The Gospels

I was looking through some old notes recently and found this from last year. The challenge for me remains, all other issues in my Christian life are secondary to this one.

I have to confess, although it is not easy, that I have never been that keen on the Gospels! I love the Bible and try to read it from cover to cover each year, but I have always preferred other bits to the story about Jesus. I find it hard to admit and even harder to understand why this is the case, but I have come to realise that it is definitely true

However three things have happened over the past few months that have started to change this situation. 

Firstly I have stopped my regular practice of reading from Genesis to Revelation each year to concentrate on just reading the Gospels. As I have done this over and over again, the wonder and beauty and stunning greatness of His life have started to impact me again. My faith is utterly meaningless if not rooted in a historic figure who lived in first century Israel. His teaching is awesome, but good instruction without the instructor is not going to cut it. Christianity is about Christ, about His life-changing life, about His death-defeating death, about His resurecting resurrection. Everything about my faith can look right, but if Christ is not central then everything else is wrong. 

Secondly, I have realised in a fresh way that Jesus is the lens through which we understand every other truth in the Bible. Jesus is the truth of God, the word of God, the revelation of God. All Scripture leads to Him, is empowered by Him and written for Him. Any deepening of understanding of Scripture will lead to a corresponding deepening of understanding of Christ

Thirdly, I have been impacted by Paul's words in Philippians:

[3:8] What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ  [9] and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. [10] I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, [11] and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

I am slowly learning how to say the words 'I want to know Christ' for myself