When it comes to the Bible, there seems to be a massive gap between what people think the Bible says and what it actually says.
People seem to think the Bible says that good people go to heaven, while bad people go to hell. But the Bible says there are no good people and bad people (Romans 3:23), and the only way out of this mess is by putting your faith in God’s goodness instead of your own (Ephesians 2:8).
People seem to think that God in the Bible can’t wait to punish sinners in hell for all eternity. But the Bible is clear that God wants everyone to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4) and that the only people in hell will be those who condemn themselves (1 Tim. 5:12, Titus 3:11).
People seem to think that the Bible capitalizes on believers’ wishful thinking by promising them all sorts of riches and happiness. But the Bible actually promises believers that they will suffer for their belief in Jesus (John 16:33, Romans 8:18).
People seem to think the Bible is a no-fun zone that outlaws drinking and sex. Have we forgotten that God’s first command to human beings in the Bible was to make lots of love and babies (Genesis 1:28) and that Jesus turned water into wine (John 2:1-11)?
We’ve so clearly lost the plot of Scripture that sometimes I think we need a reset button. We need a reminder that the Bible is a story about God. He is the main character, not us. We exist for His glory, and not the other way around. The Bible is His story, not just ours.
The word “story” is key here, because stories are how human beings have always made sense of things. Everything else about us has evolved: we’ve changed the ways we live, what we eat, how we organize societies, how we worship, how we get married, and how we raise children. But 20,000 years ago we told stories to make sense of things, and the same is true today. Without stories, there’s no meaning to life. When Christians say the Bible is holy, we don’t mean we’ll be offended if you burn it, or you’re not allowed to question parts of it; we mean the 66 books, 40 authors, and 9 genres spanning 1,000 years tell the master story about God and His intentions for the universe He created.
Here’s the short version of that story. God made the world very good. In the beginning, God made human beings very good, and He called us to be stewards over the Earth, and to love God and take care of our neighbors. But time and again, we decided that we should be the protagonists in this story, instead of God. And the choices we made ruptured our relationships with God and other people. We began to see other people as objects to use instead of neighbors to love. The result of that is a world that’s increasingly violent, greedy, and selfish.
That setting provided the backdrop for the Bible story. We know that every story needs a clear and compelling conflict. The conflict in the Bible is wrapped up in God’s response to our failures. On the one hand, if God is really God, then He must be just, and justice must be done. Humans must be punished for all the harm we’ve done and for all the ways we’ve taken God’s gifts for granted. So if God is just, there must be hell to pay for what we’ve done.
On the other hand, if God is really God, He must also be merciful (Psalm 86:5). A merciful God would understand the frailty of the human heart and would forgive us even when we don’t deserve it. He would release us from our sins and tell us that he loves us like a loving father would with his children.
You can feel the tension building throughout the Old Testament as the people’s sins added up and the drama unfolded. Satan appeared to leave God with no good options; however if God chose to respond, He’d be playing into the Enemy’s hand. If He gave us what we deserved, we’d all be toast and heaven would be empty. A merciless God is a lonely One.
On the other hand, if God chose to overlook our sins and pretend like nothing happened, He would not be just, and we could live out our days walking all over Him. An unjust God is no God at all.
So, the darkness won. Checkmate.
Just when all seemed lost, the dramatic tension between God’s wrath and His love reached its apex in Galilee, where a thirtysomething construction worker began to tell the world that God wasn’t finished yet. One day this man was preaching a sermon in the Temple when he was interrupted by a violent commotion coming from the back of the room. Some of the priests and Pharisees had caught a woman sleeping around on her husband, so they dragged her, kicking and screaming, into the Temple, and then they threw her down at Jesus’ feet.
They looked at Jesus, pointed at the woman, and said, “You know what the Bible says we should do to a woman like her. What do you say, Jesus?”
It’s the entire saga of Scripture in one little scene. If Jesus was really just, that woman must be punished. The Pharisees would have stoned her to death at his command, and then Jesus would have been one of them.
But if Jesus was really merciful, he would let her off the hook because everybody makes mistakes. But then the Pharisees would’ve accused Jesus of ignoring the Bible and shunning the holiness of God. If Jesus said “Stone her,” Satan would have won. If he said, “She was getting some on the side, so what?” Satan would have won.
Checkmate. Right? Not quite.
Because Jesus is full of grace and truth, love and wrath, justice and mercy, he refused to fall for the two-way trap. He acknowledged her sin without crushing her. He acknowledged God’s holiness without throwing any stones. To the roomful of men holding stones in their hands, he said, “Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone…Whichever one of you has never made a mistake, you go first.”
They had seen justice before, and they had seen mercy. But never had they seen equal parts justice and mercy like they saw that day in Jesus. One by one, they dropped their stones and walked away in silence.
Then, full of mercy, Jesus asked the woman, “Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir”, she replied. “Then neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus.
But that’s not all he said. Because Jesus is both merciful and just, he also said, “Now go and leave your life of sin.” He called her out without crushing her. He set her free without excusing her. Justice. Mercy. Checkmate.
John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus brings both grace and truth, both mercy and justice, both love and wrath. And that is what the Bible really says.
