The Basic Plot of Scripture, Part 3

Read Part 1 and Part 2.

“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true’” (Rev. 21:5, ESV, emphasis added).

Behold! This is worth seeing! God, Maker of heaven and earth, all things visible and invisible, is about to work again. Three times in Scripture we are told to behold this re-creation. Once in Revelation, quoted above. Once in Isaiah: “For behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (65:17, emphasis added). And once in 2 Corinthians: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (5:17, emphasis added).

Creation, the fall, and redemption—three major themes in Scripture—are like three poles leaning against each other in a tepee. If one goes down, they all go down. If one is askew, they all are askew. The previous two installments discussed these themes separately: as they are introduced in Genesis and as they are carried through the rest of Scripture. But they are very much related to each other, and this interrelation is most clearly seen when we understand that redemption is in large part a re-creation or a restoration or a renovation: paradise regained.

Redemption as restoration begins with Jesus Christ, is then applied to believers, and is finally applied to the whole cosmos.

Christ: The Second Adam

When Adam sinned, God could have scrapped His first creation; He was under no compulsion to keep working with it. Or perhaps the Divine Author could have taken a divine eraser and rubbed out the fact of Adam’s transgression, a kind of “do over” or “take two.” God did neither. The sin was real in space and time, and so was redemption real in space and “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4). God prepared a people through which His Son would enter history and save His people from their sins.

Jesus came to be the second Adam (Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15:22). We are used to speaking in legal terms: all who are in Adam sinned in Adam and are cursed with death in Adam. All who are in Christ died with Christ, shall rise with Christ, and shall be made alive. If Adam’s sin may be imputed to us, so may Christ’s righteousness be imputed to us, and Christ’s righteousness is the grounds of our justification before God: God counts us as righteous.

But we can think of Christ as more than a legal representative. He is also a pattern for the new humanity. The gospel of Luke may make this truth plainest. It is Luke who notes of the young Jesus that He “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (2:52). Jesus’ human experience involved human growth. It involved a full identification with humanity. It is not by accident that Luke orders his gospel in this way:

(1) The baptism of Jesus and God’s attestation of Jesus’ sonship (3:21–22)

(2) The genealogy of Jesus going all the way back to Adam (3:23–38)

(3) The temptation of Jesus (4:1–13)

By being baptized, Jesus was numbered among the transgressors, and He threw in His lot with humanity. He was human, and as much a Son of Adam as He was the Son of God. But Jesus was different. Like Adam, Jesus was tempted, but behold! Jesus won. Only Jesus could say with perfect candor, “I always do the things that are pleasing to [the Father]” (John 8:29). As the God-anointed and God-appointed Redeemer, Jesus lived His life in obedience to God. God the Son had never been a man before, and so truly He could “learn obedience” (Heb. 5:8). He learned it well, being obedient “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 5:8). In short, He was everything a man should be.

Christ Restored Dominion

Hebrews 1:2 says that the One through whom God “created the world” is the One “whom he appointed heir of all things.” Hebrews 2 goes on to expound on Psalm 8. In Psalm 8, the psalmist marvels at man’s place in the universe: so small and yet so honored. In one sense, mankind is lower than the angels. But in another sense, man is crowned with glory and honor and is given dominion over the rest of creation (Ps. 8:3–8). In context, the author of Hebrews asserts Christ’s superiority to angels, so Hebrews 2 shifts the Psalm 8 discussion from mankind to Jesus. This shift is absolutely appropriate because Jesus is the epitome of what man should be. Hebrews does not use second-Adam terminology, but the idea is present.

This world is still under the curse. Creation still groans. The full restoration of order to the universe, the full subjection of all things to Jesus Christ, is not a present reality: “At present, we do not see everything in subjection to him” (Heb. 2:8). What do we see? We see Jesus, alive from the dead and ascended into heaven. “But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9). This verse correlates back with Hebrews 1:3b–4, which says that “after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.” In short, Jesus’ redeeming us from our sins was a prerequisite to this restoration of dominion. Looked at another way, redemption includes restoration.

