What the Bible Is All About
Missional Interpretation 101
How can we limit the aboutness of the Bible? It is a collection of many types of writings—cosmology, narrative, legal codes, wisdom literature, prophetic visions, biography, letters, and more. It is a collection of writings across centuries, spanning millennia. It is diverse. So what business do we have boiling it all down to a single theme, gist, or story?
In one sense, the Bible is about many people, many places, many times, many things. My question is whether, at the same time, all of it is about something identifiable. For Christians, that possibility depends not on consistency from author to author across time but on divine authorship—what we call inspiration. Or, from another angle, the many narratives of Scripture are part of God’s own story.
Once a confessional stance is taken, the question becomes theological. And the answer depends on one’s commitments. I’ve been influenced by many theologians who have addressed the aboutness question. Witness to Christ, salvation history, redemption, covenant, God’s presence, God’s glory, God’s kingdom, and more are serious options. The seriousness of these options is a function of the arguments marshalled in their favor. Though their arguments diverge and compete, they are often equally compelling. None of them is superficial or arbitrary—or completely misguided. They are, however, still a representation of theological commitments that shape the reading of the biblical narrative as a whole, and they are selective. I believe that neither of these conditions is avoidable. The argument one marshals is inevitably a defense of those commitments and selections.
My guiding theological commitment is straightforward: I believe God has purposes. I do not say “a purpose” out of respect for the diversity of the biblical story, even though, from a human perspective, it might be fair to speak simply of God’s purpose. Still, I intend here only to ascribe purposiveness to God.
This is a properly theological claim. I am beginning with an attribute of God, though not a classical attribute. It is, nonetheless, an attribution that the biblical story necessarily entails. From the beginning of the story to its end, God manifestly has intentions, aims, desires—purposes. The conventional language for this phenomenon is God’s will. But it’s important to recognize that God’s will is revealed narratively—in history and in Scripture. Indeed, one of the most charming things about the claim that God is purposive is that it’s a statement about the necessary shape of revelation. Human beings can only perceive reality in narrative form. That means truth has a beginning, middle, and end; it has a plot. If the agency of God is part of the story, God’s intention that the story go this way rather than that is inherent. God is purposive.
What, then, are God’s revealed purposes? Like all questions, this one elicits answers steeped in the subjectivity of its respondents. We are all prone to think that God wants what we want. The inevitable selectivity of our biblical references is liable to reflect our subjectivity. Below are the narrative points of reference that I find most compelling, not because they are comprehensive or objective but because they compose a throughline that looks the most like a plot.
Gen 1:28 – the “cultural mandate.” God’s original command to humankind reveals God’s purpose: good creation filled with good people doing good. The multiplication of God’s image is in view. God’s benevolent rule exercised through his image-bearers is in view. The consequences of those possibilities are in view. All of it is intention—purpose—unfulfilled and dependent on human cooperation.
Gen 12:3 – the blessing of the nations through Abraham’s family. Creation has begun filling with bad people doing bad, and the question is whether anything else is now possible. Having committed the divine self not to opt again for destruction (Gen 9:1–11), God begins a slow process of redemption with the election of Abram. God’s purposes for all the nations are in view, and their blessing depends on the cooperation of God’s chosen people.
Exod 19:6 – the priestly vocation of Israel. As Abraham’s family, now a nation, begins life after liberation from slavery, the shape of their cooperation with God in relation to the nations yet to be blessed takes shape. The nation of Israel must become holy to serve as an intermediary between God and the nations. Cooperation with God’s purposes entails transformation into holiness, God-likeness, which is the recovery of the image of God.
Isa 42:6; 49:6 – the role of Israel as a light to the nations. In the aftermath of Israel’s failure to cooperate with God’s purposes, God reiterates the commitment to make his people a means of redemption for the nations. Though the law has proven unable to make Israel a holy nation, holiness is still a proximate purpose that serves the ultimate purpose of the nations’ blessing.
