The incarnation by itself doesn’t remove the obstacle to fellowship with God. We also need the resurrection and ascension. The resurrection not only proves Jesus’s divinity but is a further moment of his saving work. Moreover, the ascension of Christ isn’t merely an exclamation point to the resurrection but is another stage in his accomplishment of redemption. Through all these events in Christ’s life, those who are united to him are forgiven, justified, sanctified, and glorified.

According to Genesis, the curse resulting from the fall of humanity is all-encompassing. The breach between humans and God (both judicial and relational) bled into blame-shifting toward one another. The earth, crying out against human violence and death, yields its produce grudgingly, groaning for release from its involuntary captivity. And, launching the story behind all stories in the Bible, the war of the Serpent’s surrogates (evident as soon as Cain) and the woman’s offspring (Abel) ensues. No longer holy, endowed with a holy calling, living in a holy land with God in peace and safety, the royal family lives “east of Eden.”

At the same time as he announces the curse, God issues a surprising announcement of a promised redemption and institutes a regime of common grace as space for this gracious pledge to be realized in history. For example, when God elects Abraham and Sarah out of sheer grace as the parents of a chosen nation, the promise continues with a typological family (ethnic descendants) and ultimately with the unilateral and unconditional announcement of a single offspring in whom all peoples will find a sufficient Mediator. From Sarah’s fallow womb, the promised offspring of Eve appears.

Reformation theology has always been eager to affirm that the nature created by God remains good yet corrupted; depravity is total in its extensiveness (heart, intellect, will, and body), not in intensiveness (as if God’s image could be eradicated). There’s no safe landing for Christ when he comes in gracious redemption. Without the new birth, no part of the world or the human self welcomes him. Yet, as expounded by the Calvinist Isaac Watts in the hymn “Joy to the World,” the remedy reaches “far as the curse is found.” Therefore, it’s reductive to define the gospel simply as the solution to one of these problems. Nevertheless, Reformed theologians affirm justification as the basis for believers’ sanctification and glorification.

Scripture’s Storyline

Christ himself is the solution to the curse’s extensiveness. He’s the incarnate gospel. Jesus said he was the unifying feature of Holy Scripture (Luke 24:27; John 5:39). Irenaeus is quoted as saying that Scripture’s coherence lies in “Christ, the mosaic,” in which each piece has its particular redemptive-historical place.

The Protestant reformers and their confessional heirs said that the scope of Scripture is Christ as he’s clothed in his gospel. There are, of course, other topics, genres, supporting actors, and subplots, but all are subservient to this single message that grows clearer as the story unfolds. Thus, there can’t be many gospels but only one, albeit with many facets.

The good news is as encompassing as the bad news—it’s even more so, since it doesn’t announce a mere return to a pristine condition. Rather, it announces a future consummated condition that’s never been experienced by any mortal except for our exalted brother, Jesus (1 Cor. 2:9; Heb. 2:8–9).

Read More