BIBLICAL THEOLOGY AND OUR TRAUMA

I.     The Five Golden Cables: Unity

You may wonder why the previous chapter, "Somewhere in the DMZ . . ." It sets the stage for this and the following chapters. What follows, demonstrates how Biblical Theology helps us think truthfully about what we have seen and done, but from a wide-angle lens.

Biblical theology is an interpretive discipline that unifies Scripture from eternity past to eternity future, including redemptive history. In other words, we want to take a wide-angle look at the previous chapter and see how God's eternal purposes relate to difficult days (and good days) in a believer's life. How are we to understand severe trails that make little sense and wreak so much havoc in our lives?  

We can quickly locate all five of these cables in Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21:1-22:5. These five cables rightly divide or interpret all of Scripture, and how the Holy Spirit reveals them continually throughout the Bible’s pages. Where you find one, you will find the others hovering in the background or nearby, influencing and uniting all Scripture. The following five cables will reveal how. 

Let me define these cables briefly: 

A.     God’s Kingdom: 

God created Adam to reflect His authoritative, royal reign over His created realm. God declared Adam the first universal King (Gen. 1:26, 28). But Adam sinned, spoiling his royal status and the creation over which he was to rule (Gen. 3:1-7). Adam, God’s first king, pointed to Christ (1 Cor. 15:45, 47), who would one day fulfill Adam's royal reign and then offer the Kingdom to the Father (1 Cor. 15:24). 

B.     God’s Covenant: 

The Bible uses covenant over 300 times in the Bible. God administrates His realm via covenants. Redemptively speaking, the eternal Covenant of Redemption addresses the reason Jesus came to earth. The “Covenant of Redemption is an eternal agreement made between the members of the Trinity. The Father charges the Son to take on human flesh, and the Son of God agrees to die for the sins of His people. In return, the Father promises to raise the Son back to life and glorify him. The reward purchased by the Son's willing sacrifice is the Holy Spirit Himself who establishes our communion with God for all eternity.” (Jn. 6:38-40; cf. 5:30, 43; 17:4-12; Rom. 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:22; Ps. 110; Zech. 6:13 Lk. 22:29)

Adam disobeyed the stipulations of the Covenant of Works or Life by not rendering personal, “perfect and unerring obedience” to God (Gen. 2:16-17), so that “he might attain the prize of eternal life.” Adam represented all humanity in his probationary trial in Eden (See Rom. 5:12-20). Immediately after Adam sinned, God established a second covenant, the Covenant of Grace (Gen. 3:15), manifested progressively from Adam to its fulfillment in Christ, coming through Noah (Gen. 9:24-27), Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3; 15; 17), Moses (Ex. 19:6-24:8), David (2 Sam. 7:12-16), the New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32; Lk. 22:19-20). God’s gracious covenant pointed to Christ through the blood-shedding and death of an innocent, unblemished animal and offered by a priest to atone for the sinner’s transgressions (Ex. 12; Heb. 9). Christ endured His own probationary time during His ministry, thus fulfilling the Covenant of Works Adam failed to keep. 

C.     God's Mediator: 

The mediator in Scripture represented and had to be one with Yahweh God. As a created being, he became one with God’s people. God created Adam as His first mediator (prophet (Gen. 2:19, 23; Acts 3:20, 22), priest (Gen. 2:15; Heb. 5:5-6), and royal (Gen. 1:26, 28; Ps. 2:6; Lk. 1:33; Isa. 9:5-6; Acts 2:29-36; Col. 1:13) in this sense. In light of Scripture, the Shorter Catechism declares there are three mediatorial offices of Christ: king, priest, and prophet. Christ fulfills all three mediatorial offices as God’s mediatorial King, High Priest, and Prophet. As fully divine, only Christ can represent God, and only the flawless Man, Jesus, be one with humanity.

1 Tim. 2:5-6 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time. 

D.     God’s Temple: 

The heart of the Covenant is God dwelling among His people. At His birth, Jesus became our Emmanuel, God with us (Mt. 1:23). God communicated His immediate presence first in the garden (Gen. 3:8), then in the pillars of cloud and fire (Ex. 13:22, the Tabernacle Ex. 40:34), and later in Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs. 8:10-11), then in Jesus’ incarnation (Jn. 1:14). After Jesus’s ascension to the Father (Acts 1:9), Paul declared the Church God’s Emmanuel (1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19), and finally, the Apostle John proclaimed, “I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Rev. 21:22). The early temporal structures pointed to the day when God would dwell uninterrupted amid His righteous people in the person of Christ. 

5.     God's Promised Land: 

God created the land of Eden, which pointed to Canaan in Palestine. God created Adam in the land of Eden. When the man and his wife sinned, God expelled them from Eden (3:24; See Gen. 3). Centuries later, Abraham’s descendants migrated from Canaan due to a terrible famine to the land of Egypt (Gen. 12; See Gen. 37-50). Four hundred years later, the Egyptians forced Abraham’s descendants into hard servitude (See Ex. 2ff). God delivered His people with a mighty hand from their Egyptian masters (See Ex. 5-12). He would bring them to the next “Eden,” the Land of Canaan that He swore covenantally to give Abraham (Gen. 15:18-21). These two previous lands pointed to the final Canaan, New Jerusalem (See Heb. 11:13-16; Rev. 21). God’s elect will dwell and reign with Christ Jesus forever (Rev. 22:5), fulfilling the first Adam’s lost royal mediatorial role.

God sent His mediator par excellence, Jesus, to lead the second exodus. Unlike Moses, Jesus alone frees us from our bondage to sin, Satan, the world’s vanity, various lusts and pride, and finally, death itself.

The Five Golden Cables connect to our worst trials and our best days. It is crucial to understand that each of these cables or themes hovers in the background of everything God involves us, good and bad. God joins every situation in our lives to these cables, which means they are intimately joined to the purposes of the Person and work of Christ.