I also tried to depict texts (albeit not perfectly) that showed the call to be a more corporate matter, instead of relating specifically to a personal relationship.

That’s worth pointing out - I rather assumed you were bending everything to a personal agenda. Sorry.

However, my fear is that all too often the ‘truths’ we pick to recognize are purely social in nature and not the central truth of redemption in Jesus Christ.

The fear is perfectly legitimate and reflects the mess that our theology is in: either personal salvation or social justice. That should be intolerable. What the narrative approach allows us to say is that we are incorporated into a people that has been redeemed, rescued from the destruction of God’s wrath. To my mind that ‘redemption’ should be understood as a corporate process, anticipated in Jesus, whereby the community of Jesus’ disciples remains faithful to YHWH in the face of suffering and overcomes the oppressor - in other words, the story of the Son of man (cf. Lk. 9:21-27).

That redeemed identity is never lost - any more than Old Testament Israel ceased to be a people that had been delivered by YHWH from slavery in Egypt. And in becoming part of that people we must, as Paul puts it, put off the old human nature and put on the new, put off the old creation and put on the new creation. We can articulate that as a personal dying and rising with Christ, for example; but that has been made possible because the corporate drama has been acted out. It is Israel that dies and rises with Christ - it is Israel that is torn and stricken and raised on the third day (Hos. 6:1-2). We find our ‘salvation’ within that historical narrative.

Imagine a dirty polluted river. At great personal expense a benefactor builds a filtration plant at a certain point and downstream from there the water flows pure and river life abounds. We cannot now go through that filtration plant ourselves - we are too far down the winding valley of history - but we can wash and thankfully jump into clean water. The good news in the Gospels is that a filtration plant was about to be installed. Our good news is that we can now swim in that purified river. More importantly - and here the metaphor creaks a little under the strain - we can splash water on the banks to startle and refresh people who, out of curiosity or thirst, approach close enough.