As we look at how the ending of the Bible story contains pictures that we can gather along the way, we begin to again see an important foundation for biblical theology: the Bible story ends in a way that relates to all of what has come before. There are echoes of Genesis in Revelation, as well as pictures and events that remind us of every part of the story of God’s saving work in the lives of his people in the world.

A Foundation for Biblical Theology
The core conviction of those who practice the discipline of biblical theology is that the Bible is a unified work—a book inspired by one divine author (God) and given to human beings to help them understand his broad saving plan, which ultimately was accomplished through the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ. We will see shortly how Jesus himself pointed us toward this way of understanding Scripture. Our goal in biblical theology is to trace God’s story of redemption as it is revealed to us progressively in the revelation of Scripture.
Let’s discuss some foundational arguments for biblical theology. In other words, why do we believe that this is a valid way to study the Bible? This is an important question to answer because not everyone agrees that this is a valid approach! So I will seek to explain just a few of the key foundations that establish biblical theology as the right way to engage with Scripture.
1. Jesus’s Example
One answer to the above question is that Jesus read and interpreted the Old Testament in this way. When we practice biblical theology, we are following the lead of Jesus in the way that he looked at and applied Scripture.
In Luke 24 we find the account of Jesus walking and talking with two men on the road to Emmaus after his resurrection from the dead. These disciples were struggling to understand the events that had just taken place. Jesus, the man they had followed as the Messiah, had been killed. They were sad and discouraged because it seemed that he had failed.
Jesus confronted these men based on Scripture. He told them that it was “necessary” for the Christ to suffer and die (Luke 24:26); Scripture had told them that would happen! Then he did something amazing: Jesus opened the Old Testament Scriptures for these men—right there on the road—and explained to them the “things concerning himself ” (Luke 24:27). Luke tells us that he began with Moses (the books of Genesis to Deuteronomy) and then moved into the prophetic writings in order to show them how the Old Testament—all of it—ultimately pointed to him.
This is a crucial passage for helping us understand how Jesus interpreted Scripture. He saw himself as the main character—the one to whom the entire Old Testament pointed. Thus, biblical theology is legitimate. It is right to see the Bible as telling one great story that has its climax in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
We can draw a few conclusions:
The Bible—all of it—is about Jesus. That is not an overstatement. We can really say, according to what we see from Jesus in Luke 24, that the Bible is ultimately all about him. The Old Testament points forward to him, shows the need for him, and explains what he was going to do for God’s people. The New Testament makes Jesus’s work clear and plain. The Bible is about Jesus.
We cannot rightly understand the Old Testament without understanding the work of Jesus. In other words, it is bad scholarship to read the Old Testament without looking forward to the work of Jesus—the Messiah—that the Old Testament anticipates! This is what Jesus would have said. He called the men on the road to Emmaus “slow of heart” because they did not understand all that the Old Testament Scriptures had been teaching about him and his work. If we miss Jesus in the Old Testament, we simply have not studied it correctly!
We should never study the Bible without talking about Jesus. Finally, we can conclude with this important point: to study any part of the Bible without referencing Jesus—the central character of the Bible—does not do the Bible justice. We have studied it incorrectly. We need to frame our discussion of each passage of Scripture in terms of its place in the great story—a story that has its climax in the life, death, and resurrection of God’s Son, Jesus Christ.
Jesus’s “sermon” on the road to Emmaus lays an important foundation regarding biblical theology. How wonderful it would be to have that entire sermon recorded for us! Jesus took time to explain to the two men, from Moses and the Prophets, all the things about him in the Old Testament Scriptures. In other words, Jesus himself used “biblical theology” to see the connection between the Old Testament Scriptures and his work through his death and resurrection.
2. The Apostles’ Preaching
Another foundation for biblical theology is the example of Jesus’s apostles. We will look at just one example of the teaching of the apostles about Jesus in relation to the Old Testament: Acts 2:14–41 (Peter’s sermon to the crowd at Pentecost). In this passage, we see how Peter explained the work of Jesus from Psalm 16—a psalm written by King David.
Just as Jesus did biblical theology on the road to Emmaus, his apostles did biblical theology as well.
In Acts 2, Peter delivered a sermon to the crowd at Pentecost, just after the Holy Spirit had descended with power on the disciples, enabling them to share the gospel with people in many different languages.
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Biblical theology involves understanding the storyline of the Bible, but it is more than just a march through the pages of Scripture sequentially. It takes work and discipline and intentionality in every step along this march through the biblical narrative to see how the parts of the story are connecting, how continuity of God’s work and promises is maintained, and how God is progressively revealing his glorious saving plan and redemptive purposes to his people in the world he has made. This is why one wonderful way to engage in biblical theology is to trace theological themes or ideas, examining their development from Genesis all the way through Revelation.

