For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. (1Corinthians 2:2)
The tendency of men, if left alone, is to drift father from God; and preachers are no exception. If left alone, they depart from preaching the true gospel of Jesus Christ and begin to major on other things. It was true in the early days of the church. For the first few years after our Lord ascended, Christ was preached; but, gradually preachers and churches began to preach works, ceremony, law, and tradition.
Read the epistles of Corinthians and Galatians. It is no different today. Where can you go and hear Christ preached? Men preach about the gospel and doctrines about Christ, but John called our gospel “the doctrine of Christ,” not the doctrine about Christ. It would be easy to give the sum and substance of Paul’s message; it was Jesus Christ and him crucified! If you had asked Paul his creed, he would have said, “My creed is Christ.” If you had inquired as to his body of divinity, he would have replied, “There is but one body of divinity”—“In him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” To these apostles Christ was not a historical character, a creed, nor a plan of salvation; he was their Lord, real to their minds, the first love of their hearts, who was, is, and is to come—my Lord and my God.
-Henry Mahan
