THE BIBLE AIN’T ABOUT YOU

By Akin Ojumu

When the average modern-day preacher looks into the Bible, his principal interest is to find himself and his congregation, and not to find Christ. In his quest to make the Gospel relatable, and in his attempt to make Christianity more fashionable, the preacher forays into Bible texts in search of what the Bible says about him and his congregation and not what it says about Christ.

Consequently, the preacher’s sermons are always focused on the “people in the Gospels” rather than on the Lord Jesus Christ who is the Gospel. He is preoccupied with why the names of certain individuals are not mentioned in the Bible. The question the preacher is most interested in asking and answering from Bible stories is not “How do I find Christ in this story?” but “Where am I in this story?” What he is keen on knowing is not “What has Christ done for us” but “What have I got to do?”

Thus, the preacher and the congregation become the heroes of Bible stories. They see themselves as Elijah defeating the prophets of Baal, they believe they are David slaying the Goliath in their lives, they fancy themselves as Daniel thrown into the lion’s den of their enemies, they consider themselves as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in King Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace, and they most definitely think of themselves as Peter walking on the water of their problems, troubles, and challenges.

This rather low view of Scripture is what’s known as NARCIGESIS. It’s a term coined from Narcissism (i.e., grandiose sense of self-importance) and Eisegesis (i.e., reading oneself into Bible texts).

Even though such a man-centered and self-absorbed understanding of Scriptures excites the flesh and it’s exactly what the itching ears love to hear, it’s an approach and use of the Bible grossly lacking in power to transform the sinful soul. While the consumers of such poisonous sermons get an instantaneous emotional high from the self-affirming and self-aggrandizing platitudes, the ecstatic feeling and pleasurable sensation soon dissipate and, like the drug addict, the craving returns in full force. Very soon, they build tolerance and need more and more of the addictive substance to generate the level of high they crave.

It’s for this reason that most of the religious organizations today are full of unchurched and untaught pseudo-Christians who go about with their theological and doctrinal empty heads swollen up with false sense of eternal security. On a daily basis, hundreds of thousands of these spiritual zombies throng to the various houses of horror called Churches to be fed with the same man-centered, seeker-sensitive, people-pleasing, ear-scratching, ponderous platitudes dressed up in Christian slogans. The hollowness of this sort of wishy-washy adulterated gospel is manifested in the namby-pamby Christianity that pervades the contemporary Church landscape.

What these preachers and their followers fail to understand is that the Bible is about Christ and not about them. Whether it’s the Torah (i.e., the five Books of Moses), or the Tanakh (which is the entire Hebrew Bible i.e., the Old Testament), or the twenty-seven New Testament Books, Scripture is an account of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. From Genesis to Revelations, the Bible is an autobiography of the Messiah written by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Every single book of the Bible is by divine design. Together, they tell an amazing story of the same person, Jesus, the Anointed One.

Luke 24:27

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”

John 5:39

“You pore over the Scriptures because you presume that by them you possess eternal life. These are the very Words that testify about Me.”

Christ is not the main attraction in Scriptures. He is the sole attraction. All that’s written in the Bible is meant to point us to Christ. The stories, history, poetry, signs, wonders, and miracles are all written to help us believe that Jesus is the Messiah. This is the story of redemption.

John 20:30-31

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

Sinclair Fergusson, a Scottish Reformed systematic theology scholar, best describes the proper Christian approach to understanding and preaching the Bible. Writing in his essay titled, “Preaching Christ from the Old Testament,” he says:

“As Christians standing within the light of New Testament revelation and looking back on the Old Testament, Christ himself acts as a hermeneutical prism. Looking back through him, we see the white light of the unity of the truth of Jesus Christ broken down into its constituent colours in the pages of the Old Testament. Then, looking forwards we see how the multi-coloured strands of Old Testament revelation converge in him.  When we appreciate this we begin to see how the constituent colours unite in Christ and are related both to each other and to him. In this way we see how the Old Testament points forward to him. We see how sometimes one ‘colour’, sometimes another, or perhaps a combination of them, points forward to Jesus Christ, is related to Jesus Christ, and is fulfilled by Jesus Christ.”

Any minister of the Gospel who deviates from this approach of preaching the Gospel and turns the Bible into a self-help motivational book is not preaching the Biblical Gospel. The pastor who is in the habit of making himself or his congregation the hero of the Bible story is nothing but a spiritually damaged snake-oil salesman peddling a bill of goods. Regardless of what they want you to believe or what you think of them, these are Gospel hucksters peddling the Word of God for profit.