The Effect of Focus

The Church tends to focus on the cross of Christ: His passion, His death, and His burial. In His suffering for us we find healing and atonement: His body, broken for us; His blood of the New Covenant, poured out for many for the remission of sins. He was wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities, and by His stripes we are healed.

These are all essential aspects of the Gospel message, but they are not the focus of apostolic preaching. Many, if not most, of the world religions understand the import of personal and/or substitutionary sacrifice. It was not the teaching that Christ died for our sins that brought scorn from the unbelievers, but the news that God had raised Him from the dead.

The central teaching that the apostles never left out is that of Christ's resurrection. That the God-Man died and rose again makes the difference between the religions of legalism and the Gospel of grace. Not only did God atone for our sins, He rose, validating our forgiveness, and still reigns! On the heels of that great Truth, He not only rose, but ascended and returned to dwell in and through those who accept His atonement.

We who believe and follow are not only forgiven and redeemed, we are also regenerated, adopted, indwelt, empowered, and actively directed by the living Christ. We are not merely the purchased people of God; we are the Body of Christ: His flesh and voice to the world around us.

The Church today often seems so anemic, so comatose, so dead alongside the vibrancy and unstoppable growth of the Church we see in Scripture. It is said that we become like that on which we focus. How much of the difference is due to time, culture, doctrine, or organization? And how much comes from focusing on the dead and buried Christ rather than the resurrected, ascended, and soon-returning Christ? Is the Church becoming dead and buried? Or are we rising up and moving into all that Christ saved us for?

"If Christ be not raised ... we are among all men most to be pitied." 1 Corinthians 15:14-19