If you ever feel discouraged about your lack of progress in the Christian life, remember the words of 1 Corinthians 15. Let the words you find there bathe you once again as you reflect on Christ’s accomplishments, rather than focusing on your failures. He died and was buried in your place. Though you feel unworthy and condemned, in Christ you are graciously accepted and reconciled. And he not only bore your sin but was also raised again to new life, objectively—for you. It has already been accomplished.

If I were to ask you to write down the most important things taught in the Bible, what do you think you might include on your list? Worship, prayer, discipleship, faith, heaven, grace, the Trinity?
Now this next question is a little harder. Which of the topics that appear on your list would you end up placing at the very top? In other words, what is the most important topic in all of Scripture? Would you be able to come up with a single answer to that question, or do you think it’s just too difficult to rank biblical topics in this way?
Jesus himself said that some matters of the law were weightier than others.
You may be tempted by the thought that because the Bible is God’s inspired word, all its precepts are of equal weight and value. Yet, Jesus told the Pharisees, “You tithe mint and dill and cumin, but have neglected the weightier matters of the law:  justice and mercy and faithfulness” (Matt. 23:23). Now of course it wasn’t that tithing mint, dill, and cumin were unimportant things, but according to Jesus they apparently carried less weight and significance when compared with the much more important themes such as justice, mercy, and faithfulness.
There is also another passage in Scripture where a lawyer asked Jesus which of the commandments found in the law of Moses was the greatest. And as you may recall, Jesus didn’t end up saying that all the commandments were of equal value and importance, but he instead cited the words of Deuteronomy chapter 6, which says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This he said, “is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:36-40).
There is an important distinction between the most important commandment in the Law and the most important thing in all of Scripture.
Perhaps, then, following Jesus, we could say that “loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength” is the most important thing in all of Scripture. Well, if we consider carefully the lawyer’s original question, he didn’t actually ask Jesus, “What is the most important thing in all of Scripture,” but rather, “What is the most important commandment recorded in the Law of Moses?” This, as we’ll see, is an important distinction.
The thing we should notice at this point, however, is that Jesus didn’t seem to have any difficulty ranking various biblical themes in the order of their importance. And so, in light of this, what do you think every Christian should place at the very top of their list? What biblical idea should be considered the thing of first importance?
The apostle Paul reminds the Corinthian church of the most important thing in all of Scripture—the gospel.
Thankfully, we don’t have to go through the difficult process of weighing and comparing all the doctrines of the Bible in an attempt to answer this question, since the apostle Paul has already done the heavy lifting for us in the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 15:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures… (1 Cor. 15:1-4)

According to verse 1, Paul makes clear that he is writing to the Corinthians in order to remind them of the gospel of Jesus.
In many churches today the focus ends up drifting away from the gospel to other things.
Now, I’m convinced that in far too many churches in our day the gospel appears to be taken for granted. And because it’s something that many pastors simply assume that everyone already knows, over time our focus ends up drifting away to other things—things that are more practical, relevant and me-centered.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, July 17, 2022
God made all this with a word. Think how much bigger he is than me. Imagine the biggest thing possible, God is bigger. In every way you could possibly imagine and many we could not. Marvel at the God who spun the stars on his tapestry. And then realise he’s grander than that. And bigger than that. And more wonderful than that. And be drawn into the worship of the one who Anselm called That Than Which None Greater Can Be Conceived.

Have you ever stood next to something truly huge? The typical examples are the Grand Canyon or a giant Redwood tree, but I’ve not been to North America. My huge things are smaller—in part because my green and pleasant nation is.
I remember how small Edinburgh looks from the top of Arthur’s Seat, or the dramatic view up Dovedale in the winter, or how big the sky is in Yorkshire, or Durdle Door rising from the sea by Lulworth Cove.
When you see something naturally big, or beautiful, or dramatic, or just find a standpoint that makes what our hands have made look small, it’s easier to reflect on the Lord who made them. There’s something worshipful about it. We think about how big Yahweh must be that he made these beautiful things with his voice as he spoke them into being. We start to write our own version of Isaiah 40—he scooped Dovedale with his fingers, he stoops to find Arthur’s Seat.
Here’s the thing. He’s a lot bigger than that. We’re like grasshoppers to him (Isaiah 40). Except the difference is much bigger. Ok, we think, like he scooped Dovedale but times a thousand, wow! Except that’s not it either, we’re making a category mistake.
Before I go on, I want to head off a thought. This reads at the moment like a well ackshually comment from that kind of theologically informed but emotionally dead person you find on the internet who wants to ruin your faith with all their minutiae. I should know, I’ve been that guy. I don’t want this to be that. Please keep gazing at trees and mountains and thinking “wow!” about the God who made them. That’s absolutely the right thing to do, and the Old Testament is chock full of it.
What I’m hoping to do is make your apprehension of God bigger, but we should still have our mind blown by the stars.
We could scale this up, look at what we know about the Universe and think “God made that! He must be huge!”
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The Gospel writers communicate the providential ordering and pattern, as John stays in the wilderness (so to speak), while Jesus will emerge with the fullness of the Spirit from the wilderness to conduct His mission in the land of Israel. John as Jesus’ forerunner begins and ends his ministry in a way that shows how the kingdom he has preached will come: by defeat in the eyes of the world, but victory in the plan of God. Having set the stage for the coming King, John is then removed from that stage. Or is he?

The relationship between John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus is one of the most fascinating in the Gospels. They are blood relatives through their mothers Elizabeth and Mary, and in a very memorable family reunion between the miraculously pregnant women, John in the womb recognizes and rejoices in the presence of Christ (Luke 1:39–45). Later in their lives, they are each misidentified and mistaken for one another: early in his ministry, John is thought to be the Messiah (John 1:19–20), and then in the middle of His kingdom activity Jesus is feared to be John raised from the dead (Mark 6:14). In his preaching, John points to Jesus as the preeminent Lord and “coming one” (John 1:26–29); Jesus in His public proclamation points back, saying, “Among those born of women there has arisen no one greater” than John (Matt. 11:11).
The great movement from prophecy to fulfillment is realized as the Lord sends the trailblazing messenger and then the triumphant King. John sums up the “Law and the Prophets,” and Christ fulfills them (Matt. 11:13; 5:17). Taken together, they represent the very climax of God’s redemptive revelation in terms of the “old and the new”—Augustine’s lovely phrase is thus applicable not only to two testaments, but to two men: “The new is in the old concealed, the old is in the new revealed.”
This symbiotic interplay between John the baptizer and Jesus the baptized (“anointed”) opens up a very significant theme in the gospels: to recognize the identity of the one means to realize the identity of the other. It is no accident then that when the temple authorities present an inherently skeptical question: “By what authority are you doing these things, or who gave you this authority to do them?” Jesus responds with a question of His own: “Was the baptism of John from heaven or from man? Answer me” (Mark 11:27–33). The assumption is that if John’s ministry is accepted as carrying the authority of God Himself, Jesus’ also bears this same authority in consummate form. If one rejects John’s prophetic word, however, such recalcitrance will only be magnified when confronted by the word and presence of Jesus.
One of the most memorable summaries of John’s ministry comes from his own lips when he says, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Before universalizing this statement to apply to all ministers of the gospel, it is important first to particularize it in the character of John himself. Remarkably, this utterance concerning the necessity of his own diminishment for the sake of the enhancement of Christ is fulfilled in the very pattern of John’s life and death. For instance, Jesus commences His public preaching of the kingdom only after John is first arrested and imprisoned (Matt. 4:12; Mark 1:14).
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