Making Much of Jesus

Along the same vein of how the church views the Gospel I was recently listening to a new song by Steven Curtis Chapman called “Much of You” on his new album: All Things New. I immediately wondered if he had read John Piper. Lo and behold Chapman reflects on how his reading of Piper’s Don’t Waste You Life changed how he viewed things and led to is writing of “Much of You”.

The whole concept of how we present Christ is wrapped up in the idea that we are to make much of Christ not the other way around. Chapman writes:

This is Your love,
oh God Not to make much of me
But to send Your own son
So that we could make much of You

All too often the way evangelism is presented is the other way around and is as all too focused on man and not God. The more I contemplate this I think at issue is that often evangelism dictates theology rather than theology driving evangelism.

I pray that the churches preaching and teaching would more focus on making much of Jesus than making much of man. It is, I feel, a desire to build up man’s self esteem that probably drives this not scripture. Scriptures focus is Christ from Genesis to Revelation not man. Man is a central character but not THE central character. Let us change our evangelism to be God centered and not man centered and then we may see true conversion and not surface conversions that are nothing but emotionally engineered decisions.