To be faithful to the gospel means treating Christ and His redeeming death and resurrection as matters ‘of first importance’ (1 Cor. 15:3-4). And yet, through the centuries, Christians have managed to downgrade Jesus, cast Him in their own image, or use Him as the icing to sell some other agenda.
But that is not the evangelical way. Evangelicals look to Scripture to know Christ, and there they find the unique Son of God, exclusive in His glorious identity and completely sufficient as a Saviour.
The Gospel of John opens like a parting of the clouds with the most glorious possible assertion of the unique identity of Christ: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men’ (1:1-4).
The one who would take flesh (v. 14) was the Word spoken out by the Father in His work of creation in Genesis 1. This Word of God displays the innermost reality of God’s being.
It is that eternal title of Christ’s, ‘the Word of God’, that John focuses on in the first few verses of his Gospel. From verse 12, however, his emphasis shifts to another eternal title. At first, there is only a hint: ‘to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.’ But what sort of being could give that blessing of adoption? Only one who is ‘the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth’ (v. 14). Only ‘the only God, who is at the Father’s side’ (v. 18).
John has thus affirmed for Christ an identity shared by no human teacher or saviour-figure in any other belief system in the world. And on that identity the gospel stands.
John has also shown why Christ-centredness is not imbalanced, as though such devotion to Christ disregards the Father and the Spirit. Christ’s very identity is the Word who reveals God, and the Son beloved of the Father, and the Spirit-anointed one (or ‘Christ’). To put Christ at the centre of our theology is to do like the Father, who has His Son at the centre of His ‘purpose’ (Eph. 1:9-10). To bear witness to Christ is to keep in step with the Spirit (John 15:26-27) who inspired the Biblical writers for that very purpose (5:46). ‘Christ alone stands at the centre of God’s eternal purposes, Christ alone is the object of our saving faith, and therefore Christ alone must stand at the very centre of our theology.’
To say that this principle has been vital for the church is not to say it has been easy to keep. Fallen sinners naturally gravitate toward anything but Jesus, even when that thing is religious. Christ can be eclipsed or added to by other gods or ideals, by works or by doctrines.
In Knots Untied, J.C.Ryle explains that this principle can in fact be spoiled in two main ways: ‘You may spoil the Gospel by substitution. You have only to withdraw from the eyes of the sinner the grand object which the Bible proposes to faith, – Jesus Christ; and to substitute another object in His place …
‘You may spoil the Gospel by addition. You have only to add to Christ, the grand object of faith, some other objects as equally worthy of honour, and the mischief is done.
As Scripture alone is our supreme authority, so Christ alone is our only hope. Only through Him do we know the glory of the living, triune God.
And, importantly, the gracious acts of God in both revelation and redemption are complete in Christ. Here, we are right at the heart of what makes the good news good. Because Christ’s redemptive work is entirely sufficient, the gospel is God’s kind work of rescue, not his offer of assistance. It is not a call for the strong and good to prove themselves, but for the weak and bad to prove the depths of the mercy of Christ.
Redemption is accomplished by Christ alone, and needs no topping up from us. This is true not only with respect to Christ’s death: all of Christ’s redemptive work is achieved without our contributing to it. It is one reason evangelicals have historically been so eager to defend the virgin birth, for it emphasises the miraculous nature of our salvation. Likewise with His resurrection and ascension and return, we do nothing; Christ does everything.
Yet it is Christ’s death that is central to His redeeming work. It is the ‘hour’ for which He came into the world (John 12:27). It is, above all, in His broken body and spilled blood that He wished to be remembered by His disciples. It is, therefore, classically evangelical to say with Paul: ‘… far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 6:14).
