Christ at the Centre

“For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” — 1 Corinthians 2:2 (KJV)

After the awakening at Crossweeksung, Brainerd looked back and tried to work out what God had used. His answer is simple, and it is still the most important thing in any church, youth group or friendship today.

He wrote that ever since coming to Crossweeksung he had been helped “in preaching Christ crucified, and making him the centre and mark to which all my discourses among them were directed.”

Christ crucified. Jesus dying on the cross for us. That was the centre of everything he said. He started with the basics: who God is, how he made us, how we have turned away from him and can’t save ourselves. Then he kept pointing to Jesus, who came to save us, and invited people to come to him.

Brainerd noticed something important: people were not changed by being told off. They were changed by being shown Jesus. When he spoke about Christ’s love and invited them to come, hearts that had been hard for years began to open.

This is a helpful check for your own faith. It is easy for Christianity to become about other things: rules, being good, church activities, arguments, how you look to others. All of those have a place. But if Jesus himself, and what he did on the cross, isn’t at the centre, something has gone wrong. Brainerd had learned that the hard way, back when his religion had been all about his own efforts.

It is also a help when you talk to friends about faith. You don’t need clever arguments or perfect answers. You can tell them about Jesus: who he is, what he has done, and how he has changed you. That is what God used at Crossweeksung.

In his last weeks, dying, Brainerd said that he had seen “nothing else in the world that can yield any satisfaction besides living to God, pleasing him, and doing his whole will.” Jesus had become the centre of his life, not just his preaching.

Paul told the Corinthians that when he came to them, he decided to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Brainerd made the same decision in the woods of New Jersey. It is a good one to make wherever you are.

One thing to do this week: read the account of Jesus’ death in Luke 23 this week. Then write down, in a few sentences, what Jesus has done for you, in your own words, as if you were explaining it to a friend.