Divinely Inspired Words
The Bible doesn’t come to us as an academic textbook, with carefully delineated topical headings organized according to theological themes. Certainly, God could have chosen to reveal himself differently. He could have given us a long lists of rules. He could have given us something like an encyclopedia of theological doctrines.
But, as we know, that is not how God has chosen to reveal himself to us in his inspired word. In the pages of Scripture, we discover stories, poems, and songs. We find prophecies, visions, parables, and letters to early churches and individual Christians. God’s word, divinely inspired through at least forty different human authors over thousands of years is artistically and beautifully composed and wonderfully literarily diverse. What a gift for us to discover our God through the pages of Scripture and through all of the distinct human authors and different biblical literary genres!
Systematic Theology
However, from the earliest days of the Christian church, biblical scholars and faithful pastors have discerned the important benefit of bringing careful organization and explanation to the theological truths and doctrines that the Bible clearly teaches God’s people. Some of the earliest articulations of what today we would call “systematic theology” emerged in and through the church councils of the third and fourth centuries as the early church fathers battled various heresies (particularly relating to the person of Jesus Christ), and early creeds were formed as fundamental summaries of Christian doctrine.
The Nicene Creed, as one example, affirms clearly both the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ (doctrines which had both been under attack by pernicious false teachings), as well as the glorious authority of both God the Father and God the Son, from whom God the Holy Spirit proceeds. To put it simply, systematic theology is the careful organization and articulation of the theological truths of Scripture.
Systematic theology uses human categories to summarize what the Bible teaches about all kinds of things. What is God like? What is the nature of sin? What can we know about creation, the church, about human beings, and about the end of the world when Jesus Christ returns? When we engage in systematic theology, we systematize (or organize) our theological understanding of the clear truths and doctrines that God’s word teaches us.
Biblical Theology
Biblical theology is a different way of studying and organizing Scripture’s teaching of core Christian doctrine. Rather than utilizing categories and topical organization, biblical theology involves tracing the development of theological truths throughout the pages of Scripture in conjunction with the development of the biblical narrative.
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Our goal is to work toward the right way for Christians to think biblically about angels and properly relate to them. The biblical response to these heavenly beings is somewhere between worship and obsession on the one hand, and a total denial of their existence on the other. Christians can learn from Scripture how to relate to angels as they follow the great God and Savior of the world.

What Are Angels?
While God’s word does not offer us a detailed description of how and when God made the angels, or of what exactly they look like, we can nevertheless gather truths and principles from various Scripture passages that teach us about these beings that are in eternal service of God.
You have probably seen pictures, movies, or cartoons portraying angels, but it’s likely that none of them portrayed angels in any way close to what they are actually like! What does the Bible say?
Angels are created beings. First, the Bible is clear that angels, like humans, are created and living beings, made by God. In Psalm 8, the psalmist points out that human beings have been made “a little lower” than the angels and “crowned . . . with glory and honor” (Ps. 8:5).
Angels, then, have greater glory and honor than humans; it is noteworthy that the natural human response to these beings when they appear is first fear and then worship. Nevertheless, angels were created by God, and therefore are less than God. They are another kind of living being that God made.
Angels are eternal, nonmortal beings. Jesus makes it clear that angels—unlike human beings—are eternal and nonmortal (they do not share in human institutions such as marriage, for example; see Matt. 22:30). Angels were created by God to live forever; they do not grow old and die. While it seems that angels can certainly take on physical form, they are spiritual beings.
Angels are servants of God. Primarily, angels were created by God to be his servants (we will talk much more about what their service looks like in the next section). You saw this in the passage from Revelation 22 that you read just above. John was tempted, as we discussed above, to bow down and worship the angel who was showing him this vision of heaven. The angel stopped him, though, reminding him that, although glorious, he was nothing more than a “fellow servant” of God with John (Rev. 22:9). Angels are not to be worshiped; they are servants of God, who alone is worthy of worship and praise.
Angels dwell in heaven with God. Angels, unlike human beings, never have lived on earth and never have been subject to the fall in the same way that human beings are. Angels, then, do not have sinful natures; they are not guilty of sin, rebellion, and death. We know this because they are portrayed (in Rev. 4, for example) as dwelling closely with the holy God in heaven. Sinful beings would not be able to do that! So the permanent dwelling place for angels is in heaven with God.
The Purpose of Angels
Now that we have considered what angels are, we are going to dig a bit deeper into their purpose, as we see it revealed in the Bible. We will identify several of the chief roles that we see angels filling in Scripture as they obey God and help his work to move forward in the world he made. While we are not certain about the work of angels in the world today, we can look at how they have worked throughout the history of God’s people.
Above all, the Bible presents angels to us as servants of God. This was the point that the angel in Revelation made clear to John when John attempted to worship him (Rev. 22:9). But what do these servants do? What is their purpose? In the Bible, we see them acting in several key ways:

