John Calvin says that being a Christian is all about Jesus: ‘our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ.’ In other words, when we become part of the story of Jesus we enter into the multi-layered story of our salvation:

• our salvation— in his very name
• our untroubled expectation of judgment—in the power given to him to judge
• our protection, security, abundant supply of all blessings—in his Kingdom;
• our gifts of the Spirit—in his anointing
• our strength—in his dominion
• our purity—in his conception
• our gentleness—in his birth
• our redemption—in his passion
• our acquittal—in his condemnation
• our remission from the curse—in his cross
• our satisfaction—in his sacrifice
• our purification—in his blood
• our reconciliation—in his descent into hell;
• our mortification of flesh—in his tomb
• our newness of life—in his resurrection
• our immortality—in the same
• our inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom—in his entrance into heaven

Calvin concludes, ‘In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.’[1]

In the novel, Fight Club, writer Chuck Palahniuk, through the character Tyler Durden, gives voice to a generation without a Metanarrative:

We are the middle children of history—no purpose or place. We have no great war, no great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very ****** off.

In a world without a great war or great depression is left to create its own futile story. What the world needs is a story which is not only worth living for, but worth dying for. In 1 Corinthians, there is such a story. A story which has been foretold and revealed by a divine storyteller (2:10), which Paul reminds the young and troubled church in Corinth, to lead them out of decadence. Such a story, if McIntyre is correct, is eminently practical for, ‘I can only answer the question “What am I to do?” if I can answer the prior question “Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?”’[iii]

[ii] Jean-François Lyotard, La Condition Postmoderne: Rapport sur le Savior (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979), 7.

[iii] MacIntyre, Virtue, 217.