Focus on Jesus

When I was 19 I taught a vacation bible school class. I remember we got the material from one of the big companies that market happy little bible lessons to make kids smile and parents feel warm and fuzzy about church. I remember the ridiculous cartoon Jesus that filled all the pages. He was goofy, always smiling, and inevitably He was giving kids a high five, thumbs up, or the peace sign. Jesus, the buddy, Jesus the birthday clown, Jesus the pacifier.

As a teenage rebel, with long hair and baggy pants, that Jesus wasn’t the vision I had of who I wanted the savior of the world to be. I didn’t want a vanilla flavored happy-go-lucky cartoon character. I wanted radical. I wanted life altering. I wanted a vision of Jesus that I couldn’t look away from, that was engrossing and edifying.

But Happy Jesus did none of those things… and it was easy to look away.

I am reading a new book. It’s entitled God in the Flesh by Don Everts, a campus ministry leader with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. It cuts through the familiar message of Jesus, the important but often washed out familiar Christ of our vacation bible school packages and Sunday school lessons and examines the Jesus that lived between the sermons and miracles.

In this new context we see a fresh new Jesus, a shocking and amazing man that was the living embodiment of the God of all creation. God in the Flesh will challenge your idea of Jesus as a quiet, peaceful teacher and bring the true Christ into focus. Jesus was the revolution. He was awe-inspiring, jaw dropping, stunning, radical, and life altering. His enemies couldn’t take their eyes off Him. His followers dropped everything to follow Him. Everywhere He went, people praised Him and stood in fear of Him.


One amazing section of the book deals with 2 Tim chapter 2 which most of you will remember is some of my favorite readings in the NT. Writing to his former ace student and now leader in the church, Paul pens an amazingly simple verse. He says, “Remember Jesus.” (2 Tim 2:8a) That’s it. That is the meaty verse that Everts spends pages analyzing. Of that verse he says the follow:


I believe this one comment by Paul is either the greatest understatement I’ve ever read or some of the greatest, most sublime theology I’ve ever encountered.
p. 18

So we see both Paul and Mr. Everts compelling us to be focused on Jesus? But what does that mean? What does focus mean? It isn’t enough to merely look. You have to look intently. You have to zero in with clarity and see what is really there. Remember now that art is my first love. Focus in Photography is very important. It’s the difference between an image that is useless and a stunning image that stops people in their tracks. We talk a lot about clarity and depth of field. As a photographer you have to go beyond a mere snapshot and become an observer of the world. You find your subject and you study it. You get all the information and capture a picture that is accurate and informing. That is what Paul wants us to do with Jesus.

Everts continues:

Let there be no mistake: the call to focus on Jesus is a call to life… Though I realize I am young and my experience is limited, I have learned two hard truths during my (campus ministry): (1) the world-including me- is beautiful and broken and confused. (2) In Jesus we have the answer to almost every question or dilemma or opportunity we will ever race on this earth.
p. 20

I am finding a sweet cure to a thirst I have had since those teenage days. I am focusing on the true Jesus. Gone is that cartoonish clown, the smiling buddy giving high fives to little kids. In his stead stands the Powerful Embodiment of YAHWEH, God in the Flesh. I see a Figure just as shocking today as two-thousand years ago. He was anything buy safe and easy. He was anything but passive and peaceful. He challenged everything. He did the opposite of what the establishment wanted. He took His power and used it the reverse of what was easy and what society told Him to do. He was the revolution.

The more I focus on the real Jesus the more clarity I see in my own life and the more fruitful my own ministry becomes. The more Christ-centered I become the more my friends lean on me and look to me for guidance. But when my eye strays to other things, when I focus on the sophisticated or the intellectual, I lose my balance and become unfocused. The more muddled my vision is the more fuzzy my message becomes. That is not a coincidence. Jesus isn’t just the focusing point, He is the goal, the prize, the destination.

Paul honed in on the truth. He was fixed on the essence of life. He saw Jesus. He stared at Jesus. He wouldn’t look away. He called for others to look at Jesus too. So while we ever look for fresh new ways to reach people with the Gospel, let us not forget that the center of our faith isn’t the Church. It isn’t the style of worship and it isn’t the accuracy of our Old Testament hermeneutics. Christianity is about Jesus the CHRIST. It’s about focusing on that amazing person who was God in the Flesh come down to our world. He is alive today and the answer to the crises that are tearing our lives apart and turning our worlds upside-down.

Focus on Jesus. Find him and make Him the axis of your life.