The Epistles and Revelation In the Biblical Story
In our introductory chapter on the biblical story (see pp. 14 – 20), we noted the central role the people of God play in God’s story (as the human “agonists”); we saw too that the “plot resolution” to the story is their redemption and reconciliation (with God and with one another).
The Epistles play a crucial role in the grand story, both defining how the plot resolution works out and how God’s newly redeemed and reconciled people are to live in the present age, as they hopefully and joyfully await the final chapter of the story. Collectively, the Epistles presuppose the story of Jesus as told in the Gospels; their main concerns lie in the instruction, encouragement, and exhortation of God’s people. As such, the Epistles share several things in common.
First, since the writers of the Epistles are primarily concerned with the salvation of God’s people, Christ’s death and resurrection play the absolutely key role in everything the writers say and do. At the same time, they also understand the role of the Spirit to be vital — as the way God and Christ are now present with God’s people.
Second, all the Epistles are written to first-generation converts — even if sometimes after many years of living in the faith — and do not set out to give a full summary of Christian doctrine or ethics. As noted in How to 1 (pp. 56 – 59), they are all ad hoc, written to specific situations in the lives of believers, most often in direct response to some false teaching that is circulating among the churches. This means that they tend to highlight those aspects of the gospel that expose and counter the errors they are combating.
Third, each of the Epistle writers lives and breathes an understanding of present existence that is eschatological (see How to 1, pp. 145 – 48). That is, they believe that with Jesus and the Spirit the time of the end has already begun and that they live between the times of Jesus’ inauguration of God’s rule and of his coming again to bring God’s rule to full consummation. Thus, both the writers and the people addressed understand their new life in Christ to be “already” a reality but “not yet” what it will be at the end (1 John 3:2). By indwelling the individual believer as well as the gathered church, the Spirit is both the evidence that the future has already dawned (the down payment, or “deposit,” Paul calls him, 2 Cor 1:22) and the guarantor of the final glory that is to be.
Fourth, the ethical imperatives (the supposed do’s and don’ts) that occur throughout are not a new form of the law. Rather they are understood as expressions of God’s own likeness as revealed in Christ (2 Cor 3:18; 4:4 – 6), and therefore they reflect what life in the final kingdom is to be like. The emphasis of the Epistles is that this life of the future is to be lived out now in the believing community as we await the final end. And here again the Spirit of God, who is now also known as the Spirit of Christ (Rom 8:9; 1 Pet 1:11), plays the central role.
About the Revelation of John: Although it functions as an epistle, it is in fact a word of prophecy expressed in the form of apocalyptic. As we point out in our chapter on the Revelation (see pp. 426 – 29), although writing primarily to encourage God’s people in light of their soon-coming conflict with the Roman Empire over emperor worship, John at the same time gathers up strands of the story from both the Old and New Testaments and weaves them into a glorious tapestry of the final chapter of the story — so that the New echoes the Old in every imaginable way. When God’s people live in God’s eternal presence (Rev 21 – 22), the biblical story will have turned the final page.
In the meantime, don’t forget as you read that this part of the story is ours as well. Here is where God writes us into his story. So read and enjoy.