"That in all things He may have the preeminence" (Col.1:18)
There is no greater issue that confronts the church today than the centrality and supremacy of Christ. A dim view of Christ's centrality and supremacy tends to hold the Christian in a state of spiritual and doctrinal infancy. For lack of maintaining the heart knowledge of Christ a believer surrenders every spiritual blessing purchased for our sanctification.
1. God purposed for Christ to receive the preeminence in all things.
Christ's role as Creator of the universe, Head of the church, Savior of Sinners, and Judge of the wicked means that all roads lead to Christ. In the end no one can avoid bowing the knee to Jesus. All will come face to face with the Son of God and realize that God made Christ Lord of all. Nothing can be done without Christ's permission. This guarantees that Christ gets the glory, credit, and preeminence in all things! In Eph.3:10 the Apostle Paul said that God will "gather together all things in Christ." Yet as we look at the church today do we see Christ receiving the preeminence in all things? Is the church really as hungry and thirsty for Christ and His glory or is it just paying lip service? Do church leaders sincerely have Christ's preeminence in mind as they lead their assemblies, make most of its important decisions, and wield powerful influence among the brethren?
2. The church is the full expression of Christ.
The church was not saved to preach the gospel mechanically, but to be the vessel that contains Christ, who is the life of the gospel. Ideally, Christ is to be ministered through us. The temptation confronting the Church is to shift its focus from abiding with Christ to merely proclaiming His message. These two duties, to abide with Christ and to proclaim the gospel, are not in competition with one another. Both must be working simultaneously for the gospel to have its greatest impact among the unsaved. They are designed to work harmoniously - flowing back and forth into each other -- never conscious of two separate duties at work -- because the written word (the gospel) and the Living Word (Christ in you) are one. Evangelism's strength rests largely on the quality of our walk with God. The best witness is one who maintains intimacy with God. This enables the believer to manifest the presence of Christ as the unsaved hear the gospel. Christ's sweetness pours through the message and the Lord can be tasted -- "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good" (Psa.34:8). This accounts for the Christian's special role as "the salt of the Earth" (Mt.5:13). The unbeliever comes into contact with "Manna from Heaven" dwelling in the Christian. Therefore, evangelism and good works can be defined simply as expressing Christ to others through word and life.
When the Holy Spirit combines our walk with our gospel we become the message. We are transformed into the full expression of Christ to the world and we "diffuse the fragrance of His knowledge in every place" (2 Cor.2:15). The best way to preach the gospel is to embody its message in our behavior. And what is the message we preach? Christ and Him crucified! When we manifest Christ's personality and presence through our actions it gives bite and power to the gospel we preach. "Let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven" (Mt.5:16). Mere words will change no one. But the word spoken by one whose mouth, mind, heart and spirit are oozing with the presence of Christ will be a mighty witness that Christ lives in His people. This testimony of the living Christ is desperately needed in the world. Hence, if Christ is central to and living in our witness, the world will be brought into contact with the Savior's life, light and love.
3. The centrality and supremacy of Christ will not be a reality without the Holy Spirit's control of the inner man.
The inner man is everything to God. God purposed that His rule and reign over the believer must begin by gaining control over his inner life. The inner life consists of man's mind, thoughts, heart, consciousness, affections and will. If God has control over the inner self everything else man needs will follow. Therefore, if we don't surrender the inner man to Christ how can He be central and supreme in our lives? This lack of Christ's supremacy in the church is ghastly and epidemic. When He planned our salvation God's desire was to live inside His people, not outside. Let me use the Lord's Supper to illustrate this point. In the Old Testament the Jews were commanded to observe thousands of ceremonial laws. Yet in the New Testament God commands only one ceremonial law to be perpetually observed and this is the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. Why is our attention forced to gaze upon this sole ordinance? Why is the Lord's Supper so important? Because in it God make's a powerful statement on the inner life. In John 6:63 Jesus said, "Most assuredly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you." Jesus is saying here that we cannot be saved unless He lives inside of us. His life in us must also be renewed and perpetuated. The bread and wine are not only symbols of Christ's body and blood (justification), but also of taking Christ in (sanctification). The weighty truth imbedded in the imagery of the Lord's Supper that cries out for the believer's attention is that Christ must dwell in and control the inner man or we don't know Him.
