Meet God Again for the First Time

If Jesus is the answer,

then what’s the question?

Forget everything you’ve ever heard or thought about the Bible. When the author set aside his training, traditions, and prejudices and read the Bible straight through to see what it really said, it changed his life. Amazed at what he’d missed, he discovered a very different book than the one he thought he knew.

Specifically, he discovered God’s patterns. He discovered a consistency, a dependability, in God’s great saving deeds–the Creation, the Flood, the Exodus, the Exile, and the cross. He discovered that the Bible is about telling and retelling the story of the God of promise and covenant who keeps working until toward His ultimate goal–the restoration of Eden.

Salvation and worship are not about what we need to do, he discovered, but about what God has done.

When Jesus–the new Adam, the new Moses, the new David, the new Israel–suffered on the cross, He paid the price for Israel’s failure and transformed their history. As a result, He can give you a new heritage. You walk away from the sordid past and into a bright new future, not be trying to become what you are not, but by becoming what, in Jesus, what you already are.

The author shows how Jesus fulfills the longings of the Jewish Scriptures and explains the role of the law, showing how freedom comes from strong boundaries. He shows how our assurance of salvation flows not so much from God’s mercy as from His justice. He cannot demand satisfaction twice for the same sin. If you are in Jesus, God can’t touch you. The book concludes with practical suggestions on how we, in our secular world, can know God.

Confused about the Bible? Get the big picture. Let Jon Paulien introduce you to the perfect friend.