"In a salvation-defined history, sin is not diminished -- if anything we are even more aware of it -- but it is no longer definitive; salvation is definitive. Salvation provides the terms that set the limits, establish the boundaries, inform the conditions in which wars are fought, gardens planted, marriages arranged, good and services bought and sold, elections conducted, funerals held, football games played, and meals cooked. These limits are grand, exceeding by far what we are used to. Only worship can approximate such conditions.
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A sin-defined history understands history as primarily the experience of what men and women, some better and some worse than us, do. ...
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By contrast, a salvation-defined history accepts all the sin-evidence but penetratingly discerns the sovereignty of God and the work of salvation "in, through, and under" all of it. St. John puts Israel's salvation perspective in an epigram: "he who is in you is greater that he who is in the world" (1 John 4:4). The "he who is in the world" is thoughtlessly and ignorantly presumed to be definitive for history. John, compressing the biblical salvation work into a phrase, says "not so -- he who is in you is greater." We say, "Greater? Are you sure? Can this be true? Is this evangelical bluff? Pious bombast? Maybe this is 'spiritually' true but certainly not historically true."
But Israel never spiritualized salvation. The Song of Moses is emphatically historical, something happened. And what happened continues to happen."
Eugene Peterson
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