The forward leaning aspect of biblical theology is most apparent when the covenants are in view. But the eschatology and teleology began before anything was made. This goes back to the preparation of the Messiah. The Creation Project actually precedes the creation itself, as passages such as 1 Peter 1:20 inform us that Christ’s office of Savior was “pre-temporal.”*
This forward movement in scriptural narrative is twinned with an inherent purpose or teleology. Neither the eschatology nor the teleology in Scripture must ever be separated from our reading of the Bible as biblical theology.
Purpose and outcome go together. A basic sketch of this teleology/eschatology model would look like this:
The “Purpose – Outcome” Model in Outline
- Before creating anything, Yahweh prepared His Son to come into the world He would create, to come as a man with the goal of saving fallen men from their sins. This shows intentionality in God with respect to everything He would go on to make.
- God created everything with a goal, a telos in mind, and man was meant to have the responsibility of bringing the world to that goal.
- God is working that goal out now in spite of the fallen state of man. He has told us about it in Scripture. That movement toward a goal is eschatological. Therefore, although eschatology in systematic theology concerns the last things, this is not appropriate in biblical theology, which is concerned with the progressive unveiling of the Bible.
- There are clear markers or signposts in the Old Testament which show us the route God is taking us in subduing all things to Himself. These signposts are most clearly seen and most authoritatively stated in God’s covenants. God’s oaths are found in these covenants. It is the contents of these oaths that must be carefully studied because they reveal the outline of the Creation Project.
- After Adam’s failure, the “second man” Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 15:47) is the Fulcrum around whom everything in God’s Creation Project will be brought to perfect completion. One can observe strong affinities between Messiah and the biblical covenants.
- The covenants that God has made form the main framework that God is utilizing to bring about His will for the world. Each divine covenant “passes through” the New covenant, which is inescapably linked to Jesus Christ, on its way to its fulfillment.
- But the role of Jesus Christ comes in two phases: In the first phase He suffers and dies and rises again on behalf of sinners and because of the curse. In so doing He becomes the embodiment of the New covenant, through which the other divine covenants are guaranteed and empowered. In the second phase, the phase to which creation is tending (Rom. 8:18-23), He rules over the world that was made for Him (Col. 1:16), bringing it all into compliance with the original pre-temporal intention, destroying the serpent and presenting creation back to His Father (1 Cor. 15:24), thus completing the Creation Project.
- God creates a New Heaven and New Earth fit for life in the eternal realm. A life that it is not possible to imagine beyond some vague revelations.
Hence, what becomes apparent is that God’s covenants signal the trajectory of His intentions and their objective, but that trajectory interacts closely with the prophecies of the great coming Ruler (Messiah) who will bring to pass earth’s Golden Age, in which the covenants of God will be fulfilled. This Messiah will have two comings; the first to save sinners (Isa. 49:6; 59:20-21), and the second to rule for God in righteousness upon earth (Gen. 49:10; Isa. 2:2-4). Therefore, any attempt to read the Bible outside of this covenantal framework is going to falter and misunderstand God’s stated intentions as set out in His oaths. Simply stated, we must respect the oaths of God enough to grant them priority in Bible interpretation.
* As was His Kingly office. These roles of the God-man were prepared before the world was made.
