Is Christocentric Preaching the Only Way to Preach?
Does every sermon have to lead us to Jesus?
I recently attended a terrific seminar on Scripture and preaching at Singapore Bible College. It was a great discussion with three panelists, all pastors in churches, where they discussed preaching.
One topic that came up was christocentric preaching. The way of using Scripture, both OT and NT, to point to Jesus.
Now this is something I generally agree with because we find a lot of examples of christsocentric preaching by Jesus and the apostles! For example:
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. (Luke 24:25-27).
You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (John 5:39-40).
We tell you the good news: What God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. (Acts 13:32-33).
If you read someone like Melito of Sardis, his sermons really do find Jesus everywhere in the OT: Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, etc., these are all types of Christ.
So christocentric preaching is biblical and part of the historical practice of preaching.
At the same time, I have always believed that christocentric preaching can be overdone, sound a bit cheesy, and needs to be supplemented in other ways.
I often ask my students, “If confessing the Trinity were a crime, what evidence would there be in your preaching to convict you?” Which is to say, we are not Jesus-only preachers or worshippers, we worship the triune God, so we preach the triune God.
Similarly, we must never forget the moral vision of Scripture, even if we must be alert to avoid moralizing.
I once remember Richard Hays writing about an ecclesiocentric interpretation of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 10, where Paul wrote, “These things happened to them [the punishment of the Hebrews] as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come” (1 Cor 10:11).
My point is that christocentric preaching is good, legitimate, and biblical - let’s have more of it! But it should be nested within an account of the work of the Triune God, rehearse the moral vision of Scripture, and even notice the church’s place in God’s purposes!
For a gentle critique of christocentric preaching, the type championed by the Reformed tradition, read the terrific article by one of my former doctoral students, Rev. Dr. Jason Hood, on Christ-Centred Interpretation Only? Moral Instruction From Scripture’s Self Interpretation as Caveat and Guide.
So keep preaching Jesus … but with a few more threads attached!
I with you Mike. Thanks. My experience of listening to and reading about Christocentric preaching is that the role/Work of Christ can be emphasized at the expense of the Person of Christ. The best Christocentric preaching takes us to the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, as the lectionary does, and not just to his role in salvation history. Sorry, but my first comment like this one doubled, so I deleted one, and it deleted both.
This is a helpful perspective. I think of the many (too many) sermons where, at a certain point in the preaching, my wife and I would lean in to each other and say something like, "here it comes..." and the preacher would essentially copy and paste the same sermon tag. Usually something like, you're rubbish deserving judgement, but lucky Jesus died for you. I've seen some pretty tight shoe horning of substitutionary atonement into sermons over the years!