Month: September 2026

Most Americans still say they believe in God. But which God? The one who has actually revealed Himself — or a god stitched together from personal experience, cultural assumptions, and wishful thinking?

Here’s the problem: we can’t believe in a caricature of God and still understand the gospel. The gospel’s metanarrative is His Story, and it opens with a declaration of who He is — revealed through both general and special revelation.

Postmodernism insists there’s no single story that explains reality, only competing stories shaped by culture, perspective, and power. But if God has actually revealed Himself, then there is an overarching Story, and postmodernism’s central claim falls apart. God’s Story is the antidote to the pathogen of postmodernism.

Christianity is unique among the world’s religions for exactly this reason: it doesn’t begin with humanity searching for God. It begins with God revealing Himself.

The biblical story turns on two great realities: who God is, and what God is doing. These two threads run through every page of Scripture. The Bible wasn’t primarily written as a theological encyclopedia — it’s the unfolding story of God’s self-revelation.

Scripture touches on plenty of topics, but it was never meant to be a textbook on history, science, or philosophy. It was written to tell His Story, so we could answer three questions:

1. Who is this one God who created everything? What is He like?
2. Why did He create it? What’s His purpose?
3. How do we fit in? What’s our place in His story?

The Bible tells us everything we need to know about God for faith and obedience — but not everything that’s true about God. When Scripture speaks to a topic, it speaks accurately and adequately, but not comprehensively. John makes this explicit at the end of his Gospel, admitting that what he’s written about Jesus doesn’t come close to the whole story (John 21:25).

So to understand the God of the Bible, we need both general and special revelation.

General revelation is what we can know about God from what He’s made. Special revelation is what we can know only from Scripture. Think of general revelation as the overture to an opera — it sets the stage, gives everyone a starting point, and special revelation fills in the rest.

David puts it this way in Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies display His craftsmanship.” Creation, he says, is God’s universal language — available to every person who’s ever lived. It doesn’t reveal everything about God, but it’s the starting point for what comes next.

Paul makes a similar claim in Romans: “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God” (Romans 1:20).

As the biblical story unfolds, we get sharper and sharper clarity on those three questions. Later revelation doesn’t contradict earlier revelation — it deepens it. The Trinity is a good example: what’s only hinted at in the Old Testament comes into full focus in the New.

Think of it like a sunrise. At dawn you can see enough to know where you are, but as the sun climbs, more of the landscape comes into view. Early revelation is true but incomplete. Later revelation doesn’t overturn it — it fills it in.

What Creation Reveals About Its Creator

Creation reflects something of its Creator’s nature — the way any work of art reflects its artist. Stand in front of Michelangelo’s David, and you learn something about the mind behind it. Creation works the same way, if we’re willing to look.

1. God is eternal. Everything in creation had a beginning. The universe points beyond itself to an uncreated Creator. “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Psalm 90:2). Creation tells us God exists outside the universe, independent of it.

2. God is sovereign. Creation obeys God’s command. Throughout Scripture, winds, seas, stars, and seasons answer to Him. The universe isn’t self-governing — it’s sustained by its Creator, who owns it and holds authority over it. Creation is subject to Him, dependent on Him for its very existence.

3. God is immensely powerful. The sheer size of the universe speaks of power beyond imagining — galaxies spanning millions of light-years, energy locked inside a single atom. Creation whispers, and sometimes shouts, that its Maker’s power has no limit. As Jeremiah wrote: “Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power… Nothing is too hard for you” (Jeremiah 32:17).

4. God is wise. You see it in the beauty of creation. Beauty isn’t necessary for survival — sunsets, flowers, birdsong, coral reefs, snowflakes, butterflies, mountain ranges, galaxies. None of it had to be beautiful. It reveals a Creator who delights in beauty for its own sake. When God finished creating, He didn’t just move on — He called it good, again and again.

You see His wisdom in order, too. The regularity of the seasons, gravity, chemistry, mathematics — all of it reflects a God who delights in consistency, not confusion.

5. He is relational. The climax of creation isn’t a thing — it’s people. Human beings, made in God’s image as male and female, capable of love, fellowship, language, creativity, community. Even before sin entered the picture, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2:18).

Our relationships reflect something true about God Himself. Relationship isn’t something God invented for our benefit — it exists eternally within God.

Where General Revelation Reaches Its Limits

Here’s a shorthand some theologians use: general revelation reveals God’s existence and attributes; special revelation reveals God’s character and redemptive purpose. French theologian John Calvin’s image is a good one — Scripture works like a pair of spectacles, bringing into sharp focus what nature shows us only as a blur.

Nature can tell us a designer is powerful and orderly. It can’t tell us that designer is love — that He pursues covenant relationships, that He’s patient with sinners. Nature tells us God exists. Scripture tells us His name, His heart, His purposes, His covenants, and His Son.

