How To Use The Bible As Drama, Doctrine, and Directions

“I’ve been going to Sunday School all my life, and I’ve even been teaching Sunday School for years, but I’ve never understood how the whole Bible fits together until now.”  That’s the response I received a couple of years ago when I taught this drama-doctrine-directions concept to an intro-to-the-Bible class in the adult continuing education program of a local college.  It was one of the saddest and gladdest moments of my teaching ministry. I was sad because I could sense the question she was asking inside, one I've asked myself, Why didn't anyone teach me these things? It grieves me that I and others have grown up in the church and have never understood what the Bible is, much less what to do with it.  But her words also made me glad, because there are few joys like watching God help someone see the Bible with fresh depth through the 3D glasses of drama, doctrine, and directions.

Trying on the 3D Glasses
Last week I promised a sample of how this works in my own personal study.  Recently I was considering the one another passages in the New Testament.  The obvious place to begin such a study is John 13:34-35:

³⁴ A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. ³⁵ By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Having put on my 3D glasses, I can quickly identify this passage as directions because any command from God is His way of saying “If you want to live in the story of Jesus, do this.”  I can also identify some doctrine in these verses.  Jesus is saying something here about the theology of God, God’s love, man, the church, evangelism, the cross, and more.  But I need to start with the Story, the drama that unfolds in the pages of Scripture.  So, my first question is always Where does this passage fit in the larger story that the Bible is telling?

Start With The Story
I am continually convinced that too many Christians are missing the big picture of how the entire Bible fits together as a single narrative.  As they listen to sermons, sit through Sunday School, and do their daily devotions, they collect biblical puzzle pieces. After one week in the Word they come away with ten jagged-edged Laws, a few square sections of Old Testament history, and a smooth piece of epistle.  But do they fit together, and if so, how?  How would they put the pieces together if they’ve never seen the picture on the front of the puzzle box?

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I’ve adapted my own version of an article from the ESV Study Bible into the graphic.  Imagine that the two pages of the book in this graphic are the first and last “pages” of the Bible’s Story.

What does the Story tell me about John 13:34-35?  The big picture reminds me that part of God’s plan is to create and redeem for Himself a Christ-centered community who will join Jesus on His mission to multiply His goodness and glory throughout all creation forever.  He created this community, and we corrupted it, but God is committed to redeem and restore it through His Son.  The final “page” of the Story introduces the true “happily ever after”:  God and His people living in His planned community for eternity.

So, where does the command to “love one another” fit?  As the continuing presence of Jesus on earth, the Christ-centered and Christ-like community called the church is made of people who are new creations in Christ being formed into a royal priesthood (2 Corinthians 5:17, 1 Peter 1:4-10).  We are the first fruits of the future New Creation community promised and pictured in Revelation 21-22.  Jesus is directing us to live and love as His people now on earth as it is in heaven.

Study the Story
Remembering that the doctrine of the Bible is meant to help me learn the Story of Jesus, I begin to ask questions of the passage in question.  In his book Real Church, Dr. Larry Crabb suggests seven questions that I’ve found helpful for my study of God’s Story:

The seven questions (along with fancy theological terms that scholars use to label the subject that each question addresses) are these:

Who is God? Core theology, the study of God.
What is He up to? Practical eschatology, God’s plan for now and later.
Who are we? Basic anthropology, our nature as image bearers, male and female.
What has gone wrong? Essential hamartiology, defining sin.
What has God done about it? Surprising soteriology, undeserved rescue, grace-based salvation.
What is the Spirit doing now? Living pneumatology, mysterious movement.
How can we join in? Purposeful ecclesiology, what the church is called to do.

The Bible’s answers to the first six of these questions help us develop doctrines that deepen our understanding of God’s Story.  (We’ll save Crabb’s seventh question for our final step.)

