Paul identifies the distinguishing marks that must characterize every Christian sermon in Colossians 1:26-28. God's mystery, once hidden but now revealed, is Christ himself, present even among Gentiles. Since Christ is the very hope of glory, writes Paul, he is the one "whom we proclaim, admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, in order to present everyone perfect in Christ." Here are the content, purpose, method, and audience to which every faithful pastor attends every time he preaches God's word.

Content⤒🔗

Everywhere in the vast treasury of the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation, we, like Paul, preach nothing but "Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). In so doing we put every passage in its proper context, for the theme that unites the Bible's diversity is God's one redemptive plan, worked out through history and culminating in the Son, the almighty and all-merciful Lord who became, for us, the faithful and suffering Servant. Jesus was the one to whom Moses testified (John 5:45-47), and he showed his disciples how all the Scriptures — Law, Prophets, Psalms — foretold his death, resurrection, giving of the Spirit, and gathering of believers from all nations (Luke 24:44-49). Whether we preach Israel's history of triumphs or failures, proverbial wisdom or tabernacle regulations, every text finds its true meaning in relation to God's grand agenda to purchase a people for himself through Jesus.

Purpose←⤒🔗

We aim not merely to produce skilled interpreters and accurate theologians. We want to "present everyone perfect in Christ." The good news entrusted to us changes people! Through the gospel God's sovereign Spirit turns dead rebels into his living, loving children. Through the same gospel God's children grow into maturity, discovering the life-transforming implications of our union with Christ. We preach not merely to inform, but in the expectation that God will use his life-giving word to initiate, perpet­uate, and complete his new cre­ation in his elect individually and corporately, as we grow together into "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Eph. 4:13).

Method←⤒🔗

We preach Christ by "admonishing and teaching" — and never one without the other! The Bible is a covenant document, defining the relationship between the Lord and his servant. God's covenants begin with his action: creation, the promise to Abraham, Israel's Exodus, Jesus' death and resurrection. We teach God's sovereign, saving initiatives because they both motivate and empower his servants' response of trust and obedience. Our admonition to holiness and love, therefore, is not guilt-inflicting scolding or legalistic cajoling, but a summons to love him who first loved us and to live in the grace that he has lavished on us.

Audience←⤒🔗

When Jesus arrived, a new day dawned for preaching. In times past God rarely spoke to Gentiles outside Israel, but now he has opened up his secret — "Christ among the nations" — to peoples once beyond the borders of his covenant community. Therefore our preaching, like Paul's, must be clear and unveiled (2 Cor. 3:12-13; 4:2), intelligible (insofar as it depends on us) not only to those already steeped in the "language of Zion" but also to strangers whom God is gathering from the nations. We must not blunt the Spirit's sharp sword (Heb. 4:12) by accommodating our content to sinners' tastes, but neither should we sheathe it behind insiders' jargon.

Preaching is therefore the proclamation, explanation and application of God's written Word in relation to Christ, its integrating center, by a man gifted by God and called through his church, to people made in God's image but alienated and deadened by sin. Through preaching God's Spirit replaces dead hearts of stone with believing hearts of flesh, and conforms the children of God to Christ, all to the glory of God in his church.