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BARBARA DENMAN
Florida Baptist Convention
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OCALA (FBC)—“It doesn’t matter what else we say, what else we preach, if we don’t get this right—the Christology of the Gospel—we may as well declare ourselves a civic club, a social club or some other entity,” said John Sullivan, executive director-treasurer of the Florida Baptist Convention. “This is the most important thing about the Word of God.
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“There is no salvation outside of Jesus Christ. He is the Savior of the whole world.”
The Christology of the Gospel deals with the duality of Jesus as God the Savior and as Jesus the man, Sullivan explained Nov. 15.
“Jesus must be seen as the Holy One. His goodness was more than a lack of faults as measured by the norm of human ethics,” he said. “It was righteousness in relation to man and holiness in relation to God that constituted Jesus as the Savior of the whole world.”
Drawing from the first two chapters of Hebrews, Sullivan spoke during the Tuesday afternoon session of the Florida Baptist State Convention, continuing a seven-year tradition of presenting a doctrinal message at the request of the Committee on Order of Business.
“There is a narrowness in Jesus Christ,” Sullivan explained. The culture of today treats “all religious belief as truth,” he noted. “Jesus said, ‘I am the way. I am the truth and I am the life.’ There is no ultimate truth outside of Jesus. He is the ultimate truth.”
Sullivan continued, “When we allow reason to sap the foundation in order to strengthen the building, we make a tragic theological blunder. The Gospel must be understood Christologically or it ceases to be the Gospel.”
Cautioning against becoming “open-minded,” Sullivan noted, “Jesus constantly drew distinctions and set boundaries.”
“He is either the Son of God or He is not the Son of God. Either he is the savior of the whole world, or He is not the savior of the whole world. I have made up my mind—He is the savior of the world.
Baptists, he said, must be concerned with “slippage” in their beliefs and can prevent slippage by returning to the foundation found in Scripture.
The Old Testament speaks of the Christology of the Gospel through the fathers—Abraham, Jacob and Joseph—and prophets—Isaiah, Amos, Hosea and Daniel. But these Old Testament men only have a “fragmented view” of salvation, Sullivan proposed, until Jesus Christ came as man “not part of the truth, but all of the truth.”
The New Testament speaks of Jesus’ walk as found in the reflected “brightness of God’s glory” Sullivan said. He was the “expressed image” of God, he explained, the exact replica of the character of God. “You can find the character of God in the Old Testament by looking to the New Testament,” he explained.
And finally, the Christology of God was “locked in” on Calvary, Sullivan said, “when He purged our sins. He locked it down for you and me.”