Therefore, if you are to grow in your understanding and experience of Christ's supremacy you must first become deeply convicted about the need for Christ to control and regulate your inner man. If the church and its leaders fail to uphold the preeminence of Christ in it's goals, vision, teaching, preaching, prayers, and fellowship, the body of Christ will suffer great weakness and spiritual decline and it's reputation will be marred. How the church responds to the command "Christ in you" (Col.1:27), will determine its spiritual effectiveness in the community and generation in which it exists.
May Christ be restored to the place of centrality and supremacy in our hearts, and may He grant us repentance to the acknowledging of the truth until "in all things He has the preeminence."
Joseph Jacowitz
THE CENTRALITY AND SUPREMACY OF CHRIST
"It pleased God…to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him" (Gal.1:15,16)
1. Everything Tested by Inwardness.
Since Paul's day so very much of Christian activity has been the furthering of a movement, the propagating of a teaching, and the furthering of the interests of an institution. It is not a movement, nor to establish a movement in the Earth and to get followers, adherents, members, support. It is not an institution, even though we might call that institution the church. The church has no existence in the thought of God apart from the revelation of Jesus Christ, and it is judged according to the measure in which Christ the Son of God's love is in evidence by its existence. It is not a testimony, if by that you mean a specific form of teaching, a systematized doctrine. No, it is not a testimony. Let us be careful what we mean when we speak about "the testimony." We may have in our minds some arrangement of truth, and that truth couched in certain phraseology, form of words, and thus speak about "the testimony;" it is not the testimony in that sense. It is not a denomination, and it is not a "non-denomination," and it is not an "inter-denomination." It is not Christianity. It is not "the work" - oh, we are always talking about "the work": "How is the work getting on?" -we are giving ourselves to the work, we are interested in the work, we are out in the work. It is not a mission. It is Christ! "…That I might preach Him." If that had remained central and preeminent all these horrible disintegrating jealousies would never have had a chance. All the wretched mess that exists in the organization of Christianity today would never have come about. It is because something specific in itself, a movement, a mission, a teaching, a testimony, a fellowship, has taken the place of Christ. People have gone out to further that, to project that, to establish that. It would not be confessed; nevertheless it is true, that today it is not so much Christ that is our work.
Now beloved, an inward revelation is the cure of all that. Am I saying too hard a thing, too sweeping a thing? -The existence of all that represents the absence of an adequate inward revelation of Christ. If Christ the Son of God's love is central and supreme in the heart of the believer so much else goes down, it must go down. Controversies with God will divide, but those artificial things, those things resultant from man's activity and his projecting of himself, insinuating of himself into the interests of God, those things cannot abide where there is an adequate inward revelation of the Lord Jesus; they cannot be. These two things are before us: one, because of the revelation of Jesus Christ in our hearts we have a passion for Him; on the other hand, because of the absence of a sufficient revelation of Christ in our hearts we are out for other things which we would say are in His interests, and for Him, but which can never, never satisfy God's heart. It is the satisfaction of the heart of the Father, which is in view.
Beloved I am speaking about the individual. I am not justified, and you are not justified, in claiming to be Christians except in the measure in which Christ is manifested in me, in you; and all the force and weight and ingenuity of hell is out against that. Believers have far more to provoke them to un-Christ-likeness than anyone else in the world. Believers have far more assaults to churn them up and to make them betray Christ than anyone else. Hell is dead set against the revelation of Jesus Christ. Everything begins with this, the revelation of Jesus Christ within.
