Why We Don’t Fix Our Eyes on Jesus
Jordan Thomas is a husband, father of six, and founding pastor of Grace Church, Memphis. After preparing for the ministry through college and seminary, Jordan went on to train in church planting at Bethlehem Baptist Church before returning to Memphis, Tennessee to plant Grace Church in 2007. Jordan now continues in local church ministry through shepherding the fold at Grace Church and leading with Treasuring Christ Together Church-Planting Network.
Christ Our Treasure: Enjoying the Preeminence of Jesus in the Local Church is an 8-week multimedia Bible study by Jordan Thomas that invites you to return to Scripture to behold the beauty of Christ, contemplate the role of the local church in the Christian life, and learn what God says about the purpose of each body of believers: to treasure Christ above all else, together.
Our failure to be captivated by Christ is certainly not owing to any deficiency in Him.
Our failure to be captivated by Christ is certainly not owing to any deficiency in Him! Missing the magnificence of Jesus is an exposé of spiritual blindness. To see Him is to see God (John 1:1–2). To see Him is to behold the glory of God (John 1:14). Jesus radiates God’s glory (Hebrews 1:3). He is the visible manifestation of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). Jesus is the object of all angelic praise (Hebrews 1:6). Jesus is of such a quality of holiness that the holy angels must shield their holy faces in the presence of His qualitatively divine holiness (Isaiah 6:1–3).
If you have no yearning for the beauty of Jesus Christ, it is because you are lost.
If you have no yearning for the alluring, admirable, compelling, captivating, mesmerizing, glorious, praiseworthy, satisfying beauty of Jesus Christ, it is because you are lost. At the same time, if you battle for assurance that you belong to Christ, be comforted that lost people are not bothered by how little they yearn for Him. If you want to know Him, God the Spirit instigated that desire. Turn from your feeble faith and turn to its only proper Object. We must hold up the diamond of Christ’s beauty as the line of demarcation between the lost and the saved. None begrudgingly “trust” Him. Rather, new-born souls sell all to have Jesus, due to our new superior joy in Him (Matthew 13:44).
Just as most of Old Testament Israel perished in their unbelief, many “white-washed tombs” today masquerade as Christians (Hebrews 3:17–19; Matthew 23:27). Sincere recitations of religious mantras are not synonymous with new life in Christ. Though sincerity is indispensable for an honest appeal of a contrite heart toward God, sincerity doesn’t save. Christ saves. Many things about the Christian life can be faked. Bible reading, prayers, church attendance, religious talk. But the core aspect of the Christian life cannot be faked: a savor for the preeminence of Christ in your soul.
Satan’s uppermost agenda is for anyone or anything—other than Jesus—to fill your gaze.
When Christ dwells within your heart by faith, there is a corresponding passion for Christ to be exalted in your body whether by life or by death (Ephesians 3:17; Philippians 1:20). No one can fake that. You cannot pretend to prefer the supreme elevation of Christ in your life and insist on a corresponding decrease of self unless He is most precious to you (John 3:30; 1 Peter 2:6–7).
It makes perfect sense, then, that the enemy of our souls wants to blur our sight of Christ. Make no mistake, Satan’s uppermost agenda is for anyone or anything—other than Jesus—to fill your gaze. To put it bluntly, the devil is working overtime to prevent you from seeing “the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:2–6). Eating his deceptive fruit, millions are blind to the brilliance which beams from the countenance of the Lord of glory (vv. 4, 6). Jesus’ face shines (Numbers 6:25). Only the spiritually blind are unable to see. To all who savingly see Jesus, He is our treasure (2 Corinthians 4:7).