Much has been said in recent years about a “biblical worldview.” Here are some aspects of such a worldview that I include in my teaching and preaching:

• The centerpiece of God’s activity is Jesus. As God incarnate, Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection gives us the best picture of who God is and what God is up to.
• God was, is and will be an active agent in the world (conta deism).
• God is not the only effectual agent in the world (contra determinism).
• God’s activity is centered on healing/restoring Creation and overcoming sin and all its consequences. (A view of Christian Perfection writ large)
•  Jesus’ ministry (i.e., the total of his life) was spent in identification with and suffering for undeserving sinners, a truly amazing act on the part of the sovereign, almighty, God of the universe.
• God’s purpose, at least since the call of Abram, has been to produce a people who are his very own, and the salvation God seeks to work out is most clearly expressed (at least in this age) through that people. (contra individualism)
• Through the presence of the Holy Spirit in every believer individually and in the church corporately, we are equipped to be the people God wants us to be. However intelligent, skilled and practiced we become, we never get to the point where we can be the church apart from the activity of the Spirit. (contra Max Weber’s theories of the routinization of charisma)
• God’s call to the church to be a suffering people echoes through the ages from Jesus’ invitation to his disciples to take up their crosses all the way to us today. (contra the modern practice of the comfort centered life)
• The salvation Jesus offers is for all people (contra five point Calvinism), they will probably never know unless we tell them, and it will cost them if we do not tell them and they do not come to faith in Jesus (contra universalism, laziness and smug self-satisfaction).
• The church’s story line (as well as the story lines of individual believers) are extensions of the biblical story line. In Christ, God invites us to become willing participants in that story line.