Get Your Pretense On!

Chapter 3: ”There’s Plenty Good Room” • 61

This promise-fulfillment rhythm is the primary guiding motif of Scripture, and it underwrites all truly sound biblical exegetical theology. We get a clue to this structure in the genealogy of Matthew’s Gospel, which essentially records Christ’s origins from Adam to Abraham, from Abraham to David, and finally from David to Christ (Matt. 1.1). God’s intent in his sacred covenant, announced in the garden and fortified with the patriarchs and the nation, was to make Jesus Christ the center of all the universe, and through him, to bring together a people who would belong to him for all eternity, which, amazingly, included us, the Gentiles. This amazing unfolding biblical drama is not merely a story of a provincial people with a tribal deity who fights for the descendants of Abraham, the people of Israel alone. Rather, the biblical story is a story of God’s election of his people Israel who were designed to serve as the people through whom God’s anointed King would come. This special Elect of God, the Messiah, would reveal the Father’s glory to us, redeem us from the Curse, and restore the world, under God’s reign. This notion of Israel as the nation through whom he would come for the saving of humankind was a notion either unknown or unaccepted by God’s people Israel. The Scriptures declare, however, that God’s determination from the beginning was to bring together a new people, of both Jews and Gentiles, into existence which would shine forth his praise together, as a new humanity under his kingdom reign. Three key NT texts suggest that the Church and its inclusion of non-Jewish peoples, the Gentiles, represents the very heart of the revelation of God’s mystery (cf. Rom. 16.25-27; Eph. 3.7-10, and Col. 1.25-27). Here are those three texts below, so you can see the argument Paul makes about the mystery in his epistles.

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the