“I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified”  (1 Corinthians 2.2)

Here was the Apostle Paul’s resolution and it is my own new year resolution. Too easily we can become spiritually eccentric — that is, off centre. The focus of the Apostle, and in deed all Scripture, was the Lord Jesus Christ, God incarnate, crucified and risen. What a powerful message: the crucified God.

I want to learn more of Him. To that end I am going to need to read His word, study the cross, and remember the Lord in His appointed way, which is the Sacrament.

I need to let the crucified (and risen) Lord shape my thinking, my values and priorities. Even at their very best, the driving values of humanism are quite different. I cannot afford for my version of Christianity to be mere worldliness dressed up in religious clothing.

I have to present to the church and our society, not religion, or even Christianity, but Christ and Him crucified.