Keeping the Messiah at the Center

In John Piper's book God is the Gospel he says, "The glory spoken of in 2 Corinthians 4:4 is not a vague, impersonal glory, like the glory of sunshine. It is the glory of a person. Paul speaks of 'the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.' The treasure in this text is not glory per se. It is Christ in his glory. It is the glorious Christ. He is the ultimate gift and treasure of the gospel. All other words and deeds are means to this: seeing Jesus Christ-the kind of seeing that is seeing and savoring simultaneously" (p. 65).

At the very heart of the gospel is the declaration that the Messiah is Jesus. The death of Christ accomplished what needs to be done so we can enter into the family of the Messiah and the resurrection is God's declaration of Jesus' status as God's 'anointed-one'. The point of the gospel is that we might come to Jesus and enjoy him as the crucified and risen Christ. We ought to always seek to deepen our understanding of what exactly it means that Jesus is the Messiah so that our hearts might rejoice in him for his glory and our good.