Christ is Preeminent

Preeminent—that Christ might be preeminent and placed above all things. Let us think of Jesus Christ above all things, underneath all things, outside of all things, and inside of all things. He is above all things but not pushed up. He is beneath all things but not pressed down. He is outside of all things but not excluded, and inside but not confined. He is above all presiding, beneath all upholding, outside of all embracing, and inside of all building.

We are committed to Jesus Christ, our Lord, alone. Our relationship to Christ is all that matters, really. I believe that a true Christian’s faith is an attachment to the person of Christ in total commitment to Him.

Several things are involved in this attachment to the person of Jesus Christ.

There is an intellectual attachment. To follow Jesus Christ forward in complete commitment, total commitment, means there has to be an intellectual attachment to Christ; that is, we cannot run on our feelings or wisps of poetic notions about Christ. We have a good many bogus Christ’s among us these days, and I believe that as followers of the Lamb, we are obligated to point out these bogus Christ’s, show them up for what they are, and then point to the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

We must warn people today that if they have an imaginary Christ and are satisfied with an imaginary Christ, then they must be satisfied with an imaginary salvation. That seems to be the bottom line with us. Our salvation is no better than our perception of Christ. If that perception is flawed, our salvation is also flawed.

In our world today, there are many Christ’s, many Lords, and many Gods. We have a knack for dreaming up a God of our imagination that satisfies us at the time. However, our message is that there is only one Christ, and those who follow Christ have an attachment to Him that is an intellectual attachment, that is, they know Christ theologically.

There is the romantic Christ of the female novelist, the sentimental Christ of the half-converted cowboy, the philosophical Christ of the academic egghead, the cozy Christ of the effeminate poet, and the muscular Christ of the all-American athlete. We have these kinds of Christ’s, but there is only one Christ, and God has said about Him that He is His Son.

The Athanasian Creed says that “Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is God and man: God of the substance of the Father, begotten before the worlds; a man of substance of His mother, born in the world; perfect God and perfect man, subsisting of a reasonable soul and human flesh; equal to the Father as touching His divinity, and inferior to the Father as touching His manhood, who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two, but one Christ.” This is the Christ we adore, and we must have knowledge of this; that is, we must have the Christ of Christian theology.

I would never have anything to do with any book or any movement or any religion or any emphasis that does not begin with Christ, go out from Christ, and return to Christ again—the Christ of God, the Christ of the Bible, the Christ of Christian theology, the historic Christ of the Scriptures. He is the One, so we must have an intellectual attachment to Christ. You cannot simply let your heart run out to Christ with some kind of warm feelings about Him and not be sure of who He is. This is the essence of heresy. We must believe in the Christ of God; we must believe in who God said He is.

Tozer, A.W., Delighting in God (Series Book 1), GroMedia, 2021, “Christ is Preeminent,” Perlago.

https://www.perlego.com/book/2742803/delighting-in-god-aw-tozer-series-book-1-pdf.