I dislike having to give this note of warning on such a wonderful topic and focus, but it needs to be said. The forceful way some people use the hermeneutic and focus of Christ-o-centric, or Christ-centered or the redemptive historical reading of scripture is wrong and heretical. For some people the bible is not Christ-centered enough for them. As odd as it sounds, Christ is not Christ centered enough for them. And so they invent man-made theories to force most or all of the bible to be Christ-centered in a way that the bible is not. By doing this they exalt themselves and exalt man focused theories over the scripture and how the bible interprets itself.
This is pathetic, because when reading the bible with a redemptive historical approach, in a correct way, it can yield some beautiful insights. However, if you take it too far you end up making Jesus and the Father fight one another, and cause the scripture to devour itself.
For example the story of David and Goliath is not mainly about Jesus and His defeat of sin and death. This passage is not Christ-o-centric. There can be an additional insight taken from this story about Jesus and His defeat of sin, but it does not replace the original story as the main thing. Because the bible teaches us to moralize the bible for ourselves, then an additional insight or application of this story is to inspire us to use courageous faith to defeat Goliaths in our lives; however, this is not the main point.
There is an important reason for why this story is the main story and why there are grave consequences if you try to make the Christ-o-centric the main thing. David prays to God (a Word of Faith Confession), and thus, God is already the main power and author in the story. David even says by his actions everyone will know there is a God in Israel. The point of the story is for all to know there is a God who has chosen Israel. Now, carefully think about the implication if you were say that a story where God is already the main power and author, is not the main story, but Jesus is, because Jesus is more central and important.
The implication is that God is not the main thing, but rather God is. It is contradictive nonsense. Or, God the Father is not the main thing, but Jesus is. This is blaspheme. This is to make the scripture devour and fight itself. This story with David and Goliath is a story already about God. You cannot therefore make it more God-centered. It is already God-centered to the max. A story where God is already the main author and displayed power does not need your help to make it more God-centered. A story where God is already the main author and power does not need your help by allegorizing God into it, as if God was not already there.
If a person did not already see God as the main author and power of this story, then I understand why they would feel the need to allegorize God into the story by making it Christ-centered. They are reading the story as if they are an atheist. God is not there and so they need to allegorize God into a story where God is not present. This happens because their Christ-o-centric theories have become so all consuming that when they read the bible they do not even recognize the Father or the Spirit. They do not see God already in the passages, and so they need to allegorize Jesus into it so that the passage now becomes God-centered.
Vincent Cheung even noticed a pastor bragging about this.
“A well-known pastor and professor was teaching a group of children something about biblical theology. They came upon a passage in which Christ performed a healing miracle. The pastor persisted with one of the children until the poor thing finally surrendered to the interpretation that the passage was not about the healing miracle, but about Jesus Christ. But the passage was already about Jesus. Why did the pastor forbid the child’s initial understanding? The advocates of biblical theology and the redemptive-historical approach are fond of boasting that they find Jesus on every page of the Bible. The problem was that this particular page revealed Jesus Christ the healer, and as one who would heal those who ask by faith. You see, this is what the theologians resent. This is the thing that the pastor and professor refused to permit. He had to destroy it before faith in this Jesus grew in the heart of the child. He had to murder this Jesus before he could take root in the next generation. And so he did it. And then he wrote a book and boasted about it. But Jesus said that someone like this should go kill himself (Matthew 18:6).
He claimed a miracle is only a “sign” that points to Jesus Christ. But which Christ? What does the sign tell us about this Christ? Does the sign “Christ is a healer” point to a Christ who is not a healer? Does the sign “Christ heals those who come in faith” point to a Christ who does not heal those who come in faith? How do you pull this off? Magic! What would a sign have to say to actually tell you that “Christ is a healer” and “Christ heals those who come in faith”? You just won’t let it happen, will you? You will allow Christ to be only that one thing about him you still believe in and nothing else. You will let Christ be only as big as your microscopic faith, instead of increasing your faith to embrace all of Christ. When the Bible reveals a Christ that is bigger than your faith, you cry heresy. This is what you mean by Christ-centered, but you make everything, including Jesus himself, centered on what you decide…”[1]
The issue with their Christ-o-centric theory is that the Father, the Spirit, the Scripture, and even Jesus Christ Himself are not Christ-centered enough. The scripture is not God-centered or Christ-centered enough for them. Jesus is not Christ-centered enough for them, and so they even end up correcting Jesus by allegorizing passages directly about Jesus to not be about Jesus and what Jesus is doing and teaching, but instead be about Jesus. Nonsense. This nonsense occurs because they have a version of Jesus they like and allegorize all scripture, even Jesus and His own words into this version.
Christ-o-centric theology has become a smoke-screen to allow elites to practice liberal theology by covering it up with the most gospel sounding words possible. They have a doctrine of Jesus that is liberated from the confinement of scripture. They do not like the Christ that the scriptures reveal and so they create a false doctrine of Christ and then force the entire bible into this false doctrine of Jesus. They call it Christ-o-centric and then accuse others for not being Christ-centered when they do not adhere to this anti-Christ version of Jesus they allow. They are the worst of the worst of religious elites.
