“Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel that I preached to you, that you received and on which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message I preached to you – unless you believed in vain.  For I passed on to you as of first importance  what I also received – that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,  and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures,” – 1 Cor 15:1-4

From a blog post at Pyromaniacs called The Christian’s Priority and Presence: Things We Agree On:

• Among other things, the Christian is the person who boasts only in the Cross; to whom the world has been crucified, and he to the world (Galatians 6:14).
• The sole unique possession that every Christian has, that all his neighbors most desperately need, is the Gospel (Romans 1:16).
• The Gospel is itself not actions nor outreaches nor programs; the Gospel is a message, communicated in words that express propositional truths (Romans 10:14-17).
• While what we do may at best adorn the Gospel, it must never supplant or eclipse the Gospel (cf. 1 Timothy 2:10; Titus 2:10).
• The message and aim of the gospel is redemption (Galatians 4:5; Titus 2:14) not merely reform.
• The gospel itself is the only instrument of redemption; it “is the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16).

The life of the believer in Christ begins at, and ought to revolve around the Cross of Christ, His death and resurrection. Too many times we remember that our lives began at the Cross, but in the conduct of our lives, and in the sharing of our lives and testimony with others we seem to go right back to focusing on ourselves. Instead of dying to ‘self’ as Jesus and the Apostles taught, we get wrapped up in ourselves in more subtle ways. Sure we talk about Christ, but mostly with terms and in ways that seem to include a lot of personal pronouns, betraying who is REALLY at the center of our lives. I call it the tyranny of self and I suffer from it as much as anyone else.

In our Bible studies, wherever and however they are conducted, we get wrapped up in ‘our’ insights, whether they be in the text or not, even patting ourselves and each other on the back for being so ‘deep’. In our conversations with those who do not yet know Christ, we are apt to spend a lot of time ‘proving our spiritual points’ and omit the very message of the Cross that we are to convey (1 Cor 15:1-4). Or, we present our ‘transformed lives’ as proof of the power of the Gospel, but fail to share the message itself!

Interestingly enough, I don’t see much of the ‘us’ described above, in the pages of the New Testament. The Apostle Paul, with the equivalent of several post-graduate degrees, refused to draw on his own intellectual prowess and preached the simple message of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:1-5). When conversing with the intellectuals of his day, he (Paul) unashamedly brought the discourse to the foot of the Cross and the power of the Resurrection (Acts 17).

Should we who profess Christ act otherwise?

Have a blessed weekend,

Dan