Many of us can remember the moment when the lights came on. We were already believers, familiar with the stories, the commandments, and the promises, but suddenly everything connected. The many pieces of Scripture formed a single picture centered on Jesus Christ. It was nothing less than a revolution in how we saw the Bible and, in a sense, how we saw everything else. Once the story, like a jigsaw puzzle, lay in pieces, all edges and fragments. Then someone flipped the box over, and the picture on the package brought it all together. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t go back. And if you’re reading this, chances are you’ve experienced it too. If you know, you know.
The experience was something like the blind man at Bethsaida—seeing, but only dimly, men that looked like trees walking (Mark 8:22–26). Then came the second touch, and everything sharpened into view. You may know that moment when the optometrist finally clicks the right lenses into place, and suddenly the big fuzzy E on the chart is not only an E, but it has edges sharp enough to shave with. The words of Scripture were always there, familiar even, but now they came into focus.
And more than just improved eyesight, it is an entirely new way of seeing. It was like waking up to find the sun doesn’t revolve around you after all. It was something like a Copernican shift, as if the heavens themselves had been re-ordered and the whole of Scripture burst into motion around the blazing Son.
The Teacher Who Helped Us See
At the center of that awakening, for me and many others, stood Graeme Goldsworthy. Born in 1934 in Australia, he is from the land down under. But he is not the kind of Australian found in movies, with a Bowie knife on his hip or a crocodile under his arm. No celebrity theologian, he carried no flair, no flash, and no trace of self-promotion. He was and is plainspoken, steady, and unassuming.[1] His strength was not in dramatic delivery but in clarity. His words cut through confusion and helped people see Scripture as a unified whole.
1. This video offers a good sense of Goldsworthy’s clarity, tone, and teaching style: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHr2cnrhUsY
You might expect, after all that talk of revolutions and blazing suns, a prophet with fire in his eyes and thunder in his voice. Instead, you find a humble scholar and churchman with an unshakeable confidence in God’s Word. He doesn’t look like the sort of man who would reorder how people read the Bible, but for many, he has.
For many years, Graeme Goldsworthy taught Old Testament, Biblical Theology, and Hermeneutics at Moore Theological College in Sydney. Building on the foundations laid by Broughton Knox and Donald Robinson, and working alongside contemporaries such as William Dumbrell and Barry Webb, he gave biblical theology a distinctive voice and a reach that stretched across the globe. In the years since his retirement, he has continued to write, mentor younger pastors and Christians, and to preach and lecture. Now in his nineties, his influence endures through his books, teaching, and the many students and pastors he helped train.
My own story is one small example of that influence. In 2001, I moved from Wheaton, Illinois, to Sydney to study with Goldsworthy. Having him in class, he built a biblical-theological framework in me—layer by layer, passage by passage. The lessons didn’t end when class did; our conversations outside the lecture hall were just as formative. He and his wife later invited my wife and me to visit them in Queensland. For me, and for so many others, his steady influence has been deeply personal, the kind that lingers long after the lectures end and the books are closed.
Goldsworthy’s Canon: How One Theologian Shaped Modern Biblical Theology
And yet, it’s through those very books that his influence has reached farthest. As great as his impact has been on his students, his writings have shaped the church worldwide. His books have done for many what his teaching did for me. They have helped readers see the Bible as one unified story centered on Christ.
His earliest work, Gospel and Kingdom (1981), introduced readers to the framework that would come to characterize his teaching—God’s people, in God’s place, under God’s rule. Gospel and Wisdom (1987) applied the same method to the wisdom literature, showing that the fear of the Lord and the pursuit of wisdom ultimately find their meaning in Christ. Wisdom wasn’t an idea after all; it was a Person. Completing his Trilogy, The Gospel in Revelation (1984) traced the same redemptive story through the symbols and visions of John’s Apocalypse, revealing the triumph of the Lamb at the center of history. Revelation, then, is not a chart of future events but a confession of present realities. It is, after all, the Revelation of Jesus Christ (Rev. 1:1).
With According to Plan (1991), Goldsworthy offered a synthesis of his teaching in an accessible textbook that remains a standard introduction to biblical theology. Likewise, Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture (1999) extended his vision into the pulpit, urging pastors to preach every text in light of Christ and the gospel.
His later works—Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics (2006) and Christ-Centered Biblical Theology (2012)—developed his mature reflections on interpretation and engaged various academic approaches to biblical interpretation. More academic in tone, these two works revealed that Goldsworthy’s earlier and accessible works were written by a man who had done his homework. In particular, these two books explored how biblical theology should shape the reading and teaching of Scripture itself. Finally, The Son of God and the New Creation (2015) distilled a lifetime of work into a concise meditation on how the theme of divine sonship runs from Adam to Christ and reaches its fulfillment in the new creation.
Among all his writings, Gospel and Kingdom and According to Plan stand out as Goldsworthy’s most enduring and influential works. In these two volumes, his vision of the Bible as a single, Christ-centered story took root in the hearts of pastors, students, and ordinary Christians, reshaping how a generation reads and teaches Scripture.
According to Plan is broader and more methodological than Gospel and Kingdom. Whereas Gospel and Kingdom serves as a concise demonstration of how to read the Old Testament through the lens of redemptive history, According to Plan steps back to explain how and why we read the Bible this way. It’s not just a survey of biblical themes; it’s a manual of hermeneutics rooted in the gospel.
Goldsworthy explicitly frames According to Plan as “a textbook of biblical theology” that deals with the principles of interpretation—how revelation unfolds, how type and fulfillment work, and how Christ is the key to understanding all of Scripture.[2] He argues that biblical theology is not one discipline among others but the hermeneutical center of all theology. And if you are just beginning your biblical-theological journey or looking to introduce the subject to Sunday School teachers at your church, this book is ideally suited.