A Jesus who says, “your faith saved you” (regarding forgiveness of sin) and “your faith healed you,” is a Jesus that they cannot allow to live. If I teach on these verses, then I will get corrected by them, saying I am too man-centered. Since this is a direct teaching from Jesus’, they are correcting Him not me. And if they think, if they were put back in Jesus’ time that they would not correct Him, then they are delusional. They would correct Him with great zeal. Since Jesus it the main protagonist of His own existence, then Jesus serving man, healing man and praising man for their faith, is as Christ-centered as it gets. It is already Jesus to the max. It is already Christ-centered on steroids. The issue for many, is that the Jesus revealed by scripture is a Jesus they hate.
At that time the argument seemed so pious. The church had strayed from the path by paying too much attention to men, holding services for healing, prosperity and marriage, when the purpose of worship should be the glory of God, not the needs of men.
Liturgical music should talk less about us, and more about God and Christ. Preaching should be focused on the person and work of Christ, and not on our instruction for healing and prosperity, for example.
Men need to be degraded and humiliated. God should be the only one to receive glory. That was the message.
It was through Vincent Cheung’s writings that I began to realize the hypocrisy of these people. To paraphrase, if you are more Christ-centered than JESUS Himself, then this whole time you have been only self-centered, and still marveling at being so Christ-centered!…
When a church holds an event to restore marriages or heal the sick. The immediate purpose of such meetings is to use divine resources to meet human needs, and in this sense it seems that God is being used as a springboard.
However, since people are being saved by divine means rather than by human tools, it is clear that the meetings are theocentric. They would be completely man-centered if psychology were used to heal relationships and medicine to heal bodies.
Because it is the wisdom and power of God that is in action — exactly as God wants it to be — it is not God who is being used, it is he who uses human needs and the activities of the church as a springboard to magnify his attributes and results in the world.
Christocentrism is a hermeneutical and liturgical principle that lacks a biblical basis. Nothing in the Bible suggests that the word of God should be interpreted in a Christocentric way or that everything in worship should be Christocentric. The Bible is messianic, not Christocentric. Some things in it are about Christ, others are not. It is not correct to say that Jesus is the subject of the Bible, if by that we mean that every sentence in the Book is about him. It isn’t, and we don’t need to pretend it is. Some sentences, paragraphs, chapters and even books are not about him — although they can be read in his light and may contain specific references to him, whether literal or figurative. For the Bible to be Christocentric to the standard demanded by those who make a big deal about this need, it would have to be a book about Christ and not about us, but the Bible is a book about us too, therefore, it is not Christocentric. Defenders of Christocentrism consider it Christocentric only because they distort it to fit their standards..
This shows that Psalm 24 is not Christocentric. The second part can be taken as referring to Jesus Christ, but in the poem as a whole Jesus shares space with the believer. The Christocentric preacher was forced to distort the passage so that the man would not have space in his exposition. In the process he ended up saying that God’s people are made up of people with dirty hands, impure hearts, who turn to other gods and swear by idols. This is probably true of him and those who approve of him, but it is not true of anyone who actually belongs to God’s people.
Advocates of this principle are often eager to humiliate man, even man who has already believed in Christ. They say, for example, that the believer’s righteousness is like filthy rags, and that our best works are nothing. However, the Bible says that we do good works by the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit. When they denigrate our good works, they are attacking the righteousness that God produces in us. In their zeal to offend man they end up offending God.…[2]
In a galaxy not so far away, there exists a breed of theological overlords who wield the “Christ-centered” hermeneutic like a lightsaber, slicing through scriptures with a zeal that would make even Darth Vader blush. These folks have decided that not only is the Bible not Christ-centered enough, but apparently, Christ Himself isn’t Christ-centered enough for their taste.
Picture this: David and Goliath, the ultimate underdog story, gets hijacked. Instead of a tale of faith and divine power, these overlords twist it into a convoluted allegory where Jesus is both the slingshot and the stone, leaving poor Goliath to symbolize… well, who knows? Sin, bureaucracy, or perhaps bad WiFi?
These scripture-twisting maestros have turned the Bible into a one-man show starring Jesus, where even God the Father gets sidelined like an understudy. They’ve created a Christological echo chamber where every story, prophecy, and proverb must echo “Christ” or be deemed heretical.
In their quest for ultimate Christocentrism, they’ve managed to argue that when Jesus heals or teaches, it’s not really about what Jesus is doing but about some abstract version of Jesus they’ve concocted. It’s like saying the main character of a movie isn’t the main character because he doesn’t fit the sequel they’ve already written in their minds.
So here we are, caught in a theological tug-of-war where the Bible’s rich tapestry is reduced to a single thread, and that thread must be Christ, even if it means tying the scriptures into knots. Let us return to sanity, where logic and categories are not turned into a child’s playdough; let us leave this mono-themed Christ-fest where every page must scream “Jesus!” or be cast into the outer darkness of “not Christ-centered enough.”
Let’s return to scripture and logic and leave these elitist zealots who can’t different that clouds and rocks aren’t the same thing. While Christ is central, He doesn’t need to be the center of every verse to validate His divinity or our faith.
[1] Vincent Cheung. All Things Are Yours. Sermonettes Vol.9. 2016. Pg. 16-17
[2] Gabrial Arauto. Translated to English by Google Translate.
