Full Story

Knowing our story matters | Witnesses to the true story of the world.

The Triune God speaks! He speaks the world into existence. He speaks words of love and instruction. He speaks the truth. One way to think of History, then, is to see it as the story[i] God Himself is telling. History, then, is His-story. As His-story, it is not only meaningful, but has a telos,[ii] a destination. This means that history, the passage of time, and our participation in it, is a gift to be received and not simply an evil to be endured. The Bible reveals to us the true story, the true history in which all of our little stories participate. These stories that God Himself is telling, like most great stories, are never safe, sterile, and mundane. They are stories in which we have real agency, with the ability to make real choices that will have real consequences. At times, they can be filled with much trial and difficulty, at other times with much surprise and mystery, and often they are full of the things we’d be too sacred and timid to write for ourselves. Since you and I were fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of this storytelling God, we are wired to be responders to stories. So much so that what we think, say, and do; who we believe ourselves to be; who we see as the heroes and villains; what we understand our responsibilities to be, emerge out of the basic narratives that inform our lives.

Leslie Newbigin, the great theologian and missionary, wrote, “To be human is to be a part of a story, and to be fully human as God intends is to be part of the true story and to understand its beginning and its ending. The true story is one of which the central clues are given in the Bible, and the hinge of the story on which all its meaning turns is the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the message we are entrusted with, and we owe it to all people to share it." [iii]

We can understand the full biblical story in four movements:

Creation - History begins with the creation of a very good world by the loving Triune God. This part of the story explains how the world ought to be, who we are, and why there is something rather than nothing.

Fall - This part of the story, what we call “the Fall,” explains why we live in a world that has both good and evil, life and death.

Redemption - This part of the story recounts the historical event of God’s reentry into history, through Jesus, to create a new people for Himself. This part of the story helps us understand how God intends to make what went wrong in the Fall, right in and through Jesus.

Restoration - This part of the story looks into the future. It explains how the world will one day be; how Christ is bringing all history to its intended telos. This part of the story helps us understand what our future holds.

Half Story vs. Full Story 

Knowing our story matters, but knowing the full story matters even more. There are real dangers in only knowing half of the story. Manipulators and liars know this and utilize this to their advantage. Imagine only knowing half of your story? How much pain, confusion, and frustration could arise from that unknowing? Imagine how easy it would be for you to be manipulated or deceived.

A Half Story | Fall and Redemption

Sometimes we can get so excited about the redemption Jesus brings, we fail to tell any other part of the Biblical story. We are told that our sins are forgiven, which is good news! However, if this is the only part of the story you know, or you mistake this part as being the whole story, much confusion, frustration, and even deception can occur. For example, if this is the only part of the story you know, then you may begin to think that salvation is only about believing certain propositions so that you can go to heaven when you die. Over time, this prioritizes justification over, and even against, sanctification and glorification, which creates an unnatural divide between “being saved” and “being a disciple.” As if salvation is necessary, but discipleship is an optional extra. This reduction also implies that Christianity is an escape from the demands of the real, natural God created world. And worse yet, it opens the door both to the modernist tendency to privilege interior knowledge over the exterior reality of space and time and the gnostic tendency to “de-historicize and de-physicalize the Christian religion.[iv]” This causes a great deal of confusion within the church, leading many to believe that 'spiritual” things are of tremendous importance to God, but 'earthly” or 'physical” things, such as working, playing, eating, sleeping, procreating, exercising, governing, voting, farming, banking, economics, etc., are not. So while many Christians deeply love Jesus and believe in Him, they also wrongly perceive salvation to have little or nothing to do with the majority of their earthly life or with how to order and structure the world around us. This has unfortunately led to a stunted view of the mission of the church. The Bible, however, does not allow for that option; it boldly proclaims that history and salvation are grounded in creation, incarnation, resurrection, ascension, and return! God does not create junk, nor does He intend to junk that which He creates. As it has been said, “It was not worthy of the goodness of God that those created by Him should be corrupted through the deceit wrought by the devil upon human beings. And it was supremely improper that the workmanship of God in human beings should disappear either through their own negligence or through the deceit of demons[v].”

The Full Story | Creation

In the beginning God. With great clarity, these three Hebrew words boldly declare that before anything existed - cows, cucumbers, lions, mountains, algebra, music, butterflies, and supernovas - there was the Triune God, eternally joyful within His triune Self[vi]. The classical Christian confession is this: God is One, but He is also Three[vii]. Why does this matter? Think about it. If God were only one and not also Three, then before creation, that would mean that God would have been completely alone, needing creation to experience, love, productivity, honor, and glory[viii]. The Christian claim, however, is that the reason there is something rather than nothing is sheer gift! The Triune God didn’t gain anything by creating; rather, He chose to share the joy, love, life, and glory He had within Himself. This is why you and I were made!

