Chapter Two: The Story from Above

Before you look at chapter 2, let me take this opportunity to say that I haven’t dropped any footnotes in this manuscript and I don’t think it would be a good idea to put a bunch of them in the finished product, but I do see including a “for further reading/study” list at the back. A lot of what I’ve written in this manuscript has been shaped by the following writers/thinkers/theologians: N. T. Wright, Scot McKnight, Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, Robert Webber, and some others that I can’t think of right now.

If you haven’t read the introductory remarks to chapter one, you might want to take a look before you read chapter two.

I’ve tried to keep each chapter to about 1000 words. That’s a tight fit sometimes. There is always more that can be said, but my goal for each chapter is to say just enough. Thanks for reading and offering helpful feedback.

Chapter Two: The Story from Above

The Bible is long book that seems to tell a pretty complicated story, spanning thousands of years, written in three languages, with hundreds of characters known by hard to pronounce names. Yet on the other side of that complexity is a plot so simple it?s stunning. At its heart, the Bible tells a story of good news about God and God?s world. We call this good news story ?The Gospel.?

The gospel story can be summarized in a number of ways. It all depends on the perspective from which the story gets told and the point from where we choose to start the telling. We usually start with our problems and needs and what the gospel story has to offer people like us. How does the gospel benefit us? What can we get out of this story? These are the questions we want to have answered above all others.

These questions have their place and we?ll get around to answering them, but they?re not the best place to start the story. Instead, let?s start with where the Bible starts.

?In the beginning, God . . .? Genesis 1:1.

The gospel story starts (and ends) with God. He?s more than the main character He?s the author who writes himself into the story. So it makes sense to ask, ?What is the gospel from God?s perspective? What is God up to in this story? What kind of story is God telling?? Once we start to get a grasp on what the gospel is about from God?s perspective we can then start thinking about the story from our perspective.

It?s crucial that we get this order right. It will change the way we see God, the world, and our place within the story. Rather than asking, “How does God fit into my life and what I’m doing?” let?s ask ?How does my life fit into God and what God is doing in the world??

So here?s a summary of the gospel from God?s perspective, or at least it?s the best we can do to piece together what the Bible says about how God views the world. If we were actually able to see everything from God?s perspective it would break our hearts and blow our minds and leave us curled up in a corner repeatedly murmuring ?More oatmeal please.?

For summary purposes we can break the story up into three major scenes. (Insert suggested scripture references along the way for further reading.)

Scene 1: Creation and Fall (Genesis 1-3)

In the beginning, God created everything you can see and everything you can?t. God?s creative activity was a labor of love and God loved what he created. When he finished God said, ?This is good, very good.? And it was good. Creation was at peace. There was a sense of wholeness. Cosmic harmony. ?Shalom? is the fancy word for this.

Human beings are God?s favorite part of creation. He created them, both male and female, in his image. By creating humanity in his image, God gives them the ability to love God and each other and to exercise God?s authority in the world. Humanity is created to be God’s partners in loving and caring for and continuing to create good things in the world.

God also gives human beings the freedom to think for themselves and make their own choices. Faster than you can say ?big mistake,? they use their freedom to rebel against God. They go their own way and evil enters the world. Some call this act of rebellion ?The Fall.?

The result is that God’s good world is broken in every way imaginable. The image of God in humanity is scarred and distorted by the forces of evil. Love and community give way to selfishness and violence. Human creativity develops a self-serving shadow. The earth is cursed and groans under the weight of the burden. Shalom is destroyed.

What was once very good goes bad in a hurry. God honors the choices made by those created in his image and allows it to happen. But that doesn?t mean that God is content to leave his broken world in a state of disrepair. God loves his world too much to sit back and watch it spin completely out of control.

Scene 2: Redemption

God sets a plan in motion that will reverse the curse that has come upon his creation. Just as God created humanity to be his partners in caring for creation, he also partners with humanity for the purposes of redemption.

He invites Abraham and his family to be his partners in bringing a blessing to the world. He partners with a prophet named Moses to help Israel (Abraham’s family) become a light in a dark world. He partners with famous people like King David and with people we’ve never heard of.

It?s a beautiful plan, but it has a fatal flaw. God’s partners keep failing to uphold their end of the deal. They can’t break free from the forces of evil that have enslaved them. They continue to rebel against God even as he tries to save them.

Since God can?t find a suitable human partner, God enters the story as a human being–Jesus Christ. (The fancy word for the idea that God became human is ?Incarnation.?)

As Jesus, God comes into the world to defeat the forces of evil and restore the image of God in humanity by showing them how to live. This is what we see Jesus doing through his life, death, and resurrection. We?ll talk more about the specifics of what Jesus did and how he did it later on.

3. Restoration/Recreation (Rev. 21-22)

Jesus is the catalyst that sets off a chain reaction in the world that will eventually bring about a complete restoration of God’s creation. What was broken in the fall will be repaired. Evil will be extinguished once and for all. The Gospel story ends with God’s good but broken world being transformed into a new heavens and new earth. In the end, shalom will once again be the norm for God?s world.

In each of these three scenes, God is the star of the show. He does all the heavy lifting and gets all the credit. He creates, redeems, forgives, heals, restores, and repairs. As the star, God let?s his beauty, creativity, faithfulness, wisdom, strength, mercy, grace, and ultimately his glory shine into the darkness so that his world can be healed and so that his image can be restored to his favorite part of creation.

From this top-down perspective, the gospel is a story about a God who will stop at nothing to overcome human rebellion and defeat the forces of evil in order to put his broken world back together again.

Now let?s reverse the angle and tell the gospel story from the bottom-up.