This full-length study Bible aimed toward adults may not seem like my usual fare. But I’d like to argue that, actually, it is. This is a children’s book (as well as a book for the mostly-grown, the fully-grown and the elderly), and it is certainly one that emphasizes the Big Story. What makes it seem like an unlikely subject for review, however, is the fact that I don’t really intend for you to read it to your kids.
Here is what I mean:
The older my children get, the more I realize that I can’t teach them anything I don’t know. And I can’t expect them to follow me in anything I don’t live. I can tell them, Yes, we must eat our salad. Here are three excellent reasons why salad is beneficial. But if they hear me say this and then watch me take the tiniest helping of salad and push it around on my own plate without taking a bite, they won’t be fooled.
Likewise, if, in my attempts to encourage them to love Scripture, it becomes clear that everything I know about it comes second-hand from Marty Machowski (excellent though his work is), they won’t be fooled by that either. What I need, in those heated parenting moments, is not a flow chart from a parenting book or an applicable devotional (though those are both helpful), but a deep love for the gospel and its Author. I need to know the Big Story of Scripture and how my kids (and I) fit into it. And I need to be fluent enough in it to remind them of it when called upon, in a heated moment, to do so.
This is brought home to me again and again.
I make no assumptions about you other than that you are, like me, in need of the gospel, and you clearly love good books (or you wouldn’t be here). So I offer for you the best book, in a format that makes that Big Story—the gospel—shine like a diamond just rubbed free of grit.
The Story of Redemption Bible is something between a study Bible and a reader’s Bible: it’s beautifully formatted in a single column so it reads like a thick, pretty book, but woven through it is commentary by Greg Gilbert. Every interjection is meant to point back to that single narrative that arcs through all 66 books of the Bible. See how this connects here? he asks, pointing from some obscure prophecy in Malachi to the moment Jesus fulfilled the prophecy in the Gospels.
Making these connections always enlivens my understanding of Scripture. It helps to put those strange passages of Scripture in context. Understanding where the sacrifices began and why they were necessary makes Jesus’ coming—and his abolition of the sacrificial system—all the more beautiful. I love the Author of this story; I love that we are a part of it.
And the gorgeous design of The Story of Redemption Bible reminds me, when I read, that the Bible is no ordinary book. Peter Voth’s illustrations illuminate the text. Elegant maps and timelines don’t gather idly in the back of the Bible, waiting for an invitation to dance, but stand proudly where they’re most needed: right where they’re mentioned in the text.
The Story of Redemption Bible also offers two reading plans: one that will take you through the whole Bible in a year, from cover to cover, and one that will take you through the Bible in chronological order, interweaving the prophets with the narrative books about their lives, or interspersing Paul’s letters throughout readings from Acts. And a fold-out timeline of God’s redemptive story tucks into the back of the book, ready to be explored.
So this one, dear parents, is for you. Let us love our God more every day and draw freely upon his wisdom and grace when we need it. Let us remember that we’re not yet at the end of his story, but that that ending, when it comes, will be glorious.
ESV Story of Redemption Bible
Crossway (2018)