Instead of an example to chase, preachers preach a Jesus who seeks, finds, and remakes, even as He gives Himself away on the lips of imperfect preachers, Sunday after Sunday.
At the heart of a particularly poignant section of Gerhard O. Forde’s Theology Is for Proclamation, a distinction is made between the “Jesus who preached” and the “Jesus who is preached.” While that might sound like nothing more than esoteric fare for homiletical nerds, it is precisely this distinction which radically alters how preachers preach. Of course, this is a field in which I have a vested interest. What preachers preach about and how they go about fulfilling the preaching task is not a minimal pastime. The words that echo from pulpits around the world have the ability to shape the lives of individuals and communities. But what shape are they being formed into?
This question can help us trace the ways in which the “Jesus who preached” track and the “Jesus who is preached” track diverge. While one might suppose these tracks are parallel, they are not. Their trajectories are off by a few subtle degrees, such that, when taken to their eventual end, they are worlds apart. Forde tells us, the “Jesus who preached” assumes the taxonomy of a Jesus “who is amenable to us,” one whom “we would never have crucified had we been there, a Christ who would be approved by reasonable and free beings, a Jesus who is the perfect earthly exemplification of our ‘Christ principle.’”[1]
In other words, the Jesus who preached all too often adopts our views and preferences on just about everything. He agrees with us and votes like us and does what we do and values what we value. But “just as we try to make God ‘nice’ by our theologizing,” Forde continues, “so also are we inclined to make Jesus into a ‘gospel’ suitable to our taste.”[2] And what good is a Jesus who is suitable to us? It might, at first, sound like good news, but there is not much benefit to be had in the wake of the “Jesus who preached,” precisely because it keeps what He came to accomplish in the realm of an ideal we are all meant to pursue. The so-called “prize of the upward call” is the assurance that is encased in the archetype Christlikeness, which, it is said, Jesus came to realize.
A generation or two before Forde, this same distinction was noted by renowned Princeton theologian J. Gresham Machen, who, while caring for the moral ideals of his day, was not duped into assuming that preaching morality could actually solve the crisis of immorality. “It is one thing,” he once wrote in a treatise called What Is Faith? “to hold that the ethical principles which Jesus enunciated will solve the problems of society, and quite another thing to come into that intimate, present relation to Him which we call faith; it is one thing to follow the example of Jesus and quite another different thing to trust Him.”[3]
Rather than offering an ideal after which sinners and saints are made to strive, the Jesus who is preached gives what He says.
In the same book, Machen goes even further, piercingly naming the exact threat Forde would oppose decades later: “The truth is that in great sections of the modern Church Jesus is no longer the object of faith, but has become merely an example for faith; religion is based no longer upon faith in Jesus but upon a faith in God that is, or is conceived to be, like the faith that Jesus had in God.”[4] Although their grammar might have been different, both Forde and Machen express the same conviction: Far better than ivory-towered principles and forever out-of-reach ideals is the Jesus who is preached.
The Jesus who is preached is the word of the Gospel that brings sinners into contact with their Savior, with one whose words actually do what they promise to do, not a syllable of which ever returns void (Isaiah 55:11). “Proclamation,” Forde wrote, “is not ‘about’ something other than itself. It does not point away from itself. It does not signify some other thing. It is the saying and doing of the deed itself.”[5] Rather than offering an ideal after which sinners and saints are made to strive, the Jesus who is preached gives what He says. Peace, pardon, and assurance are not held out as carrots dangling at the end of Christlike piety. They are gifts given through “the present-tense unconditional proclamation” of the Crucified and Risen one.[6] The good news, Machen concurs, is Jesus came “not merely to lead men through His example out into a ‘larger life,’ but to give life, through His death and resurrection, to those who were dead in trespasses and sins.”[7]
This imbues the sermon with a new vocabulary, one where preachers are found “pouring Christ into [the] ears” of their hearers.[8] Instead of alluding to an event that happened two millennia ago, hoping its veracity compels saints to “press on toward the goal,” the Jesus who is preached is right here, right now releasing sinners from bondage and raising them to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4). “Proclamation,” Forde concludes, “is present tense: I hear and now give the gift to you, Christ Himself, the body and blood of the Savior. I do it in both Word and Sacrament. This is God’s present move, the current ‘mighty act’ of the living God.”[9] When preachers preach the Jesus who is preached, the old house of rebellion and ruin is occupied, the strong man bound, and his hostages freed.
Both Theology Is for Proclamation and What Is Faith? together are a powder keg of homiletical revelation ready to combust. And this is why both belong within arm’s reach of every preacher. Whereas Forde will not let the homiletician settle for an inspirational message about Jesus, Machen refuses to treat imitation as a substitute for faith. And when read in tandem, the preacher’s task snaps into focus. Instead of an example to chase, preachers preach a Jesus who seeks, finds, and remakes, even as He gives Himself away on the lips of imperfect preachers, Sunday after Sunday.
[1] Gerhard O. Forde. Theology Is for Proclamation. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1990. 59.
[2] Forde. 59.
[3] J. Gresham Machen. What Is Faith?. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1991. 97.
[4] Machen. 98.
[5] Forde. 2.
[6] Forde. 8.
[7] Machen. 113.
[8] Forde. 149.
[9] Forde. 2.
