PREFACE

Jesus Christ must remain the central truth of our theology and Christian experience. Wrapped up in Christology are all the great concepts of the Christian faith: the nature and character of God, the deity of our Lord, His incarnation and virgin birth His perfect righteousness, atonement for sin, the nature and fall of man, the divine provision for man's redemption, and the work of the Holy Spirit.

The doctrines of Christ and man constitute the two foundational truths of theology. If man is not the son of God, created in His image, but is the result of the evolutionary process—a little higher than the other beasts rather than a little lower than the angels—then he has no identity. Then he has not fallen away from God, his heavenly Father. There is no need for God's invasion into our world and the saving operation of Christ for lost men.

The sufficiency of Christ as Lord and Saviour is tied to His purpose and work for sinful man alienated from God. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the hinge on which man's history turns, and on which his destiny depends.

A true exposition of the Scriptures is the heart of understanding Christ, His nature, and His work. It is difficult for believers to escape the truth about God and His only Son, if we allow the Word of God to say what it means. We must see the truth about Christ in its larger aspects as God's supreme act of redemption in man's history and the complete revelation of Himself before the universe.

The question of pressing importance is "What think ye of Christ?" Can we as Christians so present Christ to men and witness of Him that they shall see what we really believe and what the church proclaims in terms of the everlasting gospel?

What made the early church invincible was its profound gratitude and the obligation on the part of those who had come into the glorious knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ with a great urgency to witness to Him everywhere.

We too are witnesses to Christ and not to ourselves. Salvation is not something we have on our own. A life lived in the love and power of God depends on what we believe about Jesus Christ. The New Testament is far more than a high-water mark of the spiritual perception of men. Only in Jesus Christ do we have the final and complete revelation of God to man.

EDWARD HEPPENSTALL