2. Christ-The Unifying Center and Object.
As I have said before, if we have any other interest that we are trying to further, something that we call a testimony, perhaps meaning by that a system of teaching, or a fellowship, or a denomination, or the contrary, the opposite, any of these things, well, the history will still be more divisions, it is bound to be. If it is Christ, only Christ, central and supreme, we have the answer to the Devil; we have the secret of victory, we have the secret of fellowship, we have the power of His resurrection. Oh, how important it is for us to see that the body represents His victory. The body is His victory in the sense that it is the reversing of all independence, and that independence of spirit or action is a violation not only of the truth of the body of Christ, but of the power of His resurrection.
3. Our Place in Christ's Supremacy.
It is necessary to carry the work of the cross to the full issue of Christ's absolute victory in the realm of all principality and power, in the realm of the authority of darkness. Forgiveness of sins is a great blessing, the atonement for our sins is a great blessing, and to be saved from hell at last and go to heaven is a great blessing. We would not minimize them for a moment or take from the greatness and grandeur of those things because of the infinite cost with which they were purchased for us, but I say again, it is necessary for us to carry the work of Christ through to its full issue, and its full issue lies in the realm of principalities and powers. It lies in the realm of the authority of darkness, the jurisdiction of darkness. That is important for the sinner to know, that it is not only a matter of being forgiven his sins and saved from sin, but that the sinner should know that in salvation all the authority, the jurisdiction of principalities and powers, of the adversary, Satan himself, has been destroyed and broken, and out of that jurisdiction, that authority, that rightful hold of Satan, they have been rescued - rescued by Christ in His cross. It means that Satan has no more power because he has no more right. His power depends on his right, and his right is based upon the state of things in our hearts, and the cross deals with the state of things in our hearts and destroys or removes the ground of his right, and breaks his power.
Carry it right through. Now all that is in Christ for us. Christ in Himself embodies His supremacy over the adversary because in Him there is no one of that ground that that adversary must have upon which to encamp and construct his rightful authority to hold in bondage. In Christ there is no such ground; Christ is in us when we believe and the authority of Satan is broken because Christ is in us. Christ being in us there is no ground for the jurisdiction of Satan. To be delivered not only from sin (let me say it again) but also from the authority of Satan is a tremendous thing. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen…" (Rom.8:33,34). What is the value of that? The accuser comes along and tries to lay a charge against us. What is our ground of answer? Oh, our ground of answer is this: "It is Christ that died, and is also risen." That is the way to answer the accusation of the enemy. Christ has triumphed over sin and over all the ground of Satan's authority. You and I can never meet the enemy in ourselves. He would win the argument every time. But if we present him with Christ, what can he do? "The prince of this world comes, and has nothing in Me" (John 14:30). These are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. What power does the devil have? In Christ's death and resurrection all his power has been destroyed. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" (Rom.8:33). "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col.1:27). Do you follow that? That is the provision God has made, and if only we had a fuller, readier apprehension of Christ we should find that to be the way of victory. What is it that the Holy Spirit works upon in order to make the victory in us actual? It is not our struggles to be better. The Holy Spirit never helps us in a struggle to be better. We may struggle on forever, and die struggling, and the Holy Spirit will not help us if that is the way in which we think we are going to be either saved or sanctified. What is it with which the Holy Spirit will cooperate? It is our faith apprehension and appropriation of Christ as our perfection, as our salvation. "Oh," you say, "yes, but we are sinful and there is so much wrong about us; are we to close our eyes to our own faults and sins?" You are to open your eyes to Christ. Stop looking at yourself and your own sin and get your eyes fixed upon the Lord Jesus as perfection for you to God, and from God to you, and as you take Him by faith - "Not what I am, O Lord, but what thou art" - "I in myself am bad: '. In me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing,' but Lord, You are my salvation, You are my righteousness, You are my holiness, You are my sanctification, I hold on to You for all that" - the Holy Spirit makes that good to us. It is our appreciation of Christ that is the Holy Spirit's ground of activity; that is the way of deliverance.
T. Austin-Sparks
(Taken from the book "The Centrality and Supremacy of Christ" by T. Austin-Sparks)
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