For the sake of time, we’ll only address the question Who is God? In light of John 13:34-35, we specifically ask Who is Jesus? Who is this One who asks us to love one another as He has loved us?  If we were to study the Story to answer that question we would learn what Darrell W. Johnson has discovered:

‘At the center of the universe is a relationship.’ That is the most fundamental truth I know. At the center of the universe is a community. It is out of that relationship that you and I were created and redeemed. And it is for that relationship that you and I were created and redeeemed! And it turns out that there is a three-fold-ness to that relationship. It turns out that the community is a Trinity. The center of reality is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…the doctrine of the Trinity is not the result of philosophical speculation carried out in ivory towers, cut off from real life. It is the result of ordinary believers trying to make sense of the facts of God’s self-revelation [in the Bible]–and trying to live in the light of those facts (Experiencing the Trinity, pp. 37, 39).

Having discovered that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, we now understand why He has commanded His church to love one another as He has loved us.  Jesus belongs to the original God-centered, God-glorifying, God-and-others-loving community.  Johnson explains:

Love implies relationship.  The mystery is that long before any human being came into the picture God was already love.  God had already existed as a community of love . . . Here is the Gospel:  The God who is love draws near to me, a sinful, mere mortal, to draw me within the circle of Lover, Beloved, and Love itself.  I become a co-lover with God!  It is the very reason for my existence.  And for yours . . . We are co-lovers with God of God; we are co-lovers with God of one another; we are co-lovers with God of the world (pp. 62-64).

So, as we come to Jesus’ directions to love one another, we have already seen that the Bible’s drama tells us what Jesus is doing when He gives this command:  He is recreating a people for God’s glory.  And we’ve learned that the Bible’s doctrine teaches us why He is giving this command:  He is inviting this new people into the presence and purposes of the Triune community, the center of all reality.

Share in the Story
Dr. Crabb’s seventh question was How do we join God in what He’s up to? The Bible’s commands and instructions answer that question by showing us how we are to participate in the relationship and reign of God with His people in the places He has put us.

When Jesus commands us to love one another, He is inviting and instructing us to live now as the New Creation community that has not yet fully come, but will.  When the Apostles wrote to the churches, they spent half of their words unpacking Jesus’ one command.  All of the “one another” commands given in the New Testament letters are directions for living as a redeemed and resurrected community who are co-lovers with the three-in-one God of love.  It’s as if the New Testament writers are saying, “This is what it looks like to relate and reign with the Trinity right where you live.  When you live this way, you will fulfill Jesus’ command to love one another as He has loved you.  And you will show the world the happily-ever-after that God is planning for those who will enter into community with Him through Jesus.”

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Because we know the Story of Jesus, we know that obedience to His new command would not be possible unless we understand that by faith and hope in His gospel we are redeemed from  hearts that scream “Me first!” and are resurrected with new hearts that look to God and to others and humbly say “You first!”  Apart from the transforming grace of Jesus’ Spirit, whom we receive by resting in His redemption and resurrection, we will not love one another as He has loved us (Galatians 3:1-5).  The Spirit does not produce the fruit of love in us merely because we learn about Jesus in Bible study, but only when we lean on the Jesus we study in the Bible (Galatians 5:6-23).

Love and Learn in order to Live
Pastors, teachers, and disciplers, let us be reminded of the challenge and joy set before us as we preach and teach others to love, learn, and live in the Story of Jesus.  The challenge as Eugene Peterson has observed, is that

in this business of living the Christian life, ranking high among the most neglected aspects is one having to do with the reading of the Christian Scriptures.  Not that Christians don’t own and read their Bibles.  And not that Christians don’t believe their Bibles are the word of God.  What is neglected is reading the Scriptures formatively, reading in order to live.

The potential for joy lies in the potential that one of your hearers just may begin “reading in order to live.”  Set this joy before you as you endure the hardship that sometimes accompanies your ministry of preaching and teaching. By God’s grace, someone, some day, may say to you, “I am reading the Bible like never before.  I’m loving, learning, and living in Jesus because I’m beginning to love, learn, and live in His Story.”

JIMMY DAVIS is an Associate Pastor at Metrocrest Presbyterian Church in Carrollton, TX, an Associate Editor for the Worldview Church, and maintains the Cruciform Life Blog and can be followed on Twitter at @cruciformlife.

For more information on this topic, read Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading by Eugene Peterson, available in our online book store.