[The first sentences of this article are long and perhaps complicated. They may need to be read several times slowly and then pondered. We assure you that the effort is worth it.]
The Holy Scriptures have a living source, and living power has pervaded their composition: hence the infiniteness of its bearing and the impossibility of separating any one part from its connection with the whole. One God is the living center from which all flows; one Christ is the living center round which all its truth circles and to which it refers, though in various glory; and one Spirit is the divine sap which carries its power from its source in God to the minutest branches of the all-united truth, testifying of the glory, the grace and the truth of Him whom God sets forth as the object, center and head of all that is in connection with Himself. This is all of Him who is, withal, God over all, blessed forevermore.
To give all this as a whole, and perfectly, would require that it be the Giver Himself. Even in learning it, we know in part, and we prophesy in part. The more we have traced it up towards its center —beginning from the utmost leaves and branches of this revelation of the mind of God, from where we have been reached when far from Him — and thence looked down again towards its extent and diversity, the more we learn its infiniteness and our own feebleness of apprehension. We learn, blessed be God, that the love which is its source is found in unmingled perfection and fullest display in those manifestations of it which have reached us even in our ruined state. The same perfect God of love is in it all. But the unfoldings of divine wisdom in the counsels in which God has displayed Himself remain ever to us a subject of research in which every new discovery, by increasing our spiritual intelligence, makes the infiniteness of the whole, and the way in which it surpasses all our thoughts, only more and more clear to us.
Its Object
The Bible, in its object, is a whole, which presents to us God coming forth from His essential fullness to manifest all that He is, and to bring back into the enjoyment of this fullness with Himself those who, having been made partakers of His nature, have become capable of comprehending and loving His counsels and Himself.
But before this purpose is fully revealed, man is brought upon the scene as a responsible being, and his history is given to us in the various phases through which he has passed, up to the cross, where his enmity against God was manifested. The foundation was there laid for the full revelation of that purpose and the accomplishment of God’s good pleasure in man. It was laid in such a way that His whole divine character of love and righteousness was revealed and glorified, and God perfectly glorified in every respect in bringing man into glory.
Three Great Subjects
We shall find three great subjects in the Bible: (1) the creation (now under the effect of the fall); (2) the law, which gave to man, such as he is now, a rule in the midst of this creation to see if he could live there according to God and be thereby blessed; and (3) the Son of God.
The first two, namely, the creation and the law, are bound up with the responsibility of the creature. We find all that is connected with these two either guilty or corrupted. The Son, on the contrary, is the manifestation of the grace and love of the Father and the manifestation of God’s love to the world, when this guilt was already there in lawless sin and lawbreaking. He is the express image of the subsistence of God, in whom the Father was seen. We see Him suffering in love in the midst of this fallen creation and the contradictions of a rebellious people and, when God had been perfectly glorified in respect of sin, accomplishing all the counsels of God in uniting all things in blessing by His power and under His authority, those even who with hatred had rejected Him, being forced to own Him Lord to the glory of God the Father. And at last, when He shall have subjected all things, we see Him giving up to God the Father the kingdom of His glory as Son of Man, that God may be all in all.
The Counsels of God
Besides all this, in the Holy Scriptures there are in the counsels of God those with whom the God whom we know in Jesus surrounds Himself, who are to be brought into the likeness of Him with whom they are associated as sons, He the firstborn among many brethren who are to enjoy eternally with God His favor and blessing, as it rests on Him with whom and through whom they enjoy it. There is also an earthly people in whom God manifests the principles of His government here below and His unfailing faithfulness; it is to these that the law was given.
The Church
Finally, in the Bible we see in the purpose of God before the world was (but hidden until the fit moment) that there was a church, chosen in Christ, His bride, to be presented to Himself without spot or wrinkle. It is His body too, the fullness of Him who fills all in all, united to Him by the Spirit with which all the members are baptized, and soon to be manifested in glory when He takes that headship.
The Cross
The cross is the center of all this in every respect. There the history of man in responsibility, as the child of Adam, ends, and there begins anew grace reigning through righteousness. There good and evil are fully brought to an issue, both hatred in man and love in God, both sin and the righteousness of God against it. There God is perfectly glorified morally, and man judged in sin and then redeemed in righteousness, the dominion of evil destroyed, and that of man [Christ] established in righteousness as God willed it should be. There death and he that had the power of it are set aside, and this by an act of love which set the Son of God as man at the head of all things in righteousness. Through the cross, all rests secure and immutable in result on the ground of redemption. What shall the end of the despisers of it be!
The Dealings of God With Man
Hence in the Bible we shall find, not only the creation, the law and the Son of God, but the dealings by which God has prepared the way for, and led men to expect, His manifestation; the development of all the principles on which He entered into relationship with men; the consequences of the violation of the law; and, lastly, in its place, the manifestation of the church upon the earth and the directions He has given to it, together with the course of events which are connected with its existence and its unfaithfulness on the earth; with that of the earthly people of God; and with man himself, responsible to God and clothed with authority by Him on the earth: the whole closing with the glory of Jesus, Son of Man, maintaining the blessing and union of all things under the reign of God; and, in conclusion, God all in all. The history of Jesus; the position granted to the church in glory according to the counsels of God, the mystery hidden from the ages; her participation in the sufferings of Jesus and her union with Him; and, in general, the testimony of the Holy Spirit given from on high are clearly revealed in the New Testament. That of which we have spoken previously forms the course of the ages; the church forms no part of them.
Its Two Parts
The Holy Scriptures are naturally separated into two parts — that which speaks of the first two subjects, first, the creation and man in relationship with God without law and His people under law, and, second, that which speaks of the Son come upon the earth and all that relates to the church and its glory — that is, in general, the Old and New Testaments.
J. N. Darby, adapted from introductory
material to the Synopsis