Christianity is a canonical faith. This means that the Bible is put together in the order it is for a certain reason, and that reason comes to be understood as the scripture moves from the beginning to the end. The New Testament is not “the New and Improved Testament”. Instead, the New Testament is the fulfillment of God’s promises in the Old Testament. God is doing the same thing from the beginning to the end. The New Testament doesn’t change that. The New Testament tells us how to read and receive the message of the Old Testament.

To be canonical means that our preaching, our faith, our teaching, our understanding of what God is doing must always be grounded in the beginning and end of the canon: Genesis 1-3 and Revelation 21-22. God doesn’t change his mind in the middle, and his purpose is clear from the beginning…and the end.

Any time you hear a preacher jumping around to build a supposedly biblical teaching by adding this verse in the middle to that verse at the end to this other verse at the beginning, you are hearing a false teaching because our faith is simple and canonical. Canonically, God decides what He is going to do. Then he announces it. Then he does it. Thus, the message of the Bible is very simple:

• God creates.
• Humans sin.
• God appoints a day for judgment.
• In advance of that day, he sends his Son on a mission of mercy to save all who will believe.
• Those who believe are called to serve as his witnesses. They witness to two things: The Lord’s offer of mercy, and the coming Day of the Lord where He will judge the world.
• Jesus is the appointed bringer of mercy and judgment, proof of which is given by his suffering and his resurrection from the dead.

In the New Testament, Jesus adds nothing to that message. He doesn’t change it at all. He simply is it, which he says becomes clear when we read canonically under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit. He is the fulfillment of all those promises of God. And he is our one Teacher.

“Neither be called teacher, for you have one teacher, the Christ.” (Matthew 23:10).

This canonical message can be heard clearly in Jesus’ words to the apostles on the night of his resurrection:

“Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.’ (Luke 24:44-49)

Judgment is an essential part of the canonical gospel:

“And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.” (Acts 10:42)

When the Apostles preach, you can hear those same key points of their message repeated over and over again: There is a coming day of judgment, in which all sin of all people will be punished, but mercy is available for those who believe now in God’s messiah. That’s not only the Apostles’ message. It’s also the message of Jesus, and of the prophets in the Old Testament.

But as the Apostles were martyred, and as the church moved into all the world, it gradually became like those to whom it was called to testify, just as Israel had also become like the nations around it. The first Christians cried out, “Maranatha! Come quickly, Lord Jesus!” But Christians, under the influence of Greek and Roman culture, exchanged that canonical ending for the non-canonical idea of going to the Lord Jesus, leaving behind our bodies and living in heaven forever.

It turns out that if you get the end wrong, then you get the middle wrong as well. Like King Saul making sacrifices to God too early while corrupting his simple commands, the church has wrongly taken the end of the world into its own hands, appointing mediators other than Christ Jesus–priest, politicians, even itself–to stand between God and the world, and to do something more and other than witness faithfully to God’s mercy and judgment.

But the canonical witness of scripture says that in these last days there is only one mediator: Christ Jesus. When he comes, the times of God’s mercy will end, and then Christ himself will judge the world.