God Commands Believers
Be Holy
Trained In Holiness
The canonical Gospels’ metanarrative is the story of God entering the world to begin the last act of His creation narrative’s purpose: Training a people in holiness to fellowship with throughout eternity (Gen 3:8; 1 Cor 1:9; 1 John 1:3).
God commands mankind, created in His image, to be holy, because He is holy (Gen 1:27; Lev 19:2). The biblical codices are God’s story about His work in doing so. All stories share a basic literary structure called the plot.[1]
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The Author organizes His plot so that the audience receives the story He wills them to receive. The difference between God’s story and that of all other authors is its inerrancy, infallibility, and authority.
God’s Word is a series of contiguous covenantal subplots sharing His unchanging, unfolding narrative to create a holy people unto Himself that fellowships with Him in eternity. The biblical metanarrative plot’s problem is mankind’s unholiness.
Their behavior is the problem God creates His holiness training plan to solve.[2] Through a series of contiguous covenants, God grows holiness in His chosen people.
How I Frame It
I frame God’s grand narrative around His purpose behind creation. Within the framework lives many sub-plots, problems, and God’s solutions to those problems, covenants; planned before creation.
God needs no contingency plans for His work to create a holy people unto Himself. There is no force, entity, or creature outside of God’s control able to disrupt, delay, or deny His plan (Heb 4:13; Rom 8:28; Eph1:11).
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Most men assign attributes to God they develop through their own worldly trial-and-error experiences. It is difficult for believers to accept God created evil for two reasons. First, they do not believe a loving God would do it.
Second, they do not understand how, if He did, it serves His plan. God is His creature’s Father. Like all good fathers, God wants only the best for His children. This requires the ability, desire, and patience to teach, train, and discipline them.
The difference is God fulfills His obligation because He is holy, and mankind does not because he is not. God’s people need holiness training. That is the Bible’s big picture narrative.
Why God?
God created the universe out of nothing, creation ex nihilo, for His glory and enjoyment. The LORD’s omnipotence and self-sufficiency bring Him glory through creation.
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God creates the universe because He can, not because He had to. The LORD creates man in His image, the image of holiness, to glorify Himself and bring enjoyment to Himself. This begins God’s work, outside of Himself.
God wills to teach, train, and discipline His Chosen people in holiness so they can fellowship with Him from everlasting to everlasting (Ps 103:17).
Evil
The soft explanation of evil’s existence in the world posits God allows it to exist. Man’s attempt to justify evil’s presence in the world seeks to attribute its creation outside of God.
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This leaves one to speculate on evil’s preexistence, or its creation by something other than God. Neither choice is biblical. If anything exists, that God did not create, then God is not who He says He is.
Since God created all things, and uses evil to grow holiness in His people, He separates it from them before enjoying fellowship in eternity with them.
God’s promise to restore, renew, and reconcile the righteous, His Elect, while condemning the wicked, is the administration of justice we all deserve.
Your Voice Matters
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God chooses a remnant to pardon and enjoy eternal fellowship within His heavenly kingdom. Like the fellowship shared among the Godhead; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they share their love, peace, and joy with the Chosen ones.
The remnant’s unity within the Godhead is the consummation of the Bible’s story about their progressive covenantal salvation, the creation of a holy people unto God.
The Gospel In the Plot
This post posits the gospel is more than the story of “Our great God and Savior Jesus Christ(‘s)” (Titus 2:13) enthronement at the right hand of God the Father in heaven.[3]
It is about Christ‘s teaching, preaching, and exemplifying holiness in the world for those God gave Him (John 17:2) to emulate. Jesus, ascending to God’s seat of power, accomplishes nothing for the unholy.
Thank you for reading The Flaming Sword
The chosen study, hear, and see holiness in the world through God incarnate in creation. While surrounded by evil, Jesus enters the world to judge it and save a people to fellowship in eternity with.[4]
Creation, Evil, Judgement, Fellowship
The Bible’s metanarrative unifies Scripture from Genesis through Revelation by going beyond contemporary salvation history and the cross.
This big picture narrative contextualizes the contiguousness of God’s salvific covenantal progressive story. It tells how holiness grows from everlasting to everlasting in the Chosen’s unfolding training program.
God’s work to create holiness in the remnant explains why He called the universe into existence, uses evil to sharpen it, judges the quick and the dead, and pardons a people for fellowship with Him in eternity.
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[1] Kaz Yamazaki-Ransom, “Re-visioning the Grand Narrative of the Bible” (Liberty University, Lynchburg, VA, Spring 2025).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Matthew W. Bates, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), 47.
[4] Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 134.