2017 Christian Book Award ®: Bible Study Finalists

"This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church." -Ephesians 5:32

Marriage is not a human invention; it is a divine revelation of eternal significance. From the beginning, God designed marriage to convey a greater reality—the passionate, unfailing, redeeming love of God for sinners, the eternal romance between Christ and his bride. Marriage, at its core, is of God and reveals a wonderful truth about God.

Ray Ortlund's Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel traces the biblical view of marriage—from the first marriage in the garden of Eden to the ultimate marriage in the book of Revelation—unveiling a vision of marriage that dignifies our own imperfect unions as a display of the gospel. With a scholar's head and a lover's heart, Ortlund examines marriage through the lenses of creation, fall, law and gospel, illuminating the profound mystery of marriage, namely that it reveals Christ, is for the sake of Christ, and pursues Christ. This volume from the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series leads readers to honor and exalt marriage as a grand display of the gospel, offering guidance and hope for our own marriages today.

Does the Bible need to be saved?

Over the course of the centuries, Bible scholars and publishers have increasingly added "helps" - chapter divisions, verses, subheads, notes - to the Bible in an effort to make it easier to study and understand. In the process, however, these have led to sampling Scripture rather than reading deeply.

According to author Glenn R. Paauw, the text has become divorced from the Bible's literary and historical context, leading to misinterpretation and a "narrow, individualistic and escapist view of salvation." Rather than being a culture-shaping force, the Bible has become a database of quick and easy answers to life's troubling questions. But these deficiencies can be corrected by engaging in what the author calls "big readings."

In these pages Paauw introduces us to seven new (to us) understandings of the Bible as steps on the path to recovering one deeply engaged Bible. With each "new" Bible presented, deficiencies in how we currently interact with the Bible are explored, followed by recommendations for a new practice. The Bible's transformative power is recovered when we remove the chains Christians have applied to it over the centuries. The Bible does not need to be saved because of any defect in itself, but because we have distorted and misread it. Saving the Bible from Ourselves provides students of the Bible a new paradigm for reading and living the Bible well.