2. Graeme Goldsworthy, According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1991), Preface, p. 7.
Biblical Theology and the Story of Redemption
Spanning nearly forty years of ministry, Goldsworthy’s books unfold a consistent theology and a unified vision of Scripture where every theme finds resolution in the gospel of the Lord Jesus. In Eden, God promised that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head, and every covenant since has been a movement toward that fulfillment. Through Abraham came the promise of blessing to all nations; through Moses, a people set apart; through David, the hope of a righteous King. The Prophets sang of a coming Redeemer who would bear our sins and restore all things. In the fullness of time, Christ came, the true Adam, the true Israel, the true Son of David, fulfilling every shadow and type. By his death, he broke the curse; by his resurrection, He inaugurated the new creation. And now, through his Spirit, he gathers a people from every tribe and tongue until at last the story ends where it began, in a garden renewed as a city where God dwells with His people.
This, for Goldsworthy, is not simply a narrative but the structure of reality itself. The kingdom of God, defined as God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule, provides the pattern that holds the whole Bible together, from Eden to the new Jerusalem. Each covenant advances that pattern and reveals more clearly the character of the King. The Law exposes our need for redemption, the Prophets reveal God’s steadfast purpose, the wisdom writings teach life under His rule, and all of it culminates in the gospel, where promise becomes fulfillment and shadow gives way to substance.
Goldsworthy recognized in Jesus’s words in Luke 24:44 the hermeneutical center of Scripture. When the risen Christ explained to His disciples that “everything written about Him in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled,” he provided not merely an exegetical insight but a theological principle: all of Scripture finds its unity and meaning in him. Goldsworthy made that conviction the foundation of his approach to biblical theology. As Jesus elsewhere declared, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39). The Scriptures, therefore, are not a repository of religious information but the unfolding revelation of the Redeemer. Every divine promise, as Paul later affirms, “finds its Yes and Amen in Him” (2 Cor. 1:20).
Goldsworthy’s theology insists that Christ is the interpretive key to every text and every truth. The gospel is not a topic among others—it is the lens through which all theology, ethics, and knowledge must be seen. Revelation moves toward fulfillment but never away from its center: the crucified and risen King who reigns over all and makes sense of all. To read Scripture rightly, then, is to trace this unfolding revelation until all the notes resolve in Him.
Goldsworthy in Outline
If we were to summarize Graeme Goldsworthy’s theology in outline, several key themes emerge—each flowing from his conviction that the whole Bible finds its unity and meaning in Christ. Because of his work, we who have sat under his teaching (personally or by his books) now read Scripture with far greater clarity, seeing patterns and connections to Christ that had long been obscured. The following six areas represent where his influence has most deeply sharpened our understanding of the Bible and its story.
1. Christ-Centered Hermeneutic
Goldsworthy insisted that Christ is the key to understanding all of Scripture. The Old Testament cannot be properly understood apart from Christ, and the New Testament cannot be rightly appreciated without its Old Testament roots. His simple maxim, “The whole Bible is about Christ,” gave clarity to countless readers who had struggled with piecemeal or moralistic approaches.
2. The Kingdom of God Framework
He popularized the summary of the biblical storyline as “God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule.” This became a memorable and transferable way of seeing the unity of Scripture. From Eden to Israel to the church to the new creation, the kingdom of God provided the unifying thread.
3. Progressive Revelation
Goldsworthy emphasized that God’s revelation unfolds in stages across redemptive history. This means we must read earlier passages—such as the Law, the prophets, and the historical books—in light of their place within the developing story rather than treating them as self-contained.
4. Typology and Fulfillment
He showed how Old Testament persons, events, and institutions (kings, sacrifices, temple, etc.) point forward as types to be fulfilled in Christ. These connections are not arbitrary but woven into the fabric of God’s unfolding plan.
5. The Gospel as the Interpretive Center
By now it should be clear—if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a dozen times—for Goldsworthy, the gospel is not only the heart of salvation but the heart of interpretation. Through the death and resurrection of Christ, every part of Scripture finds its meaning, unity, and fulfillment. This is genuine gospel-centeredness.
6. Accessible Biblical Theology for the Church
While many biblical theologians remained largely academic, Goldsworthy wrote with the church in mind. His works—Gospel and Kingdom, Gospel and Wisdom, According to Plan—gave pastors and laypeople practical tools for preaching and reading the Bible as one unified narrative.
The Legacy of Graeme Goldsworthy
More than forty years have passed since the publication of Gospel and Kingdom, and over thirty since According to Plan first appeared. In that time, the field of biblical theology has flourished beyond what many could have imagined. What was once the work of a few specialists has become a global movement of pastors, scholars, and readers tracing the unity of Scripture through Christ.
Among the many fruits of that renewal is The New Dictionary of Biblical Theology (IVP, 2000), which Goldsworthy co-edited, and is my favorite single-volume Biblical Theology resource. Series such as the New Studies in Biblical Theology (IVP), NAC Studies in Biblical Theology (B&H), Short Studies in Biblical Theology (Crossway), and Essential Studies in Biblical Theology (IVP) now fill the world of publishing with riches unimaginable a generation ago. Many of our own bookshelves are now lined with these volumes.
The theological resources available to the English-speaking church today are greater than any in the history of the world. And though he would never claim it for himself, part of that can be traced, in one way or another, to the quiet, steady influence of Graeme Goldsworthy. For many of us, Graeme Goldsworthy handed us the map—or walked beside us—as the sun rose and our eyes saw more clearly, renewing a sense of coherence and direction for the journey ahead.
And for that, we are personally and eternally grateful. If you haven’t read any of Graeme Goldsworthy’s books yet, don’t miss the chance to do so. They will give you a map of Scripture and one that consistently brings you to Christ.
