The Preeminent Subject of Preaching
The gospel is most certainly to be believed, studied, and exemplified in our lives, yet the great emphasis in the New Testament is on proclaiming it. At the very beginning of His earthly ministry, “Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God” (Mark 1:14). At the end of His ministry, He commanded His disciples, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15).
The book of Acts bears abundant testimony that the apostles and early church understood and obeyed their Lord’s command. Preaching was their preeminent ministry, and the gospel was their preeminent theme. They literally devoted themselves “to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). They would not divert from this sacred task even when faced with other valid needs (Acts 6:1–4); even when it was contrary to the laws of men (Acts 4:18–20); even when it evoked the whip (Acts 5:40), the rod (Acts 16:22–23), stocks (Acts 16:24), chains (Acts 12:6–7; 16:26; 21:33; 22:29; 26:29; 28:20), stones (Acts 7:58–60; 14:19), and swords (Acts 12:2).
The primacy of gospel preaching is further revealed in the epistles of the church’s most prominent missionary, the apostle Paul. The gospel was the message that he delivered as of first importance (1 Cor. 15:3). Regardless of what cultures desired or men thought they needed, Paul did not yield to their petitions but gave them the only remedy prescribed by God. He wrote to the church in Corinth, “Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified...the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:22–24). Samuel Davies wrote,
“We preach Christ crucified!” The sufferings of Christ, which had a dreadful consummation in His crucifixion; their necessity, design, and consequences, and the way of salvation thereby opened for a guilty world these are the principal materials of our preaching! To instruct mankind in these, is the great object of our ministry, and the unwearied labor of our lives. We might easily choose subjects more pleasing and popular; more fit to display our learning and abilities, and set off the strong reasoner, or the fine orator; but our commission, as ministers of a crucified Jesus, binds us to the subject; and the necessity of the world peculiarly requires it! (1)
Such was the prominence of the gospel in Paul’s catalog of preaching themes that he declared to the church in Corinth, “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). This does not mean that Paul did not expound on other matters of the Christian life, but he saw the gospel message as the very foundation on which the church was grounded and erected. If the church’s understanding of the gospel was faulty to any degree, it would bring ruin to the entire edifice (1 Cor. 3:9–11). Thus, the gospel was the treasure of Paul’s heart, the focal point of all his study, and the great theme of his preaching. Davies continued,
[The preaching the gospel] was not the apostle’s occasional practice, or a hasty wavering purpose; but he was determined upon it. “I determined,” says he, “not to know any thing among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified!” [1 Cor. 2:2]. This theme, as it were, engrossed all his thoughts; he dwelt so much upon it, as if he had known nothing else and as if nothing else had been worth knowing! Indeed, he openly avows such a neglect and contempt of all other knowledge, in comparison to this: “I count all things but loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord!” [Phil. 3:8]. The crucifixion of Christ, which was the most ignominious circumstance in the whole course of His abasement, was an object in which Paul gloried; and he is struck with horror at the thought of glorying in any thing else! “God forbid,” says he, “that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!” [Gal. 6:14]. In short, he looked upon the cross as the perfection of his character as a Christian and an apostle, to be a constant student, and a zealous, indefatigable preacher of the cross of Christ! (2)
Martyn Lloyd-Jones also taught on how vital it is to preach about Christ’s work on the cross:
The preaching of the cross, the preaching of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on that cross is the very heart and center of the Christian gospel and the Christian message. Now, I think you must all agree that that is an inevitable deduction, both from what the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 6:14 and from what he picks out as that in which he glories. The central thing, the thing that matters above everything else, and what he picks out is the cross, the death on the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…. If you only preach the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, not only do you not solve the problem of mankind, in a sense you even aggravate it. You are preaching nothing but utter condemnation, because nobody can ever carry it out. So they (i.e. the apostles) did not preach His teaching. Paul does not say “God forbid that I should glory save in the ethical teaching of Jesus.” He does not say that. It was not the teaching of Christ, nor the example of Christ either. That is often preached, is it not? “What is the message of Christianity? The imitation of Christ. Read the Gospels,” they say, “and see how He lived. That is the way we all ought to live, so let us decide to do so. Let us decide to imitate Christ and to live as He lived.” I say once more that that is not the center and the heart of the Christian message. That comes to it but not at the beginning. It is not the first thing, it is not the thing the apostles preached initially, neither was it our Lord’s example. What they preached was His death upon the cross, and the meaning of that event. (3)
Oh fellow believers, the gospel is the great treasure of the Christian faith with which we have been entrusted (2 Cor. 4:7; 2 Tim. 1:14). We must devote ourselves to searching out its never-ending beauty and power, and we must preach it as those who are under the greatest and gravest stewardship. As Paul declared to Timothy shortly before his martyrdom,
“I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom: Preach the word!” (2 Tim. 4:1–2).
The world’s greatest need is the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, “for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Rom. 1:16). The church’s greatest need is the ongoing and ever deepening explanation and application of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is “the mystery of godliness”—the great revelation that results in true piety (1 Tim. 3:16). The apostle Paul had founded the church in Corinth. Nevertheless, in his first recorded letter to them, he wrote, “I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand” (1 Cor. 15:1). Paul’s constant desire was to teach the unfathomable riches of the gospel to the church, that it might stand with greater confidence in Christ and grow in conformity to His image. There is no theme of salvation or the Christian life that can be properly understood and expounded apart from the gospel. Thus, we must devote ourselves to its endless exploration and to the most faithful proclamation of its truths. As Richard Sibbes wrote,
The object of preaching is especially Jesus Christ. This is the rock upon which the church is built. Christ should be the subject matter of our teaching, in His nature, offices, and benefits; in the duties which we owe to Him, and the instrument whereby we receive all from Him, which is faith. If we preach the law, and discover men’s corruption, it is but to make way for the gospel’s freer passage into their souls. And if we press holy duties, it is to make you walk worthy of the Lord Jesus. All teaching is reductive to the gospel of Christ, either to make way, as John Baptist did, to level all proud thoughts, and make us stoop to Him, or to make us walk worthy of the grace we receive from Him. The bread of life must be broken; the sacrifice must be anatomized and laid open; the riches of Christ, even His “unsearchable riches,” must be unfolded. “The Son of God,” must be preached to all; and therefore God, who hath appointed us to be saved by Christ, hath also ordained preaching, to lay open the Lord Jesus, with the heavenly treasures of His grace and glory. (4)
The article above is an excerpt from “The Preeminent Christ” by Paul Washer.
Davies, Sermons of Rev. Samuel Davies, 1:621.
Davies, Sermons of Rev. Samuel Davies, 1:621–22.
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross: God’s Way of Salvation (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 1986), 18–19, 20–21.
Richard Sibbes, The Works of Richard Sibbes, D.D. (Edinburgh: Puritan Period, 1863), 4:115–16.
