This is Part 2 in a four-part series on “Identity” leading up to our 2025 Conference on the same topic. For more info and registration details, click Here.
In the previous article (Part 1), I surveyed the three contrasting characteristics of worldly identity and Christian identity and argued for the superiority and necessity of Christian identity for a faithful, fruitful life. In this article, I will demonstrate the importance of the biblical metanarrative in forming Christian identity.
Metanarrative: Definition and Significance
The counselling session is story time: our counselees share their stories, and we counsellors try to connect their streams of story to the ocean of God’s story.
Our lives are a sum of stories we live in and live out—past, present, and future. Each story has a unique setting, character, plot, conflict, and theme. Each of us writes and interprets our stories—whether knowingly or unknowingly. Although we are seasoned story people—story-makers, tellers, and interpreters, we still search for a grand story with which all our stories can make a home. Like a baseball player running to home base, we need a story that can lead us toward our eternal home.
Let us call this grand story a metanarrative. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries define metanarrative as “an overall account of things that enables people to find belief, pattern and meaning in their experiences.”[1] The value of a metanarrative resides not only in the story itself but also in its applicational value. If our stories are bricks and mortar, this grand story is the foundation of the house—we build our story house upon this foundation. Due to its significance, the loss of a metanarrative can be regarded as “the loss of a sense of a single framework within which the whole of human experience can be understood by all participants in that human experience.”[2]
Scripture teaches that no other narratives can provide a central framework for human beings to comprehend God, the universe, and themselves; instead, it testifies that only a biblical metanarrative is suitable for such an important task. This biblical metanarrative works as the bedrock of Christian identity since bearing Christian identity means grafting one’s life story into God’s bigger, all-encompassing narrative.
Three Levels of Biblical Narratives
In his book, The Biblical Metanarrative: One God – One Plan – One Story, Bill Jackson argues that “the story of the Bible is being told at three different levels simultaneously.”[3] He labels these three levels as: the big picture, the strategic picture, and the detailed picture. The big picture is “the overarching level” which “has to do with the great, redemptive narrative.”[4] This big picture refers to the what of God’s plan, and it helps readers of Scripture to understand smaller narratives in the Bible in light of God’s redemptive history.
The strategic picture, refers to the how of God’s plan: it depicts “God’s strategy to accomplish his plan” through “the creation of a nation called Israel, the people of God, the summing up of that nation in the Messiah, and the grafting of all Gentile nations into the people of God.”[5] The detailed picture, “has to do with all the individual stories of the Bible in their local contexts.”[6] In other words, the detailed picture shows how the rest of the stories in the Scriptures flesh out the big picture and the strategic picture. The larger context provided by the first and the second levels helps the readers to understand all biblical narratives according to God’s redemptive plan.
Understanding biblical narratives on three levels can provide us with a theological framework to understand and interpret our life experiences in light of God’s redemptive history. For example, we can see our suffering with a renewed vision and react differently based on the biblical metanarrative. Scripture teaches that “ the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18), and the entire Scriptures testify to this glory. With eternal hope, we can even rejoice in times of suffering because “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom. 5:3b-4).
Living Out Biblical Metanarrative Wholeheartedly
To establish a solid Christian identity, we must adopt this grand story of the Bible in our lives. Let’s be clear, adopting the biblical metanarrative does not mean simply having extensive knowledge about the Bible; rather, it means embracing God’s story wholeheartedly. You might ask, “What does it mean to adopt the biblical metanarrative wholeheartedly?” Simply put, it means actively engaging with it in our daily lives using all three functions of our heart: cognition, affection, and volition. In his book, The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life, Jeremy Pierre explains the three functions of the heart:
Human experience is three-dimensional. The human responds cognitively, through rational process based on knowledge and beliefs. It also responds affectively, through a framework of desire and emotions. It also responds volitionally, through a series of choices reflecting the willful commitments of the heart. These three aspects of the heart’s response are all a part of how people were designed to worship God.[7]
As Pierre explains, all three functions of the heart must be actively involved in the process of Christian identity formation—holistic transformation and progressive sanctification.
