Lorenzo Palon

Not Everything That Sounds Christ-Centered Is Biblical

There is a kind of theology that sounds deeply reverent at first. It speaks much of Jesus. It piles up titles for Jesus. It celebrates his glory, his lordship, his work in creation, his role in redemption, his victory over evil, and his final reign over all things. At first glance, it appears Christ-centered.

But not everything that says much about Jesus is therefore faithful to Jesus.

A theology can speak loudly of Christ and still lose the shape of the gospel. It can honor Jesus with one hand and, with the other, quietly push aside the Father who sent him and the Spirit who makes us children of God. When that happens, Christ-centeredness becomes something thinner, flatter, and less biblical. It becomes a kind of “Jesus-only” imagination dressed in Trinitarian language.

Jesus Reveals the Father; He Does Not Replace Him

The New Testament does not present Jesus as replacing the Father. It presents Jesus as the Son who reveals the Father. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus says, not because he is the Father, but because the Father is made known perfectly in him.¹ The Son does not erase the Father. The Son unveils him.

The Son does not redirect prayer away from the Father as though the Father were inaccessible to believers. The Son brings us to the Father.

That is why Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Our Father in heaven.”² This was not a temporary formula. It was not merely figurative language. It was not a prayer reserved for Jesus alone. It was the prayer of the kingdom people. It taught them that through Jesus they now stand before God not as strangers, not as outsiders, not as spiritual orphans, but as children.

Adoption Is at the Heart of the Gospel

Paul says the same thing. Believers receive the Spirit of adoption by whom they cry, “Abba, Father.”³ This is not a minor detail. This is the heart of Christian salvation.

The gospel is not simply that we admire Jesus from a distance. The gospel is that in Christ, by the Spirit, we are brought into the family life of God. We are not merely forgiven criminals. We are adopted children.

This means any theology that makes believers afraid to address the Father has missed something central. Jesus did not come so that we would stop calling God Father. He came so that we could finally do so truthfully.

Christ’s Priesthood Opens the Door

This is where the appeal to Christ’s eternal priesthood must be handled carefully. Yes, Jesus is our great High Priest. Yes, he intercedes for us. Yes, he represents us before God. But his priestly intercession does not mean believers are forbidden to address the Father. It means believers now have secure access to the Father because of him.

The logic of Hebrews is not: Jesus is High Priest, therefore only Jesus may approach the Father. The logic of Hebrews is: Jesus is High Priest, therefore we may draw near with confidence.

“Since then we have a great high priest,” Hebrews says, “let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace.”⁴ Again, because we have boldness to enter by the blood of Jesus, the command is not “stay outside,” but “draw near.”⁵

A priest does not exist to keep the people away from God. A priest represents the people so that they may come near. Christ’s intercession is not a locked gate before the Father. It is the opened door into the Father’s presence. His priesthood does not silence our prayers to the Father; it secures them.

The Father Himself Loves You

This is why Jesus himself says something striking: “In that day you will ask in my name… for the Father himself loves you.”⁶

He does not say, “You may never speak to the Father; I alone will speak to him.” He says the opposite. Because of him, his disciples may approach the Father in his name, with confidence, because the Father himself loves them.

That is why the apostolic pattern matters: to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit. “Through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”⁷ That one verse guards us from two errors. It guards us from any theology that diminishes Jesus, because access to the Father comes through him. But it also guards us from any theology that isolates Jesus from the Father and the Spirit, as though the Christian life were directed only to the Son while the Father remains hidden behind him.

The Danger of Proof-Texting the Trinity

This is also where the danger of proof-texting appears. One may quote Isaiah 63:16, “You, O LORD, are our Father,” and then insist that this must refer exclusively to God the Son and not to God the Father. But that is not exegesis; it is system-driven reading.

Isaiah is calling upon YHWH, the covenant God of Israel. Christians can rightly say that Jesus shares in the divine identity of YHWH. But that does not mean the Son is the Father, or that the Father is excluded from being the Father of Israel.

The same applies to Isaiah 9:6, where the promised king is called “Everlasting Father.”⁸ This does not mean the Messiah is the same person as God the Father. In royal language, it speaks of the king’s fatherly care, protection, and enduring rule over his people. The Messiah acts with father-like faithfulness toward the nation. But the text should not be forced to cancel the personal distinction between Father and Son.

True Christology Does Not Flatten the Trinity

A genuinely biblical Christology does not need to flatten the Trinity in order to exalt Jesus. The Son is fully divine. The Son is the agent of creation. The Son is the true image of the invisible God. The Son is the one in whom all things hold together. The Son is Lord, Redeemer, Judge, and King.⁹

But the Son is also the one whom the Father sends, loves, and raises from the dead; he obeys the Father’s will and now intercedes for us before him. These are not embarrassing details to explain away. They are part of the gospel’s own grammar.

When a theology says, in effect, “The Fatherhood of God belongs only to Jesus,” it does not protect Christ’s glory. It distorts the blessing Christ came to give.

The Son Makes Us Sons and Daughters

The glory of Jesus is not that he blocks our access to the Father. His glory is that he opens the way.

He is the Son who makes sons and daughters. He is the true Israelite who brings the nations into Abraham’s family. He is the faithful Messiah who gives us his Spirit so that we may cry, with confidence and reverence, “Abba, Father.”

So yes, let us praise Jesus. Let us confess him as Lord. Let us worship him as the eternal Son, the Word made flesh, the crucified and risen King. But let us not honor him by disobeying his own teaching. Let us not exalt the Son by silencing the Father. Let us not speak of the Spirit only as a spotlight while ignoring his work of adoption, holiness, and new creation.

Christian worship is not Fatherless devotion to Jesus. It is life with the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. Anything less may sound zealous, but it is not yet the fullness of the gospel.

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Footnotes

¹ John 14:9
² Matthew 6:9
³ Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6
⁴ Hebrews 4:14–16
⁵ Hebrews 10:19–22
⁶ John 16:26–27
⁷ Ephesians 2:18
⁸ Isaiah 9:6
⁹ Colossians 1:15–20; Hebrews 1:1–4

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