Probably the most important thing I’ve learned over the past few years is to need to make the cross central in my life and in ministry to others.
What Professor Carson wrote about “many evangelicals” was true about me:
For too long, many evangelicals have viewed the cross exclusively as the means by which God in Christ Jesus achieved our redemption.
from The Cross and Christian Ministry, D.A. Carson 2004
I’m learning that the cross is of first importance to those who lead God’s people. Currently I’m reading Carson’s The Cross and Christian Ministry, a short reworking of a series of messages given to Christian leaders on selected texts from 1 Corinthians. The book contains five chapters: The Cross and Preaching, The Cross and the Holy Spirit, The Cross and Factionalism, The Cross and Christian Leadership and The Cross and the World Christian.
There’s a lot to chew on in this short book. I’m finding I need to read it slowly and in small sections. Here’s a great quote from the Preface,
Of course, no Christian would want to minimize the centrality of the cross in God’s redemptive purposes. But if we view it as the means of our salvation and nothing more, we shall overlook many of its functions in the New Testament. In particular… we shall fail to see how the cross stands as the test and the standard of all vital Christian ministry.
- The cross not only establishes what we are to preach, but how we are to preach it.
- It prescribes what Christian leaders must be and how Christians must view Christian leaders.
- It tells us how to serve and draws us onward in discipleship until we understand what it means to be world Christians.
[as Christian leaders] it is utterly imperative that we self-consciously focus on what is central – on the gospel of Jesus Christ. That means we must resolve “to know nothing… except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2), in exactly the same way that Paul made that resolution. This will shape our vision of ministry as much as it will shape our grasp of the centrality of the gospel.
