The Bible is a Story About a Promise

By Steve Weaver – 

This post is the third in a series of six that seeks to develop the following summarizing sentence about the Bible: “The Bible is the story of a God who makes a spectacular promise about a supernatural person who creates a special people to live in a supernal place with Him forever.” Today’s post shows that the Bible is the story of a promise.

It was in the third chapter of the Bible, Genesis 3, that God first makes this spectacular promise. But before we can understand this promise, we must first understand the problem of sin.

Although God created a world without sin and death, it was not long until human beings had messed up a good thing. Adam and Eve disobeyed a clear and reasonable command by God to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They had been warned that the day they ate thereof, they would surely die. But instead of believing God, they chose to listen to the lies of the devil and as a result the whole human race was plunged into a state of sin. 

God has never taken sin lightly and therefore Adam and Eve received the punishment, which God had promised if they disobeyed. They died spiritually and began to die physically that very day!  When God appears on the scene, He pronounced curses on Adam, Eve and the Serpent respectively. But in the midst of the pronouncement of the curses, there is revealed the first gospel promise. The Seed of the woman would one day crush the head of the Serpent!

This promise is developed in many ways as God progressively reveals His plan of redemption, but at its core, God’s plan is to eradicate Satan on the battlefield of planet earth. This is how three different New Testament authors understood the purpose of the death of Christ. In 1 John 3:8 the apostle John declares, “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.” Likewise, the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:25-27a, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” Here the imagery is clear. Christ must put all His enemies under His feet in fulfillment of Genesis 3:15. The author of the book of Hebrews pulls it all together for us in Hebrews 2:14-15 when he wrote, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.”

In other words, Christ destroyed death by destroying the one who had the power of death, the devil. Death came into the world because of sin and sin came into the world through the devil. Christ came to destroy death by destroying sin by destroying Satan! This work was initiated on the cross and will be finalized when Christ returns again. The Bible is the story of a promise.

Steve Weaver is the pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY. He is married to Gretta and they have been blessed by God with six children (Haddon, 12; Hannah, 10; Isaac, 7; Jonathan, 5; Lydia, 4; and Katherine, 0). Steve holds an M.Div. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Church History at The Southern Seminary.  His area of research is 17th century British Particular Baptist pastor, Hercules Collins. He also is a Research and Administrative Assistant to the Director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Michael A.G. Haykin.

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