Christ is “It”
We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord.
I Corinthians 4:5
By diverse paths and through varying experiences God’s men through the ages have arrived at the simple conclusion that what matters is Christ Himself, in doctrine, in experience, in preaching. We assume that everybody knows this, but here is our weakness. We assent to it theoretically, but we take it for granted and what we take for granted we never take seriously. We assume it but we ought to assert it. What we take as a matter of course we should be shouting from the housetops.
My own personal experience, reached through several stages, has arrived at the conviction with which I should have started – that the issue is simply Christ Himself. Familiar? Yes, but do we need anything so much these days as to familiarize ourselves with the familiar?
It is so perilously easy to preach less than Christ Himself – our own experience, a pet doctrine; a partial, fragmentary Gospel; a phase of Christ, a facet of His character instead of Himself, in whom all is included. This is “It,” “Christ Jesus the Lord” – Messiah, Mediator, Master.