And the final word on God’s nature comes through His Son. Jesus claimed that if you’ve seen Him, you’ve seen the Father.

Jesus didn’t come to replace the God of the Old Testament — He came to reveal Him fully. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). The God revealed in Jesus is the same God who called Abraham, spoke through Moses, and covenanted with Israel. As Malachi put it, “I the LORD do not change” (Malachi 3:6).

Summary

God reveals Himself because He wants to be known. From creation to covenant, from prophets to apostles, and finally through His Son, God takes the initiative to make Himself known to the people He made.

Creation tells us something real about God — but not everything we need. It reveals His power, wisdom, generosity, and glory. It tells us He exists and deserves worship. What it can’t tell us is that

• God is triune
• the Son became incarnate
• God loves broken humanity
• God’s grace extends to rebellious sinners
• the redemptive love of God is unmerited

The gospel narrative is grounded in the nature of the Triune God. The one God exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as the Apostles’ Creed affirms — the uncaused cause of all things, the source and sovereign ruler of everything He made. Through general and special revelation, we learn He is relational, rational, gracious, holy, and just — His glory magnified most vividly in the life and work of His Son, Jesus.

Redemption isn’t the center of the biblical story. God is. Redemption reveals His glory, displays His character, advances His eternal purpose. The gospel doesn’t begin with our need — it begins with the God who has made Himself known.

For Reflection

1. What people, experiences, or cultural influences have most shaped your mental picture of God?
2. How does postmodernism’s rejection of an overarching story conflict with the biblical claim that God has revealed Himself?
3. Why is it important to begin the gospel with who God is rather than with human sin or need?
4. How does Scripture bring greater clarity to what creation reveals?
5. What does progressive revelation mean, and how does the sunrise illustration help explain it?
6. Why is it important to reject the idea that the God of the Old Testament is different from the God revealed in Jesus?

Postmodernism, with its rejection of valid metanarratives, is an external threat to the clarity of the gospel, but there is also an internal threat. This one is less intentional and more by default. It exists by virtue of the way we read and teach our Bibles.

How We Read the Bible

• A devotional diary. In this method, we look for an inspirational thought to help us live out our daily lives. We can either read a verse of Scripture or read a devotional from someone else’s reflections. In this case, context is less important than inspiration. Left unchecked, this trains us to expect the Bible to speak in fragments rather than as a whole.
• A repair manual. In this approach, we read the Bible like backyard auto mechanics read a Chilton’s auto manual. Something is broken and needs fixing. We search the Bible for clues on how to fix our hurts, habits, and hang-ups. This approach often leads us to read only the passages that solve today’s problem, instead of asking how today’s problem fits within God’s larger story.
• Spiritual merit badge. This method stems from the challenge to read through the Bible in a year (more or less). Most Bible reading plans require reading multiple chapters each day, with the promise that, since all Scripture is inspired, a reader will benefit even if they don’t understand or reflect on what they read. The goal quietly becomes finishing the reading rather than entering the story.
• Illustration resource. This approach uses the Bible as a source of examples and illustrations of the values and traits we want to emphasize. David slaying Goliath illustrates courage, faith, and the life lesson that victory doesn’t always go to the strong.
• A doctrinal encyclopedia.  This approach is most commonly associated with systematic theology.  This method searches the Bible to find everything that develops our critical and favorite doctrines: sin, salvation, justification, etc. In this method, the parts are emphasized rather than the whole. Verses are gathered from various books to prove doctrinal points. This is the most theologically serious of the list so far — and, as we’ll see, the one most capable of quietly replacing the story it was meant to serve.
• The progressive revelation of God and His mission (Biblical Theology). This method of reading Scripture views the Bible as progressively clarifying major themes, such as the nature of God and His purposes. Reading progressively or historically traces how these themes develop throughout the biblical narrative.

The problem is not these approaches themselves but allowing any of them to become the primary lens through which we read the Bible, because how we read the Bible determines what gospel we naturally proclaim.

A Familiar Scene

Postmodernism erodes the metanarrative from the outside; a diet of doctrinal categories, absorbed without their narrative home, can erode it from the inside — producing orthodox Christians who are functionally as narratively homeless as the postmoderns they’re trying to reach. Without the story, the gospel can gradually be presented more as a doctrinal transaction than as an invitation into the story of the Risen King.

I once taught an adult education class on the Old Testament to a group of seasoned Christians at my church.  I began by giving them a list of major Old Testament characters in random order and asked them to list them in chronological order.  None of them could. They knew the names, but not the story that connected them. That’s the internal threat.

Biblical and Systematic Theology

To understand this internal threat, we need to describe two complementary approaches to studying the Bible: Systematic and Biblical Theology.

