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Going through a long line of prophets, God has been addressing our ancestors in different ways for centuries. Recently he spoke to us directly through his Son. By his Son, God created the world in the beginning and it will all belong to the Son at the end. This Son perfectly mirrors God, and is stamped with God's nature. He holds everything together by what He says—powerful words!—Hebrews 1:1–2(The Message)The Christian Church confesses that [what the world calls] "myth" is history itself. She recognizes herself by this myth, she recognizes her life, her true reality. She is the witness of witnesses, she recognizes through the Holy Spirit that this is the one really interesting story. Then she turns back the historians' weapon: She says to them: What you call "myth," that is history! She will also add: What you call history: That is a myth! A myth, a made-up history, that fancies the fate of man as depending on his earthly vicissitudes, a myth, a made-up history, that confuses the immediate success of a cause with its truth, and so on.—Karl BarthIn her book Mystery on the Desert, Maria Reiche describes a series of strange lines made by the Nazea in the plains of Peru, some of them covering many square miles. For years people assumed that these lines were the remnants of ancient irrigation ditches. Then, in 1939, Dr. Paul Kosok of Long Island University discovered that their true meaning could only be seen from high in the air. When viewed from an airplane, these seemingly random lines form enormous drawings of birds, insects, and animals.In a similar way, people often think of the Bible as a series of individual, unconnected stories. But if we survey the Scriptures as a whole, we discover that they form one great story of redemption—from the opening scenes of Genesis to the final chapter of Revelation. Weaving through all the diverse strands of the Bible is a divine storyline, the overarching story of what God has been up to in the rescue and restoration of fallen human beings, from the first nanosecond of creation through the final cry of victory at the end of time.

John 3:16 is a beautiful summary of the entire gospel in fewer than 30 words. If the whole Bible had been destroyed or lost except for John 3:16, that would still be enough for any person to come to know God and to receive eternal life. But John 3:16 presupposes some important things about God and the world.The Christian account of history does not begin with the birth of Jesus, nor with the calling of Abraham in the Old Testament, but with God's creation of the world "out of nothing" (ex nihilo).This understanding of the origin of the universe is unique in the history of ideas. Pantheism equates God and the creation, blurring all distinction. Dualism posits two primal principles, God and matter, or God and some other reality, locked in an eternal cosmic battle. The Bible teaches that the world is utterly distinct from God while totally dependent upon him. In the beginning God said, "Let there be," and there was.God spoke and his word was so powerful that it shattered the silence of eternity, spangling the sky with stars, causing the sun to burst forth with radiance and the earth to vibrate with teeming animal and plant life—dolphins, elephants, caterpillars, glowworms, ospreys, the whole menagerie. When all this was in place, God created human beings, males and females, making them in his own image, endowed with special dignity and intended for intimate fellowship with their Creator.Who is God, though, and why did he make the world in the first place? Some people teach that back in the vast stretches of eternity past, God had grown lonely: he created the world in order to have something to love. But this is an utterly pagan notion of God. It supposes that in his innermost being, God is utterly alone, a monad, superior and transcendent to be sure, but isolated and aloof in his omnipotence. This is the God of Arius, a false teacher of the fourth century, who wrote, "We know there is one God, alone unbegotten, alone eternal, alone without beginning, alone true, alone immortal."The Bible paints a different picture. Here we learn that within God's being there is a mysterious living love, a dynamic reciprocity of surrender and affirmation, of giving and receiving, among the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Maker of heaven and earth is at once the Triune God of holiness and love.The brute power to create and order the universe is not the most decisive mark of God's divinity. What makes God God is the relationship of total and mutual self-giving by which the Father gives everything to the Son and the Son offers back all that He has to glorify the Father, the love of each being established and sealed by the Holy Spirit who proceeds from both. If all this is true, then why on earth did God make the world? Not because he had to, but because he chose to. God is the Lord of creation, not its midwife. God did not need to create something outside of himself as an object for his love, for God is love (1 John 4:8). There is nothing missing or lacking in God.Yet, amazingly, out of the richness and utter sufficiency of his own being, God created the world and human beings with a creaturely reality and freedom, and invites them to share in the out-splashing of his divine love for all eternity.Indeed, the Bible speaks of God as "jealous" for his own glory and honor: He will brook no rivals. This does not make him a grudging, greedy God, like a Silas Marner counting his gold coins; rather, at the heart of God there is a freedom, an unthreatened generosity. This is a reflection of his own character and is the basis of all human reality and freedom.This is also the source of wonder and awe, the kind of wonder that prompted Martin Luther to find sermons in peach stones. This awe led Luther to adore the living God who made heaven, earth, and creatures like himself "of his sheer fatherly kindness and compassion, apart from any merit or worthiness of mine: For all of which I am bound to thank and praise him, to serve him and to be obedient, which is assuredly true."Some people accept that God created the world, but they cannot imagine he has much to do with its continuing operation, much less with our human lives. The British poet and novelist Thomas Hardy once wrote in disparaging terms about God as "the dreaming, dark, dumb Thing that turns the handle of this idle Show." This is the God of deism: He created the world, and still cranks it along from time to time but wouldn't think of getting his hands dirty in the daily muck and mess of it all.This God is an idol of the modern imagination—he has crippled feet and withered hands, eyes which see not, and ears which hear not.How different is the God of the Bible who is everywhere active, alive, involved. Jesus said that no act was too insignificant for the Father's care. He knows every time a sparrow is caught in a hailstorm and falls to the ground. In his great and boundless wisdom, God knows even how to use evil instruments to do good, including the devil himself (see 2 Corinthians 12:7, where Paul describes his "thorn in the flesh" as something given by God through Satan). In Christ even such painful episodes can become occasions for grace.God did not leave the world to its own devices, nor turn it over to the stratagems of Satan. Even before creation, God devised a plan to rescue fallen human beings from their foreseen sin and misery.God was not caught off guard by Adam's sin, nor surprised by the subsequent apostasy of his chosen people Israel. Thus the last book in the Bible describes Jesus as "the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world" (Rev. 13:8).The biblical word for God's sovereign freedom in salvation is election. God chose, or elected, Israel as the special bearer of revelation not because it had the biggest army or the most thriving economy. Quite the contrary: "The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you" (Deuteronomy 7:7). God's election is never conditioned on our worthiness or attractiveness, but on God's own mysterious love.Throughout the Old Testament, God is described as ever faithful in all his undertakings. The pattern of redemption is unfolded century after century through the Exodus and the wilderness, the conquest of Canaan and the exile to Babylon. Again and again God reaches out to his people and communicates his love to them through the patriarchs, the poets, and the prophets, coming finally to a denouement in Malachi, the final book of the Old Testament, which announces, "I have loved you," says the Lord.It is the burden of love, the burden of God's covenant love that comes finally to rest on a baby in a manger and a man on a tree.

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October 23 2000, Vol. 44, No. 12