"Who is Jesus? What did he teach? What is the meaning of his death? Did he resurrect from the dead and why would that even matter? Is it still plausible to believe that he will return one day? What is the relationship of Jesus to the rest of the Bible?"
If you have questions like these, this page is for you. As time goes on and we get questions from people like you, we hope to create, curate, and recommend relevant resources to help you discover who Jesus is.
The Bible begins with these words, "In the beginning" (Genesis 1:1) and at the ending we read "... and they shall reign forever and ever." If that was all we knew about the Bible, we would be clued into something essential, and that is, the Bible is a story. It can be described in many ways, but it is essentially a grand narrative with a beginning, a long middle, and an end. It is not a religious book, per se, but a book that claims to tell us the way things really are. It claims to tell us the truth of the matter, to reveal the meaning of history, to tell us what things were, why things are as they are now, and where this is all headed. In other words, it claims to tell us the true story of the whole world.
Jesus stands at the center of the story and when you get to him, you realize that somehow he has been the point of it all. Somehow everything that came before and everything that comes after is about him. If we take Jesus out of the context of this story, we will end up creating a very different Jesus, a figment of our imagination, and often one that suits our own liking. But when you get to know the true Jesus, the Jesus of the biblical narrative, then you begin to see how everything in your life relates to him also - the good and the bad, your past and your future.
Eugene Peterson captures the story nature of the Bible in his book Working the Angles:
"Just as there is a basic human body (head, torso, two arms, two legs, etc.), so there is a basic story. All stories are different in detail (like all bodies) but the basic elements of story are always there. For the purposes of sharpening our recognition of and appreciation and respect for the essential narrative shape of Scripture, we need to distinguish only five elements.
First, there is a beginning and ending. All stories take place in time and are bounded by a past and a future. This large encompassing framework presumes both an original and a final goodness. We have an origin, way back somewhere, somehow, that is good (creation, Eden, Atlantis); we have a destination, someplace, sometime, that is good (promised land, heaven, utopia).
Second, a catastrophe has occurred. We are no longer in continuity with our good beginning. We have been separated from it by a disaster. We are also, of course, separated from our good end. We are, in other words, in the middle of a mess.
Third, salvation is plotted. Some faint memory reminds us that we were made for something better than this. Some faint hope lingers that we can do something about it. In the tension between the good origin and destiny and the present evil, a plan develops to get us out of the trouble we are in, to live better than we find ourselves, to arrive at our destination. This plan develops with two kinds of action, the battle and the journey: we must fight the forces that oppose our becoming whole; we must find our way through difficult and unfamiliar territory to our true home. The battle and journey motifs are usually intertwined. These battles and journeys are both interior (within the self) and exterior.
Fourth, characters develop. What people do is significant. Persons have names and dignity. They make decisions. Persons are not lead soldiers lined up and moved about arbitrarily; personalities develop in the course of the conflict and in the passage of the journey, character and circumstance in dynamic interplay with each other. Some persons become better; some become worse. Nobody stays the same.
Fifth, everything has significance. Since “story” implies “author,” nothing is in it by accident. Nothing is mere “filler.” Chekov once said that if a writer puts a gun on the table in the first chapter, somebody has to pull the trigger by the last chapter. Every word connects with every other word in the author’s mind, and so every detail, regardless of how it strikes us at first, belongs – and can be seen to belong if only we look long enough at it.
All the world’s stories have these characteristics. The five elements can be more or less implicit or explicit, but they are there. With variations in emphasis and proportion, with shifts of perspective and invention of detail, they develop into tragedies, comedies, epics, confessions, murder mysteries, and gothic romances. Poets, dramatists, novelists, children, and parents have developed millions of variations on these elements; some of them have been written down.
What was written down in the Bible is a huge, sprawling account that contains subject matter from several cultures, languages, and centuries. There are many things and people in it, written about in many different ways; but with all the seeming heterogeneity, it comes out as a story. Northrop Frye, coming at Scripture as a literary critic and not as a believer or theologian, in his careful study of it is convinced that this is its most important feature: 'The emphasis on narrative, and the fact that the entire Bible is enclosed in a narrative framework, distinguishes the Bible from a good many other sacred books.'"
- Eugene H. Peterson, Working the Angles: The Shape of Pastoral Integrity (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1987), 120–1.
Below is a very short summary of the Bible's story
The Bible reveals that the one God is Father, Son, and Spirit, an eternal community of love.
It tells the story of God’s creation of the world, the tragedy of humanity’s rebellion, and God’s calling of Abraham and his descendants – the people of Israel – to be a sign, instrument, and foretaste of his plan to rescue us and restore the world to his loving reign.
The story of God working through Israel comes to fulfillment in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and Israel’s promised Savior and King. Jesus announced the good news that God’s power to restore all things had come. He showed us the joy of living under God’s reign. He revealed the healing power of God’s restoration. He pointed forward to the day when death will be no more and all will be well. Then he revealed the wonder of God’s love - Jesus gave up his life for us on the cross, dying in our place, so that we could be forgiven and set free from the evil that enslaves us. On the third day, he rose again from the dead and commanded his followers to bear witness to his life, death, and resurrection and called all people to repent and be reconciled to God through faith in him.
After he ascended back to the Father, he sent his Spirit to be with his followers and empower them to become people who embody the joy of life under his loving reign and spread the good news of Jesus to all people. All those who repent and believe are welcomed into God’s family, the Church, and called to carry forward the love and news of Jesus in our day.
The story ends with a promise that Jesus will one day return to judge all people, condemn those who have rejected him, banish evil and death forever, and restore all things to his loving rule. Therefore, he commands all people everywhere to repent and believe the good news!
Below that are some resources to help you continue to explore the story. As you explore these resources, we encourage you to
Check out videos from The Bible Project. Here are a few to begin with:
Here are links to The Bible Project in other languages: