Are We Marginalizing Jesus?

I started surfing some of the blog sites on the internet the last couple of days, especially ones associated with Pentecostal churches. There are a lot of excellent blogs out there! But one thing that I've been concerned about for over a decade is how we've begun to replace references to Jesus with the word "God." Several years ago I wrote an article on our web site asking the question: Is Jesus Being Marginalized In The Church? If you're interested in reading it click on the title of this post. My point in bringing this up here is that I'm seeing the same thing in some of the blogs I've visited. When a long post is written and contains the word "God" a dozen times, and "Jesus" is never used, or maybe only once or twice, it makes me wonder why? Are we really being Jesus' witnesses on our blogs if we only refer to "God?"

My concern is that an entire generation of young people have now been raised focused on God rather than Jesus Christ. Granted, He has not been eliminated entirely, but I feel the momentum is shifting increasingly away from being Christocentric to being Theocentric. As a result, the Gospel message that is being proclaimed is being changed away from bowing the knee at the cross of Jesus Christ, making Him the "center" or Lord of our lives, and calling people into a loving and personal relationship with Him.

As Pentecostal believers we are supposed to be Spirit empowered witnesses for Jesus Christ according to Acts 1:8. Jesus said in John 12:32-33 "But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." My challenge is this: What does it mean to lift up Jesus and be a witness for Him? I hear so many people talking about God today. Are we supposed to be witnesses for "God?" What God are we talking about? Buddha, Krishna, Jehovah, Allah, Vishnu?

The Bible says that the Holy Spirit draws people to Jesus Christ for salvation when He is lifted up. If we talk about God we are not necessarily lifting up Jesus. The Jews of Jesus day were already lifting up "God." Their difficulty was in the fact that the disciples were proclaiming salvation was only obtainable in Jesus Christ. The Bible says that the devils believe in God and they tremble. But that doesn't make them Christians. If you do a word study of the New Testament you will find that we are commanded repeatedly to "love" Jesus. But we are never commanded to simply love "God."

My prayer is that as Christian bloggers we will focus on and lift up the One who should be our "first love" - Jesus Christ.

What do you think?