Christ Centered Preaching Essay

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Introduction

As Christ is the center of the Gospels and Epistles—the ultimate endpoint of the Old Testament—the epicenter of all human history, and the One Being upon Whom our salvation depends, it is imperative that Christ ultimately be the center of all expository sermons. Even if Christ is only indirectly the heart of expository preaching, the fact is that nothing else can occupy that place. Christ is the “way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). No sermon can be complete without Him. One way to include Christ in one’s preaching, no matter the subject, is to approach the sermon from the theological aspect of Fallen Condition Focus (FCF), which is a way of framing the message within the fact that we are all in need of saving (because of our fallen condition) and that only Christ offers the grace—the means—by which we can be saved (Chapell, 2005). Thus, even if a sermon is focusing wholly on the Old Testament scriptures, it is possible to make Christ the center of the sermon by way of FCF (Wright, 1992). This paper will show why it is necessary to always preach Christ in some type of way in all expository sermons.

Christ as Logos

In the beginning was the Word, as John 1:1, reminds us: and the Word was God. Christ is the Logos—the Word, that John speaks of—and He was there from all time, the second Person of the Holy Trinity. This mystery is helpful in seeing how Christ can be the center of all expository sermons, even if the exposition is focused on a piece of Scripture that is not explicitly related to Christ. Essentially, it must be understood, that all Scripture—from the Old to the New Testament—is directly related to Christ, because Christ is like the North Star shining light upon all the Words of God. Christ is the One Who makes the words meaningful, as He is the Lamb of God, the One foreshadowed through all the various characters of the Old Testament, and the One Who takes away the sins of the world in the New Testament. A connection can be made to Christ from the simplest verse in Scripture to the most complex verses. Christ is the heart of Scripture, because He is, as John says, in the Beginning—the Word—the Logos that illuminates the world with life and grace and meaning.

In textual or topical sermons, a preacher will use a specific idea found in Scripture to make a larger point. These types of sermons are easier in many ways to relate to Christ, as Christian-living is the message that most sermons aim to communicate. The Scripture is used to support the main idea of the sermon. In expository preaching, the Scripture verses are the main idea. They are the focus of the sermon—not just the support used to drive home a separate idea that is developed by the preacher. In expository preaching, the preacher examines a particular passage, places it in context, studies its grammar—the words that are used and that carry significant meaning—and the historical setting of the verses themselves. All of this is used to help give clarity to the passage and to help the preacher better explain it to the audience.

How then does the Logos tie into expository preaching? Simple: The Bible is the Word of God—and Christ is the Word of God. Even in Scripture passages that do not clearly identify the Person of Christ, the Word is operating to bring souls to God and thus to Christ through the Holy Spirit. As Chapell (2005) notes, “Precisely how the Holy Spirit uses scriptural truth to convert souls and change lives we cannot say, but we must sense the dynamics that give us hope when we preach God’s Word. The Bible makes it clear that the Word is not merely powerful; it is without peer or dependence” (p. 27). The Word has in hand in creating, controlling, convicting, purposing, and overriding weakness, as Chapell (2005) goes on to state. And, furthermore, it cannot and must not be forgotten that the Word is has forever been linked to Christ thanks to John 1:1. Chapell (2005) iterates this point as well: “By identifying Jesus as his Word, God indicates that his message and his person are inseparable.

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The Word embodies him” (p. 27). Christ as Logos is the meaning—the ultimate sub-text—of every word in Scripture: it is the seed from which the life of the Bible springs; it is the soil, the life-giving nutrients that the message requires in order to fully grow into the fruit-bearing tree it is meant to become.

Chapell (2005) explains it thus: “Christ’s redemptive power and the power of his Word coalesce in the New Testament, with Logos (the incarnation of God) and logos (the message about God) becoming so reflexive as to form a conceptual identity” (p. 28). The person of Christ is explained by His divinity, His eternality, His being there from beginning; His presence and omnipresence—His knowledge of all things. Nothing in history, in time, in any place no matter where, is hidden from His mind. So it is that every piece of Scripture, every passage and verse, is ultimately oriented towards Him—because He is oriented towards it and His grace and beauty run through it, even like a phantom thread that is unseen by eyes that do not comprehend the larger canvas that is unfolding before them.

Additionally, as Wright (1992) points out, the Old Testament is best understood in the light of the Christian revelation—and Christ is best understood in the light of the Old Testament. He is the fulfillment of the Old Testament narrative—the climax that is promised but delayed. He is foreshadowed by so many characters from Adam to Isaac to Moses to David and on. The Old Testament points to Him just as He points to His Father in Heaven. It is a circuitous route: the Father creates, man falls, Christ redeems and brings man back to the Father. Yet Christ is truly present throughout it all—throughout the entire narrative, as He is the Logos Who is there from the beginning: “So when we turn the page from the Old to the New Testament, we find a link between the two that is more important than the attention we usually give it. It is a central historical interface binding together the two great acts of God’s drama of salvation. The Old Testament tells the story that Jesus completes” (Wright, 1992, p. 16).

Identifying the Theme

Christ also speaks to us and to the preacher’s audience through the themes that can be found continuously through all of Scripture—themes of Redemption, Covenant, Inheritance, and so on. The main theme that runs through Scripture, of course, is the theme of the fall from Grace. Constantly, Scripture is telling the reader or reminding the reader of the fallen human condition and the need for grace and for redemption. A preacher who adopts the FCF approach to Scripture and to expository preaching cannot fail to find Christ at the heart of whatever passage he is examining. Christ’s heart pulses within every word of Scripture because the entire history of the Jews and Christians is bound to the heart of God by this pulse—the pulse of the fallen, in need of the Blood of the Lamb to renew it.

As Chapell (2005) states, “Since the Word is the mediate presence of Christ, service is due” to the text of Scripture in the same sense that service is due to the Church, to God, to the faithful, to one’s neighbor (p. 28). Just as the Holy Spirit finds in each person a Temple, the preacher must find in the….....

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