Are Your Jesus-centred? (Gal. 3:20)

Paul and Barnabas had taken the gospel to the region of Galatia during what we call Paul’s First Missionary Journey. They had planted churches in different places and had seen God do amazing things as they preached about Jesus. There had been opposition in some places, nevertheless conversions had taken place. So when they returned to Antioch they had wonderful things to describe to the church there that had sent them on the mission journey.

Yet things in Galatia had not remained healthy in a spiritual way. Other teachers came to Galatia from Jerusalem and affected those new churches. The message they brought seemed innocuous because they liked to refer to Old Testament passages where God had given details about how his people should live. So they said to the new Christians, ‘God wants you to keep these laws. In fact, you cannot be right with God unless you do.’ Many of the new Christians were influenced by what these teachers said and moved away from what Paul had taught them.

As we think about this alternative message, what ideas come to mind? One must be that this message turned Christianity into a performance religion rather than a religion of grace. A second is that it turned Christianity into a religion that was concerned about peer pressure rather than about what God had said. And a third was that inevitably it led to pride in how the individual was doing in keeping the law.

The basic problem with the alternative message was that it was a Jesus plus something message. It was not sufficient to have Jesus alone as the centre of the Christian life. We should realise that such an idea is not limited to the false teachers who disturbed the churches in Galatia. The problem with Jesus plus messages is that inevitably they remove Jesus from the centre and the plus, whatever it is, becomes the centre, the test of authenticity.

What does it mean to be Jesus-centred?

The question that we should then ask is, ‘What does it mean to be Jesus-centred?’ To say that we believe in Jesus alone does not mean that we ignore other persons of the Trinity. There is no salvation possible, for example, without the work of the Holy Spirit in regenerating sinners and giving new life to them. Nor can one be a Christian without being adopted into his family by the heavenly Father. A Jesus-centred person will delight in the activities of the Father and the Spirit as well as in the particular activities of Jesus.

Moreover, if we are Christians we will follow the teachings of the Bible. Jesus himself made that clear when he instructed the apostles to teach disciples what he had said. He had also told some disciples to take his yoke on them and learn from him. The problem with the false teachers in Galatia was that they did not understand what the Old Testament and the apostles said about Jesus. But if we are Jesus-centred, we will obey his commandments.

I suppose the matter of concern is basically how we live the Christian life. Paul mentions in this passage how we start this new life when he refers to being justified by God without obedience to the works of the law. We know this was a central concern of the Reformation, of how a sinner becomes right with God. The church by that time had lost almost all sight of the gospel and had as many rules connected to their practices as the false teachers in Galatia had done.

The gospel tells us that we don’t have to do anything in order to be forgiven. We discover that Jesus has suffered in the place of sinners when he paid the demands of God’s justice on the cross. Of course, we respond to the gospel with repentance, with sorrow for our sins, but we are not forgiven because of the degree of our sorrow. We also respond to the gospel with faith in Jesus, but we are not forgiven because of the strength of our faith. Instead we are forgiven for the sake of Christ.

At the same time as we are forgiven by the Father, we are also given the standing of justification in his presence. In justification, we are given the righteousness of Jesus as our righteousness. The righteousness of Jesus is his obedience to the law. Each of us is required to obey the law, and none of us can. But each of us can have the righteousness of Jesus as our righteousness. It is a present from God of the best performance and given to those who each have failed performances.

The Galatians imagined that they had found something better. It is not surprising that Paul calls them foolish Galatians. They thought that somehow they could help God in the development of their Christian lives when they adopted those new insights. In reality, they were departing from him instead of remaining close to him. And we can see how serious Paul regarded this when he called down a curse from God on those who were promoting the new insight.

How do we live as Jesus-centred people?

No doubt, we could answer this question in different ways. But we can think about what Paul says in this verse. The first detail he mentions is that we have to recognise that the person we were before conversion is dead in a spiritual way. This is what Paul means when he says that he has been crucified with Jesus.

Paul was a very accomplished person before he met Jesus. He was also a very religious person before that encounter took place. If we had met Saul of Tarsus before his conversion, he could have answered most of our religious questions. We could even have asked him about what the Old Testament said about the Messiah and he could have given some answers. The obvious problem was that he did not think Jesus was the Messiah.

Yet, as he wrote this letter to the Galatians, he says that he was crucified with the Messiah, which is a reference to Jesus. But we know that Paul was not crucified literally with Jesus. So what does he mean? He means that he was regarded by God as being united to Jesus when he died. The death that Jesus died when he was crucified did something for Paul (and to all others who trust in the Saviour). He became a new kind of person because of the cross.

