It is not controversial to claim that the Bible tells a story of the world in which we find our place and role. The controversy comes when we say that this story is a metanarrative about the meaning and destiny of universal history. Scripture, as N. T. Wright puts it, “offers a story which is the story of the whole world. It is public truth.”

Furthermore, God’s mission to redeem world is the main story-line of the narrative that the Bible tells. Christopher Wright “sees the mission of God (and the participation in it of God’s people) as a framework in which we can read the whole Bible. “Mission he says “is a major key that unlocks the whole grand narrative of the canon of Scripture.” While a traditional interpretation of the missio Dei revolves around ‘sending’—the Father sends the Son, who both send the Spirit and the church is certainly true, Christopher Wright would rather speak of God’s mission in terms of his long-term purpose or goal to restore people from all nations and the whole creation. This is helpful in that we can often be shortsighted. Thus, the “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 of God’s creation.” The mission of God’s people, then, is our participation in God’s mission, playing our role in God’s redemptive purposes: “Fundamentally, our mission (if it is biblically informed and validated) means our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission, within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation.”

Therefore, the horizon of God’s mission to the ends of the earth is central to the biblical story from the beginning. God’s purpose and intention is to restore all nations, all peoples, all cultures, indeed all of the creation from the sinful rebellion of humanity and its effects. In this way, God’s redemptive purpose is comprehensive, putting to death sin, rebellion and idolatry.

From Michael W. Goheen, “Notes Toward a Framework for a Missional Hermeneutic“