Biblical Theology traces the progressive unfolding of God’s revelation throughout the story of Scripture. It asks, How does God reveal Himself and His purposes from Genesis to Revelation? It follows the flow of redemptive history, showing how themes such as kingdom, covenant, and Messiah develop and culminate in Jesus Christ.

Systematic Theology collects everything the Bible teaches about a particular topic into a coherent framework. It asks, What does the whole Bible teach about God, salvation, sin, the church, or the end times? Rather than following the Bible’s storyline, it gathers all relevant passages to formulate a comprehensive doctrine. Its clarity helps protect against heresies.

A simple way to remember the difference:

• Biblical Theology tells the Story of God’s revelation.
• Systematic Theology explains the Truths revealed in that story.

The two disciplines are complementary, and neither is dispensable. Biblical theology without systematic theology tends toward narrative without doctrinal precision — you can tell the story but struggle to define what it means. Systematic theology without biblical theology tends toward abstraction without narrative grounding — you can define the doctrine but lose the living drama from which it emerges.

Imagine dumping a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle onto a table. Systematic theology is excellent at sorting the pieces by color, shape, and edge. Biblical theology keeps reminding us to look at the picture on the box. Without that picture, even perfectly sorted pieces never become the masterpiece they were meant to reveal.

Ideally, sound systematic theology grows out of sound biblical theology, ensuring that doctrine remains rooted in Scripture’s unfolding narrative rather than detached from it. This isn’t an argument against systematic theology — it’s an argument against letting it become the dominant lens rather than the disciplined servant of the story.

Knowing the Parts, Missing the Story

Imagine studying The Lord of the Rings. You carefully catalog every reference to hobbits, rings, elves, wizards, kings, swords, and evil. You could become an expert on every category while never understanding Frodo’s journey, Aragorn’s return, or why the Ring had to be destroyed. You would know the parts but miss the story.

In Scripture, instead of seeing:

Creation → Fall → Israel → Messiah → Kingdom → New Creation

we learn about:

God, Man, Sin, Salvation, Church, Heaven.

Those are not the same thing. The first is a story. The second is a set of categories.

What Happens to the Gospel

Perhaps the greatest consequence is seen in how the gospel is presented. When systematic theology dominates, the gospel is often reduced to doctrines rather than announcements.

The Gospel is about…	The Gospel Announces…
Personal sin	God’s kingdom has arrived
Forgiveness	The powers of darkness have been defeated
Justification	Jesus is the risen King, and reconciliation with God is now possible through the cross
Going to heaven	Creation itself will be renewed and humanity restored to its original calling

All four items on the left are important, but laid next to the right-hand column, notice what is missing. Many of the things the gospel actually announces barely survive the transition into doctrinal shorthand.  Many Christians know how to answer, “How do I get saved?” but struggle to answer, “What is God doing in the world?” The latter question only makes sense inside the larger biblical narrative.

When the dominant organizing principle of Scripture shifts from kingdom story to salvation doctrine, the results follow predictably:

• Jesus becomes primarily Savior — the King is obscured.
• Discipleship becomes preparation for heaven rather than participation in God’s mission.

The Historical Problem

In Western theological education, the emphasis on systematic theology — particularly in evangelical seminary curricula over the past century and a half — flourished partly in response to liberalism and higher criticism, which tended to undermine historical biblical truths such as biblical authority, salvation, and justification. But the modern defensive posture toward systematics has often had the unintended consequence of pushing the Bible’s overarching narrative into the background. The result can be graduates who know doctrine well but struggle to tell the Bible’s unified story, knowing the pieces of the puzzle but struggling to see the picture on the box.

The Bible was not given to us first as a collection of doctrines, promises, moral examples, or devotional thoughts. It was given to us first as the true story of God’s saving work in history. Doctrine, promise, command, and application all find their proper meaning within that story.

Why it’s important

If we are to reach an audience that is biblically ignorant, we need to read Scripture first as a unified story — the Story in which every doctrine finds its proper place.  We need to rediscover the metanarrative that is the framework for the gospel.

In the next blog, we will consider how God’s nature unfolds progressively, gaining clarity as the narrative moves from creation in Genesis to the New Jerusalem in Revelation.

For Reflection

1.  Which of the six approaches to reading the Bible best describes your own habits? Why?

2.  Why is it important that systematic theology grows out of the biblical narrative rather than replacing it?

3.  In what ways can reducing the gospel to “personal salvation” unintentionally obscure God’s larger purposes for His kingdom and creation?

4. How might presenting the gospel as the story of the risen King connect more effectively with people who have little or no biblical background?

5.  Why do you think many Christians can explain how a person is saved but struggle to answer the question, “What is God doing in the world?”