A Jesus-centred person defines himself by the cross. Yet we know that to speak of crucifixion was to refer to something that was shameful. But it is obvious that Paul was not ashamed of the cross. If we could move Paul literally to Calvary and ask him where we should put him, he would want to be placed with Jesus because there Jesus was providing the basis for Paul to become a new creature. At Calvary, the old Saul of Tarsus died.

Paul then goes on to say that he is now alive, but not in the sense that he was before he met Jesus. Now he is alive because Jesus, the source of life, lives in him. He is not referring to Jesus literally living inside him. Instead he is describing the amazing fact that Jesus lives inside him by the Holy Spirit. Jesus had promised this about the Holy Spirit when he said in the Upper Room that he would send another Comforter, another here meaning ‘of the same kind’. The Holy Spirit would be the same in Paul’s inner life just as if Jesus was there. Why does a Jesus-centred person not need all those extra rules that the false teachers were requiring? In addition to defining himself by the cross, such a person experiences in his inner life the incredible power of the risen Christ changing him by the ongoing work of the indwelling Spirit.

A third detail that Paul then mentions for a Jesus-centred person is a living faith in the living Saviour. Paul did not promote a passive involvement in this wonderful relationship he now had with Jesus. Instead, it was active constantly – we can see this detail in the little word ‘now’. Paul is describing is new life and what marks it every day of the week is that he lives by faith in the one he recognises as fully divine – the Son of God. What does the Holy Spirit, who lives in believers, produce in them? He produces ongoing faith. That is why Christians are termed believers.

What kind of faith does the Holy Spirit produce? Obviously it is a relationship. I can have faith in a politician to do certain things, but that faith cannot be described as a relationship. It is only a response that may be disappointed or may be pleased with the politician. But it does not bring me close to him. In contrast, the Holy Spirit brings living contact between the Christian and Jesus. Sometimes, the believer may think that he is clinging by a thread, yet he should remember that the one who created the thread and maintains it is the Holy Spirit. At times, the contact may be confession of sin, at other times there may be other aspects of communion as the believer interacts by faith with Jesus.

In addition to producing ongoing contact between a Christian and Jesus, the Spirit also gives from Jesus to the Christian. That is how the faith continues. Jesus had informed his disciples in the Upper Room that one activity of the Comforter would be to take of the things of Christ and reveal them to the disciples. In this life, and maybe also in the next, the work of the Spirit is to show to believers the riches contained in the promises of God. All these promises belong to each believer because he or she is in Christ.

How does this work out day by day? A believer is drawn by the Spirit to muse on one or more of the promises. And as he does so, his faith is enlarged, his faith is stimulated, and his faith is excited by what there is in Christ. His faith, by the enablement of the Spirit, moves from one promise to the other. And this process enables the believer to sense the nearness of Jesus, even although he is in heaven.

The last detail of a Christ-centred person that Paul mentions here is that such an individual is marked by gratitude to Jesus. We see Paul’s gratitude in his description of Jesus as the one ‘who loved me, and gave himself for me.’ Surely we can see in Paul’s description both an expression of wonder and an expression of gratitude. Both, of course, are very personal. They reveal why Paul did not adopt the false ideas of the teachers of error who had disturbed the churches. The love of Jesus for Paul was eternal and the giving of Jesus for Paul was entire. Because that was true, Paul was a Jesus-centred Christian.

What now?

As we close, we can make some brief observations. Firstly, a Jesus-centred believer receives assurance because he is not grieving the Spirit who is working in his heart to teach him about Jesus and make him like Jesus. Such a believer knows that he has passed from death to life.

Secondly, a Jesus-centred believer is marked by adoration of God, of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for the incredible plan of salvation that is in existence, and which is being worked out in the lives of sinners as they become increasingly focussed on Jesus.

Thirdly, a Jesus-centred believer has one great aim, which was expressed by Paul in Philippians 3:10 as knowing Jesus more and more. This does not negate other aims, but it does govern them. The priority in his life is this incredible relationship with his Saviour, one that has begun in this life and which will continue in the next world.

Fourthly, connected to this assurance, adoration and aim is the desire to affirm to others that Jesus is precious. This is the case with regard to fellow-believers and with those who are not yet believers. Such affirming is part of who they are and is done in a gracious way. But Jesus-centred people will speak about him to others.