Today at the Vine I preached on the Gospel-Centered church through the lens of the meta-narrative of scripture. The meta-narrative is a fancy way of saying the big story of scripture which includes four main chapters, the creation, fall, redemption, and recreation. Why explore the Gospel within the context of this framework? Well, it’s kind of like reading the manual before taking pictures with your new camera. You could certainly skip learning about the whole camera and how all its features work together, but you’ll never get a consistently good product without a comprehensive understanding of the overall capability.

Here’s a few more reasons it is helpful reflect on the Gospel (and all of life) through the meta-narrative of the scriptures.

• Sometimes we get too hung up in the church focusing on individual passages of scripture and we miss out on the greater story of scripture. Kind of like missing the forest for the trees. Interpreting individual passages through the lens of the bigger story gives those passages richer context and meaning. 
• Our suffering in this life finds more hope when we recognize that those who follow Christ are part of a story that ends with complete healing, vindication of all evil, and restoration of all that is good.
• The meta-narrative confronts our tendency to be dualistic (i.e. physical world bad, spiritual world good). The reality is, God created a physical universe and will one day recreate that universe in the new heaven and new earth. This has all sorts of implications for how we view our stewardship and enjoyment of creation (environmental issues, art, vocation, creativity, etc.)
• If we embrace the meta-narrative we can better avoid the churches tendency to over emphasize one “chapter” at the cost of the whole. (i.e. creation only thinking leads to naturalism, sin only thinking leads to moralism, cross only thinking leads to dogmatism, recreation only thinking leads to pentecostalism). 
• Once we know the big story of scripture we see that our God is a God on mission. A God who is advancing his Kingdom on earth. Why would we not want to contribute to so great a story?
• The narrative magnifies the amazing gift of the Gospel by showing us that the cross is the central solution for the problem of sin. More than that, the narrative helps us to see how the cross is at the center of our eternal worship in the new heaven and new earth. In other words a perfect eternity is one where the cross is central, where we worship the lamb (Jesus) who was slain for the sins of the world. 

Below are some graphics that detail the overall story of scripture represented by the creation, fall, redemption, and recreation.