What's the Bible About?

This morning I was listening to Tim Keller speaking on preaching the gospel. One of the things that stood out for me was this: if you are going to preach, you have to decide whether the Bible is primarily about you, or primarily about Jesus.

I realized that much of what I have heard preached over the last many years has treated the Bible as if it were primarily about you and me — about what we must do to be good people, or to be accepted, or to inherit eternal life, or fulfill God's mission in the world, or be faithful witnesses, or even just manage stress.

But if the Bible is primarily about Jesus, and about what Jesus has done and is doing, and about how Jesus is the true fulfillment of all the stories and all the events, then preaching it faithfully would look very different.

I'm wondering if this observation doesn't tie into a question that has been rolling around in the back of my mind for sometime: What does it mean to read the Bible on its own terms rather than on our terms? And perhaps even more importantly: What does it mean for us — individually, but even more so communally — to treat the Bible as the prime authority, but to do so on its own terms?

I have a deep suspicion that it might look significantly different than what I have seen and been used to in my own church experience.