Jesus Manifesto — A Marvelous Christocentric Book!

Heh folks,

If you know anything at all about my theology, you know that I’m deeply committed to remaining centered on Christ. My conviction is that everything – and I mean everything — we think and say about God has to be anchored in Jesus Christ. Jesus is not one of God’s revelations. He’s not even the most important of all God’s revelations. Jesus is rather in a class by himself. He is the one and only Word of God, image of God, form of God and perfect expression of God’s essence (Jn 1:1; Col. 1:15; Phil. 2:6; Heb. 1:3). He is the one and only way, truth and life (Jn. 14:6). Next to him, it’s as though no one (including O.T. authors) really knew God or revealed God (Mt. 11:27; Jn 1:14). No one except Jesus could ever say, “If you see me, you see the Father” (Jn 14:9).

In my opinion, nothing is more important than holding fast to this Christocentric principle. I’m convinced that at the foundation of all the nonsense that’s ever been incorporated into Christian theology over the centuries  — and there has been a whole lot of nonsense! – you’ll find  a compromised commitment to remaining Christ-centered. Think about it. If theologians had remained thoroughly Christocentric, do you think they’d ever have come to the conclusion that God is “too perfect” (!) to experience passion, or to suffer, or to be impacted by human choices, or to change in any respect, or to be involved in time? Believe it or not, this is the heart of the classical view of God, and yet it’s absolutely antithetical to the revelation of God in Christ.

In any event, given my Christocentic passion, I was delighted to be sent an advanced copy of a book called Jesus Manifesto, by Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet. While I (of course) don’t agree with every one of their exegetical points, I love the intensely Christ-centered focus of this book. In essence, this book is a powerful prophetic call for the church to stop getting pulled into things we’re not called to be involved in (e.g. politics anyone?) and get back to the “one thing that is needful – Jesus.” We are called to be the body of Christ, and the one and only thing we need to be concerned with is staying connected to our head and carrying out the mandates of our head. I give it an enthusiastic thumbs up!

You can find out more about Jesus Manifesto here and you can order the book here. (By the way, did you know that if you order any book from Amazon through our website, CVM gets a small “kickback”? Just a thought.)

Stay focused on Jesus. Nothing else matters.

Greg