Narrating God’s Story Theologically
Mission of God
1. God—the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Spirit—created a blessed community with whom God dwelt in communion and with whom God partnered in order to fill, develop, and care for God’s good and blessed creation toward the divine goal and to enjoy God’s blessed seventh day. Yet, humanity created a rival story with its own agenda.
2. So, God blessed Abraham in order to bless all peoples. God dwelt with Israel, and God called Israel into a partnership to live redemptively among the peoples in order to illuminate God’s intent for the creation, draw all the peoples to God, and fill the earth with the knowledge and glory of God. Yet, Israel embraced the way of the peoples rather than pursuing God’s agenda, though God’s redemptive purposes were not thwarted.
3. Because of this brokenness, the Father sent the Son to reconcile all things. The Son dwelt in the flesh for commo-union, ministered as Israel’s Messiah in the power of the Spirit for the in-breaking of the kingdom, was put to death in the flesh for sin, was made alive in the Spirit for righteousness, and enthroned as new humanity at the Father’s right hand for the beginning of new creation in order to place every power under the rule of God.
4. So, the Father, through the Son, sent the Spirit to dwell among and renew, through faith in the Messiah, God’s partnership with renewed Israel, which heralds, embodies, and performs God’s mission. God’s people, filled with the Spirit, are sent into the world for the sake of the whole creation in order to lift up the Son to draw everyone to God and to fill the earth with the knowledge and glory of God through missional communities. Yet, these communities often fail, though God’s renewing Spirit is not thwarted.
5. These missional communities, embodying the divine mission, lead to God’s goal: the mutual indwelling of the Triune God with redeemed humanity as God dwells within a renewed, redeemed creation where righteousness, justice, and peace fill the creation.
This is the missional story of God—begun in (1) creation, restarted in (2) Israel, climaxed in (3) Jesus, continued in the (4) church, and fully realized in the (5) new heaven and new earth. This is the five-act drama of God’s narrative–a theodrama.
What is “missional”?
God’s story is about dwelling and filling—God dwells in order to fill. This is God’s missional agenda. The mission of God is performed in communities grounded in, shaped by, and moving towards the goal of God’s creation.
Missional Hermeneutics—Reading the Bible Missionally
“In short, a missional hermeneutic proceeds from the assumption that the whole Bible renders to us the story of God’s mission through God’s people in their engagement with God’s world for the sake of the whole creation.” Christopher Wright, “Mission as Matrix for Hermeneutics and Biblical Theology,” Out of Egypt (2004) 122.