[Mark 16:9–16]; Matthew 28:16–20; Luke 24:44–52; John 20:19–23 (17:14–19) – the commissioning of Jesus’s disciples. The ending of each Gospel indicates where the story is going—and what the story was always about. The Messiah’s followers are the remnant of Israel in whom Isa 49:6 is fulfilled, sanctified and sent to cooperate with—participate in—God’s purposes.
The Book of Acts – the cooperative praxis of the Holy Spirit and the Apostles. God’s Spirit is at work in God’s people to lead them into holiness for the purpose of bearing witness to the grace of God for all nations revealed in the Messiah. As the nations join God’s people, they too are sanctified by the Holy Spirit and sent to bear witness. The fulfillment of God’s purposes begins to manifest and points toward the final fulfillment of those purposes through the church’s collaboration.
The various parts of the New Testament letters that reference Gen 12:3; Exod 19:6; and Isa 49:6. The gospel is about the fulfillment of Abram’s blessing of the nations (Gal 3:8). The church’s identity is the realization of Israel’s vocation to be intermediaries for the nations (1 Pet 2:9). The apostolic mission is for the sake of the nations (Acts 13:47). God’s purposes revealed in the Old Testament are at issue throughout the New Testament.
Rev 5:9–10; 7:9–10; 21:1–8 – the vision of ultimate renewal. The final vision (not the end!) of the story is the renewal of all things and the fulfillment of God’s purposes. What Peter calls the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21) and Paul calls the consummation and reconciliation of all things (Eph 1:10; Col 1:20), Revelation envisions as all nations becoming “a kingdom and priests serving our God” (5:10), who ascribe salvation to God (Rev 7:10). So all things being made new (21:5) means good creation filled with good people doing good.
The Bible, then, is all about God’s purposes—God’s mission. To clarify terminology, “missions” (plural) is what the church does in participation with what God does. “Mission” (singular; “sending”) is what God does—and who God is. In other words, we ascribe to God the attribute of having purposes for which he sends his people. Human cooperation with God is the basic assumption of missional interpretation of Scripture.
The Gospel of John is a primary (though not exclusive) biblical point of reference for understanding mission in Trinitarian terms. God the Father sends the Son (John 5:22–23, 36; 6:38; 8:16; 12:49-50; 14:24; 16:5; and more). The Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7). The Son sends the church in the power of the Spirit to participate in the mission of the Son (John 17:18; 20:21). All of this “sending” aims at God’s purposes—that which God wills but is not yet the case. And reading these (and other) texts through a Trinitarian lens invites reflection on the attribute purposesiveness as a revealed communicable property of the Triune life. Or, as missional theologians are wont to say: God is missional by nature.
In short, Scripture narrates God’s mission. God’s mission is what the Bible is all about. Thus, God’s purposes guide our interpretation of Scripture.
This is a rudimentary rendition of one fundamental set of claims that missional interpreters of Scripture tend to make. My aim is to write about additional dimensions of “Missional Interpretation 101” from time to time. I’ll keep these pieces short, simplified, and therefore, in need of further explanation. Your comments and questions can help direct the conversation.
Recommended Reading
Heavy Lift
Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative. 2nd ed. IVP Academic, 2025. The 2006 first edition of this work was a watershed for missional interpretation. The recent second edition signals the vibrancy of this field of study in the last twenty years. Caveat lector: this one is not for the faint of heart. But if you want to dive deep, jump in here.
Lighter Lift
Bartholomew, Craig G., and Michael W. Goheen. The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story. 3rd ed. Baker Academic, 2024. A significant work that rehearses the biblical narrative with missional sensitivity. Academic but relatively quite readable.
Goheen, Michael W. A Light to the Nations: The Missional Church and the Biblical Story. Baker Academic, 2011. The most accessible of the works listed here—a great starting point.
Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission. Biblical Theology for Life. Zondervan, 2010. Half the length of The Mission of God and essentially an extension of that work. Still an academic work, but more approachable.
Wright, Christopher J. H. Great Story and the Great Commission: Participating in the Biblical Drama of Mission. Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology. Baker Academic, 2024. Still an academic work, but far more concise. Self-consciously engaged with the wider field of missional hermeneutics.