Let us talk about how we can embrace God’s grand story using our heart’s functions. First, cognition: we—both counsellors and counselees—should learn the grand story of Scripture and trust it as a true narration of God and his creation. As Pierre argues, people “interpret a situation based not only on beliefs directly related to the situation, but on a whole framework of beliefs, many of which they are less aware.”[8] In light of the cognitive function, we should teach ourselves and our counselees the biblical understanding of our inherent worth as image-bearers (e.g., Eph. 2:10, 1 John 3:1) and our identity in Christ (e.g., 1 Pet. 2:9, 2 Cor. 5:17). Having a solid foundation of the knowledge of, and faith in Scripture’s grand narrative is essential, regardless of what the presenting problem is.
Second, affection: we must love God and cherish Scripture’s metanarrative over other stories because love is the motivation in forming new habits and transforming our lives. Helping someone who struggles with the kind of body image that the world glamourizes, we can bring the following counsel: (1) remind them of how God sees them (e.g., 1 Sam. 16:7, Ps. 136:13-16, 1 Cor. 3:16) and (2) encourage them to grasp the body image that matters most—the glorified body, which will be theirs one day (e.g., Phil. 3:21, Phil. 3:20-21, 1 Cor. 15:49). In short, we must be thoroughly attracted to and affected by the surpassing beauty and absolute authority of the grand story and the Storyteller to fight off the competing stories that the world offers.
Third, volition: we should commit ourselves to and make choices based on Scripture’s grand narrative. We make choices every day based on our underlying cognitions and affections. According to Pierre, choice is “the outflow of complex structures of commitments,” and “commitment is the heart devoting itself to something it deems worthy.”[9] Just as “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (Jas. 2:17b), our knowledge of, and love for the Lord must be applied daily. A person struggling with body image, based on the renewed cognition and affection described above, can now choose to steward one’s body with a healthy diet and regular exercise without being overly concerned about the outward appearance. Love for God the Father and understanding how God the Son views us matter far more than how other people perceive us. Only then can we begin to work through our struggles constructively, with the help of God’s Spirit.
Questions
How does Scripture’s grand narrative help you reinterpret your story, especially the painful, confusing, and challenging stories?
If you are counselling someone, how can you connect your counselee’s stories with the biblical metanarrative?
[1] Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, “Metanarrative,” accessed August 18, 2020,https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/metanarrative?q=metanarrative.
[2] Robert Hunt, “Christian Identity in a Pluralistic World,” Missiology: An International Review 37, no. 2 (April 2009): 181
[3] Bill Jackson, The Biblical Metanarrative: One God – One Plan – One Story (Corona, CA: Radical Middle Press, 2013), chap. 2, sec. 3, para. 1
[4] Jackson, The Biblical Metanarrative, chap. 2, sec. 3, para. 1.
[5] Jackson, The Biblical Metanarrative, chap. 2, sec. 3, para. 6.
[6] Jackson, The Biblical Metanarrative, chap. 2, sec. 3, para. 1.
[7] Jeremy Pierre, The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life: Connecting Christ to Human Experience (Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2016), 12.
[8] Jeremy Pierre, The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life, 38.
[9] Jeremy Pierre, The Dynamic Heart in Daily Life, 44-45.
Jeemin Moon is a native of South Korea and is Director of Biblical Care & Counselling Studies at Heritage College & Seminary. He is pursuing a PhD in Biblical Counselling at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary under the supervision of Dr. Jeremy Pierre. Jeemin holds a BA in Counselling Psychology a BA in English (Handong Global University, Pohang, Korea), an MDiv in Worship Leadership, and a ThM in Biblical Counselling (both at SBTS). He also serves as a music ministry director at Grace Bible Church in Cambridge, ON