Announcement. This is the purpose that you saw in the passage from Luke that you read just above. The angel Gabriel (one of the few angels who is named in Scripture) was sent to Mary to announce the coming birth of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

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The doctrine of aseity tells us that God’s decision to create cannot be because of any deficiency in God. He didn’t need the universe in order to be happy. He wasn’t lonely without us! So, why create? God’s creation of the universe—and human beings—must be the abundant, joyful, gracious overflow of his goodness and kindness. What an amazing thought! God’s creation must be a result of his joyful delight to share and display his glory in all the universe and with all his creatures!

God’s Aseity
The first time I heard the word aseity was while sitting in a seminary class at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School with Dr. D. A. Carson. He was my advisor during my seminary years, and I heard Dr. Carson say many times: “I’ve learned over the years that my students don’t remember everything I teach them . . . but they do tend to remember what I am most excited about!” God’s aseity was a doctrine that I still remember Dr. Carson being excited to teach!
God’s aseity refers to God being eternally and completely “of himself.” The word comes from the Latin. It’s a compound word made up of two smaller words: “a” (from) and “-se” (self). To talk about the aseity of God, then, is to say that God is from and of himself. He is completely self-originating and dependent on nothing other than himself.
When we’re talking about God’s aseity, we are referring to the way that God has existed from eternity past completely independently of anything else—completely “of himself”—and therefore satisfied and delighted in himself. It goes without saying that this is not a “communicable” attribute of God (humans don’t share this attribute with God!). Now, here’s how I found this doctrine connecting with other systematic theological categories.
What does God’s aseity mean for the creation of the world?
I remember learning about creation (Genesis 1–2) in a Sunday school class when I was probably 6 or 7 years old. One of the kids asked the Sunday school teacher, “Why did God make Adam and Eve?” I remember her answering something like this: “God made Adam and Eve because he was ‘lonely’ and he wanted people to be with him and be his friends.”
Is that correct? Why would God choose to create the universe and human beings?
The doctrine of aseity tells us that God’s decision to create cannot be because of any deficiency in God. He didn’t need the universe in order to be happy. He wasn’t lonely without us! So, why create?
God’s creation of the universe—and human beings—must be the abundant, joyful, gracious overflow of his goodness and kindness. What an amazing thought! God’s creation must be a result of his joyful delight to share and display his glory in all the universe and with all his creatures!
What does God’s aseity mean for the salvation of sinners?
In Genesis 3, God could have been justifiably done with humanity! Adam and Eve had been living in the Garden of Eden, walking with God, enjoying his creation and stewarding it, and living in perfect fellowship with their Creator. And in that terrible moment, they listened to the lies of Satan and rebelled against the word of their good God. God could have wiped humanity from the earth, but he doesn’t do that.
Instead, we get Genesis 3:15, the protoevangelion or “first gospel.” God looks far into the future and promises that Eve’s seed—his own Son—will crush the head of the serpent and destroy Satan, sin, and death for his sinful people! The question is Why?
I want to suggest that the doctrine of God’s aseity gives us only one answer: God does this out of his sheer delight in demonstrating his grace! It’s the joyful overflow of God’s demonstration of this aspect of his character: his mercy and grace.
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