What is the Bible fundamentally about?

For a few generations now, evangelicals have heard, especially on the conservative side, that the Bible is fundamentally about the holiness of God.

And on today's episode, I want to make a

slightly different case. While keeping in sight the holiness of God as an absolutely vital

teaching, I want to argue that the love of God is actually the major theme of the Bible. I'm going to

walk through nine different passages in this episode and a second part in order to make the case that

the Bible is teaching us above

all themes that God is a loving God and that he loves a covenant people for himself to his

greater glory. Now, this does not mean that there is not a minor theme in Scripture that is also

quite important. And that theme is that, according to his divine justice, his own character,

God judges the wicked.

He judges the wicked for all eternity. It is not a limited time that God judges, punishes the wicked.

It is an eternal judgment, and so there is not, in the Bible, taught the doctrine of annihilation.

So, but what I want to do even while noting that is lay out for you the glorious case that

Scripture makes from the old into the New Testament that God is a loving God.

He is an altogether distinct God from every other God.

He is not like other gods.

We are accustomed to hearing such language with regard to the holiness of God, but what I want to say is this.

It is absolutely the case that the Trinitarian God is thrice holy. And that is so important. Think of Isaiah 6.3. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord. But it is also essential to understand that that holy God is a very loving God. And the whole storyline, as I'm going to argue in scripture, is that

God is forming a people for himself, that he doesn't just zap and make holy and stare at them

and they stare back at him for all eternity. But he loves a people for himself and they love him.

And there's this dynamic relationship of love that occurs into all eternity to come

...