The Biblical account opens by describing the stage where the story of history will unfold, the heavens and the earth. The heavens and earth are the world you and I live in; however, the Scriptures repeatedly describe them as a three-tiered house or tent[ix], even having foundations and pillars[x]. This isn’t because the ancients naïvely believed the earth to be flat, and now, we with our science know better. It is to help us understand what the world we live in is for[xi]. It is our home built for us by our loving Father. It is the place where we are meant to enjoy God and glorify Him. All three Persons of the Trinity work together over six days to build this good and glorious cosmic house (Genesis 1:1-2:3). At the pinnacle of the creation week, God creates humanity (Adam and Eve), in “His image and likeness” to not only live in this cosmic house but to work in it and care for it. God planted the Garden of Eden, and through Adam’s working and keeping[xii] of it, he would learn how to cultivate the land (2:5), and eventually his offspring would fill and subdue the entire world, transforming it into a garden-city (Genesis 1-2 / Revelation 21-22). As such, humans were made to be a royal priesthood who would worship God and govern the world (Psalm 8).

The Full Story | Fall

When Adam rebelled against his Creator by believing the lie of the serpent over the Word of his Heavenly Father, humanity became sick with sin and death. That sin-sickness affected not only us personally, but also everything under our stewardship (Genesis 3:17-19; Romans 5, 8). The image of God remained in humanity, but to some extent it became twisted, disfigured, and broken as a result of sin. As such every relationship man had, either with God, with others, with himself, or with creation became twisted, disfigured and broken, leading not to life but death (Genesis 3:17-19; Isaiah 24:1-6; Romans 5:1). Adam was kicked out of the garden and cherubim were placed on the eastside[xiii] blocking his return, but God promised to send the “seed of the woman,” who would be born to crush the head of the serpent and lead His people back to Paradise (Genesis 3:15). The rest of the Old Testament tells the story of God preparing the world for the coming of the Seed of the Woman[xiv] (Galatians 4:5; Luke 24:25-27).

The Full Story | Redemption

At the pinnacle of world history, God sent His only begotten Son, the promised Seed of the Woman, the last Adam, to save humanity from their spiritual sin-sickness and their oppression to the devil (John 1:14; 3:16; 1 John 3:8). Christ came as the Last Adam, to undo the damage brought by the first Adam (Genesis 3:15; 1 Corinthians 15:22; Romans 5:15-19). Jesus is the One who remedies humanity’s broken relationship with God, with others, with ourselves, and with creation. Through the person and work of Jesus Christ, we are offered full reconciliation, justification, adoption, sanctification, and ultimately glorification. He is the One through whom the House of God, both the Temple and Cosmos, is and will be rebuilt[xv]. In Christ, we once again have access to the garden and are called to once again called to work and keep the household of God.

In Christ, we really are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), because we have been recreated in God’s image (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 5:17). Salvation, then, restores humanity to its original purpose. We might say that the work of Jesus is to remake human beings; thus is “not a dehumanizing but a re-humanizing enterprise.” [xvi] The early church theologian Irenaeus was right when he said, “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

The church, then, is humanity saved. As such it strives to be a real life model of a truly human society (an ecclesia; an embodiment of God’s kingdom on earth[xvii]) that reflects what the will of God means not only for a renewed relationship with God, but for education, art, politics, work, play, worship, family life, friendship, marriage, economics, etc.; and what all of human life should look like when it is submitted to God’s reign i.e., righteous, orderly, reasonable, wise, holy, patient, etc.

The Bible presents salvation in terms of what David Chilton calls the definitive-progressive-final structure (the already/not yet paradigm or movement between justification, sanctification, and glorification). Salvation was definitively accomplished in the perfect work of Jesus Christ; it is progressively working itself in our lives, and it will be finally achieved in its highest fulfillment when Jesus returns. We have been saved (2 Timothy 1:9), we are being saved now (Philippians 2:12-13), and we will be saved (1 Peter 1:9). As the church, we live in between the definitive and final. As such, we must form our expectations around this reality (Galatians 5). We must maintain this tension to ensure we don’t fall into the ideological traps.

The Full Story | Restoration

The story arc of the Scriptures moves towards this end: Christ is making all things new (Revelation 21:5). Christ is not making all new things, but all things new. Through Jesus Christ, God is reconciling all things to Himself (Colossians 1:19-20). If we find ourselves within the full Biblical story, it gives us new hearts and minds, renewed senses, and a sanctified imagination so that we may live in the midst of history as a witness to the true story of the world!