Can’t we just get on with loving God, living for Christ, serving his people? Don’t Bible colleges just mess people up? Doesn’t doctrine divide? Aren’t we supposed to have a child-like simple faith? Why turn something living and joyful into something intellectual and boring?
Last week in Nakuru the iServe Africa ministry training course focused on the dreaded D-word: Doctrine. Why? Well for one thing – Mark 12:30.
“I love theology precisely because I love God. I love thinking about the one I adore. Theology is not the study of a topic. It is gazing at a Person.” (William Atkinson, Senior Lecturer in Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies, London School of Theology)
And who is this person? Jesus. As we were learning last week, Jesus is the full and only revelation of God, the only face of the Triune glory (Matthew 11:27; John 1:18; 14:6-10; 2 Cor. 4:6; Col. 1:15 – see also the work of Glen Scrivener (mediating Luther) which I’ve found immensely helpful on this). Why exactly is gazing at Jesus so vital and wonderful?
- Gazing at Jesus is life – John 3:15; 17:3.
- Gazing at Jesus is practical – Not pragmatic but practical. He is Wisdom so to shut our eyes to him is foolishness. He is the light without which we’re stumbling around in the dark, clueless to the point of life. To see him is to see the one in whom all things hold together, The Great Story that makes sense of everything. To see him is to see an unexpected God – a humble-to-death-on-a-cross God – and that vision redefines everything: leadership, marriage, ambition, life itself.
- Gazing at Jesus is humbling – Both because he is a so far above us – the awesome, sovereign holy one before whom Job, Ezekiel and Peter prostrate, offending our Me-centred-ness – and even more so because (incredibly) he puts himself so far below us – the one who washes our feet and serves us with sacrifice, offending our self-righteous DIY religiosity.
- Gazing at Jesus teaches us to say no to ungodliness and to live godly lives – Titus 2:11-14.
- Gazing at Jesus is how we keep going to the end – Hebrew 12:3.
Three more from Kris Lundgaard (mediating John Owen):
- Gazing at Jesus gives rest, satisfaction and peace to our souls – Rom. 8:6; Phil. 3:7-11.
- Gazing at Jesus whets our appetites for heaven – 1 Thess. 4:17-18; Phil. 1:23; Col. 1:27; Psalm 16.
- Gazing at Jesus is transforming – 2 Cor. 3:18.
fidelnyikuri
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Utumishi Blog 
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