The dominion is supremely Christ’s, but not exclusively Christ’s. Christ, who was pleased to take on flesh and blood and call us brethren (Heb. 2:12, 14), is also pleased to let His people reign again. Revelation 5:9–10 describes a song to Christ: “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth’” (emphasis added).

Restored Humanity

The meek “inherit the earth” in the future (Matt. 5:5). In the meantime, they live an already-not-yet existence. They are already a new creation, a new work of God, although that new creation has not yet renovated their bodies or completely liberated them from sin. Insofar as they have been baptized into Christ, their identity is wrapped up in His, but not wholly, not yet.

But Jesus is their pattern, and His image is their destiny: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29). Man was made in God’s image; that image was marred in the fall; in redemption, it is re-made into the image of Jesus, the man who is the “express image” of the Father (Heb. 1:3, KJV).

And so 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that Christ’s people are a new creation, a new work of God, on the same order as speaking a fresh new world into existence. Because of this reality, the apostle Paul can elsewhere urge us to “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24; cf. Col. 3:10).

In this sense, at least, God’s re-creative work is a present reality. God’s people are a new creation, being progressively transformed to be like Jesus Christ.

Worldwide Restoration

God’s re-creative work does not stop with His people. If the fall of man set the whole creation to groaning, the redemption of God will set it all right again. In Colossians 1:16ff, the scope of God’s original creation is the scope of His redemption.

(1) By Jesus Christ “all thing were created” (1:16).

(2) By Jesus Christ “all things hold together” (1:17).

(3) By Jesus Christ “all thing” will be reconciled to God (1:20).

Creation, too, is in an already-not-yet situation. Presently, creation groans, subjected to vanity. But “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19). Why does creation watch for the revealing of redeemed humanity? Because in some way, creation’s freedom from the curse follows mankind’s freedom from the curse. Creation was subjected to vanity in hope “that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). The groans we hear from creation are groans of “childbirth” (8:22). In other words, the new creation will be born out of this one. How do we know that this hope not yet fulfilled will be fulfilled? Believers have God’s Holy Spirit, the “firstfruits” (8:23). The pouring out of God’s Spirit is an eschatological event. We are living eschatology. Redemption has begun in us and will continue until the curse is thrown back to the farthest reaches of the universe.

The order of this re-creation, then, begins in Christ, the second Adam who restored the dominion of man by becoming their Redeemer; the re-creation then extends to His people and finally to the whole world. This is our sure hope, and we already see it in part fulfilled.

The basic plot of Scripture takes us right back to the beginning. The fall of man had far-reaching consequences, but the redemption of Christ was just as extensive. Revelation’s picture of the new heaven and earth looks awfully similar to Genesis’s depiction of the Garden of Eden. In Revelation 21–22, the groans and tears of Romans 8 are wiped away. Fellowship with God is restored with an intimacy best described as a marriage or as a temple-less city. The finished redemption is the central focus, for the Lamb (Jesus as sacrifice) is the light. Civilization has something worthwhile to offer, the glory and honor of nations. It is spotless. There is a river of life and a tree of healing, as it were, transplanted from Eden. No more curse. Everything subjected to God, as it should be, as symbolized by His name on their foreheads. And they finally exercise the dominion they were meant to have, reigning with Him forever and ever.

It is no wonder that Peter calls this time the apokatastasis—the “restoring”—of all things (Acts 3:21).

No more let sins and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found.

Having followed the themes of creation, fall, and redemption through Scripture, and having discussed how they relate to one another, particularly in terms of redemption as re-creation and restoration, we need to proceed to a so what? How does such a perspective affect our ethics as believers and our apologetics as we explain to the world why things are the way they are? The following articles will make some suggestions.

Michael Osborne received a B.A. in Bible and an M.A. in Church History from Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC). He co-authored the teacher’s editions of two BJU Press high school Bible comparative religions textbooks What Is Truth? and Who Is This Jesus?; and contributed essays to the appendix of The Dark Side of the Internet. He lives with his wife, Becky, and his infant daughter, Felicity, in Omaha, Nebraska, where they are active members at Good Shepherd Baptist Church. Mike plans to pursue a further degree in apologetics.