or bow before God covered with the blood of one who is.

Pete Scribner said...

Thanks, Jeff, for your input.

Your sentence is a fantastic addition to this conversation. I love how it weds our responsibility to follow the law perfectly, our complete inability to accomplish this, and the fact that Christ has done exactly that on our behalf!

jbboren said...

Jeff's sentence is certainly as well-thought-out and as descriptive as any of the pastors' in Dane's blog!

My sentence is pretty simple, but is also a play on words- "The Bible is His story."