Testament—and the whole Bible, for that matter—is ultimately about Jesus and the kingdom of God. Jesus constitutes the sum and substance of the biblical message. He is God’s gospel and the theological center for the whole of the Christian Bible. He is the source and the unifying force that makes sense of all the diversity found in the biblical record. With Jesus as the theological center of the biblical message, the kingdom of God functions as the thematic framework for that message. This is the
Page 25