Why Understanding The Storyline of the Bible is So Important

Kevin DeYoung:

I reread part of Carson's Christ and Culture Revisted yesterday. I commend it to anyone interested in this whole area of discussion. Carson concludes with a sympathetic, yet critical assessment of Kuyper that I found very helpful. One of the salient points of the book is that Christians must pay attention to whole storyline of Scripture: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Re-Creation. If we ignore creation we will not bother to care about the world nor will we see anything good in it. If we ignore the fall we will be too optimistic about the world's chances for self-improvement and too prone to baptize every seemingly good idea as "kingdom work." If we ignore redemption we will lose sight of the centrality of sin, Christ, the cross, and the needed for repentence and faith. If we neglect re-creation we will think of salvation as nothing but fire insurance. Carson makes the case much more lucidly than I do, but you get the picture. Keep the whole narrative in mind: that's good advice and can spare us a lot of mistakes.