Our Need for Sound Teaching About Jesus

It's All About JesusIt was a labor of love finding and arranging some of the most powerful and inspiring words ever said about the Son of God for my book It’s All About Jesus: A Treasury of Insights on Our Savior, Lord, and Friend. God has profoundly used these words in my life over the past two years as I faced very difficult times. I pray God will use these insights just as mightily with you, to encourage you to love and trust and follow Jesus more.

Here’s a sample entry from part four of the book, “Jesus, in and with His Disciples.”

Our Need for Sound Teaching About Jesus

A time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.  2 Timothy 4:3 NLT

The Jesus that men want to see is not the Jesus they really need to see.   G. Campbell Morgan

It is all too easy to believe in a Jesus who is largely a construction of our own imagination—an inoffensive person whom no one would really trouble to crucify.  F.F. Bruce

Much of the history of Christianity has been devoted to domesticating Jesus—to reducing that elusive, enigmatic, paradoxical person to dimensions we can comprehend, understand, and convert to our own purposes. So far it hasn’t worked.  Andrew Greeley

We refuse to present a picture of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” a portrait that tugs at your sentiments or pulls at your heartstrings. That’s because we deal with so many people who suffer, and when you’re hurting hard, you’re neither helped nor inspired by a syrupy picture of the Lord, like those sugary, sentimental images many of us grew up with. You know what I mean? Jesus with His hair parted down the middle, surrounded by cherubic children and bluebirds.  Joni Eareckson Tada

The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore—on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him “meek and mild,” and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.  Dorothy Sayers

We make Jesus Christ a convenience. We make Him a Lifeboat to get us to shore, a Guide to find us when we are lost. We reduce Him simply to Big Friend to help us when we are in trouble.  A.W. Tozer

Our prayers and expectations for Jesus usually involve making our lives easy. But Jesus isn’t our genie who grants our wishes. While he sometimes doesn’t give us what we want, he always gives us what we need.  Randy Alcorn

Why do we try so hard to make Jesus cool?! He doesn’t need a makeover.  Matt Chandler

One of the greatest distinguishing marks of a false prophet is that he will always tell you what you want to hear, he will never rain on your parade… he will keep you entertained, and he will present a Christianity to you that will make your church look like a six flags over Jesus.  Paul Washer

A cheap Christianity, without a cross, will prove in the end a useless Christianity, without a crown.  J.C. Ryle

God hates the lukewarm gospel of half-truths that is now spreading over the globe. This gospel says, “Just believe in Jesus and you’ll be saved. There’s nothing more to it.” It ignores the whole counsel of God, which speaks of repenting from former sins, of taking up your cross, of being conformed to the image of Christ by the refining work of the Holy Spirit. It is totally silent about the reality of hell and an after-death judgment.  David Wilkerson

Whenever you find a preacher who takes the Bible allegorically and figuratively… that preacher is preaching an allegorical gospel which is no gospel. I thank God for a literal Christ, for a literal salvation. There is literal sorrow, literal death, literal Hell, and, thank God, there is a literal Heaven.  J. Frank Norris

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.  Martin Luther

Just so take Christ away, and the whole arch of truth becomes a heap of rubbish.  Robert Murray M’Cheyne

The soul is in danger when knowledge of doctrine outsteps intimate touch with Jesus.  Oswald Chambers

It’s All About Jesus is available in print from retailers, including EPM’s online store. It’s also available on Kindle.

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

Randy Alcorn (@randyalcorn) is the author of over sixty books and the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries

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