What's the Message of the Bible in One Sentence?

Dane Ortlund:

That's what I recently asked a handful of thoughtful scholars and pastors. Answers below.

Understand that I specifically asked these brothers to keep it to a single sentence (ahem . . . that's pushing it, Dr. Beale). There is inevitably much that is selectively omitted, so think twice before responding (or commenting) 'How could he not mention anything about ____?!' Little exercises like this are not a replacement of reading the Bible itself in all its contours or big books that trace out the Bible in detail, but a pointer to the Bible and to such books.

In fact, it really is impossible to answer my question. How could you ask, for instance, what the Lord of the Rings is about in a single sentence? It can't be done. You must simply enter in and get swept up in the story. We can all resonate, therefore, with Hugenberger's valid response. Yet while we can agree to eschew simplistic reductionisms, this need not include an eschewing of synthetic summaries. We find such summaries in the Bible itself--psalms summarizing Israel's history, Jesus in Matt 22:40 or Luke 24:25-26, several speeches in Acts, and Paul in Gal 5:14 or 1 Cor 15:3-4 all come to mind.

The point here is to refocus and recenter on the heart of the book that is the greatest earthly treasure to fallen human beings outside of God himself.

Here is my favorite of them all.

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.

Click over to read the rest.