It's been said that one test of a good reading of a book is being able to summarize that book in one sentence. It's also been said that books don't change lives, sentences do. There's no better library than the Bible, which is made up of 66 books filled with many sentences that have changed countless lives for the good of all people and God's glory.
Dane Ortlund recently asked "a handful of thoughtful scholars and pastors" to express the message of the Bible in one sentence. While the sentences in Ortlund's post may or may not change the lives of those who read them, I hope they at least encourage and help all who do read them to subsequently read the Bible and understand that the key to understanding the Bible is to realize that nothing is more significant and central in the Bible and all of life than Christ.
Dane Ortlund's response to the question: Despite ongoing rebellion on our part, the holy God of the universe refuses to leave us to wallow in our sin, eventually and climactically becoming one of us, in the moral mud, to restore us to glory, if we will receive his love in trusting contrition.
Read the other 26 sentences here.
Romans 11:36 comes to my mind as a good summary of the message of the Bible (as well a verse that contains one of the most important hermeneutical principles for interpreting the Bible and all of life, namely, the glory of God), but Scott Hafemann already used it in Ortlund's post: From God, through God, and to God are all things, to him be the glory for ever. Amen. The next passage that comes to my mind is 1 Corinthians 15:23-28, from which I summarize the message of the Bible and goal of God's work: God is all in all.
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