Living the Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel the Main Thing

To begin, I should say I have a very low tolerance for "touchy feely" books on living the Christian life. We live in a world that has pushed theology and doctrine into the realm of the specialists, leaving feelings alone as a measure of the Christian life for the common man. I'm not certain our culture is unique in this regard; the Puritans' deep desire for an emotional connection with God could have been ripped out of the modern Christian book store.C.J. Mahoney, however, surprised me with this short book. While he doesn't dive deeply into theology, he does center on theology and thinking, rather than emotion. In fact, Dr. Mahoney is insistent that our constant reliance on our emotions is damaging our spiritual growth --something of a fresh wind in our Christian culture. What's more, the doctrine he does deliver is dead center, respecting the Scriptures in the fullest sense of the concept.He begins by explaining why the Cross should be the center of our lives, or rather why Christians can never really leave the Cross behind. He then focuses on the difference between feeling and thinking, or rather what you feel verses what is real. Faith is, after all, living your life in light of that which you know to be true even though current circumstances don't seem to support that truth.The next chapter slips somewhat, drawing a picture of God's love for people. Here he makes the classic mistake of inserting a quantitative statement in the words of Christ in John 3:16, rather than a qualitative one. This is a mistake taken up by the large majority of the commentaries in the world, however, so it's hard to fault the author for it. After this, he draws his reader into the divine dilemma --how can a perfectly just God save a people justly condemned to eternal death?Dr. Mahoney works through the final week of the life of Christ, placing each of us into the scenes we find there. We are each condemning Christ, calling for his death. In the face of all this, the author turns again to the love of God, and how he not only covered our sins, but also understands our suffering in a sinful world.In the two chapters, the author moves into practical application. These are the most valuable chapters in the book, explaining precisely what legalism is (trying to please God through our own will and actions), and how to unload condemnation. Here is a picture of the spirit filled life almost anyone, of any theological persuasion, can embrace and use to their advantage.Well worth reading.

In his book, Living the Cross Centered Life, C.J. Mahaney reminds us the words of Paul that the cross is the only essential tenet of our faith (1 Corinthians 15.1,3). And he suggests that we face constant temptation to move away from that essential in three common areas: subjectivism, legalism, and condemnation. (p. 16). Mahaney writes:"The message Paul had for Timothy is the same message God has for you. You need to rediscover the truth. They key to joy, to growth, to passion isn't hiding from you. It's right before your eyes.It's the gospel." (p. 30)Through the rest of this little book Mahaney does his best to help us come face-to-face with the purity of the Gospel and to fall in love with the reality of the grace of the Gospel."For when you're deeply aware of your sin, and of what an affront it is to God's holiness, and of how impossible it is for him to respond to this sin with anything other that furious wrath - you can only be overwhelmed with how amazing grace is.Only those who are truly aware of their sin can truly cherish grace." (p. 88).In those two sentences Mahaney seems to identify the great challenge of our age: the absence of sin. As a concept, sin has been identified as a leftover from the dark ages that no longer applies to contemporary life. Perhaps a few quaint religious types still believe in sin but not the more intelligent masses. Mahaney is correct then that one will not love the gospel (or "cherish grace") apart from an awareness of their sin.The intellectually honest seeker of God will consider the entire gospel narrative that begins with creation, then the fall, followed by God's relentless pursuit of mankind to reconcile and restore them to himself in that relationship that existed in creation! In that context the harsh reality of the cross where "Jesus does't just feel forsaken; he is forsaken" (p. 94) challenges the assertion that sin is just a quaint, outdated concept. Jesus didn't go to the cross because of a concept.I appreciate Mahaney's challenge on p. 109: "Let the cross always be the treasure of your heart, your best and highest thought...and your passionate preoccupation."Living the Cross Centered Life is a volume that should be part of your library and should be re-read annually.

Book arrived on time, I bought a book used. Book came in perfect condition. The book itself is brilliant, my wife is reading it at the moment. It's not too long but also not short. Great book to share with your brothers and sisters in Christ. The book is practical and hard to put down.

What freedom came from this book. Why? Because it brought me back to the Cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus set me free because He replaced all my sin, guilt and shame with His perfect goodness. So good! And I needed to hear it in this book again, instead of trusting myself to get right with God, because that never works!

Mahaney's short book was recommended to me by my pastor, so I read it with great expectation in one sitting. My initial reaction was disappointment; the book has a simple and indeed almost simplistic central tenet - the centrality of the cross and Christ's redemptive act - yet somehow Mahaney pads this out into 165 pages with anecdote, repetition and an embellished and rather sensational retelling of Scripture. For example, on page 91 Mahaney suggests that Christ's final words of anguish on the cross were "screamed out". Yes the Gospels talk about "crying out with a loud voice", which is not quite the same.So when I finished the book I felt somewhat dissatisfied, but without quite knowing why, other than the insubstantiality of its content. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to realise why I was unsettled: I could not remember reading anywhere in the 165 pages of the resurrection!On p14, Mahaney points to 1 Corinthians 15:3 as the central thrust of his book: "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins." (ESV translation)The rest of the book is Mahaney's expansion of this truth of 'first importance' and in particular, his belief that given our innate sinfulness we need to eschew "feelings" (even if the Holy Spirit sometimes leads us through our feelings - look at Paul in Acts 20:22) and focus wholly on the 'truth' of the cross.But hang on, isn't 1 Corinthians 15 that great chapter where Paul expounds not on the cross but...on the resurrection? We then discover that Mahaney has mischievously inserted a full stop into 1 Corinthians 15:3 where no full stop exists! This is the passage in full (vv3-5):"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve."So why does Mahaney stop with the cross? It reminds me of the 1970s musical Jesus Christ Superstar, which finishes with Christ on the cross. Most Christians condemned the musical for that reason, yet CJ Mahaney writes a book with the same message and it is hailed as a Christian masterpiece!The deeper you dig, the more flawed is Mahaney's theology. He devotes a whole chapter to how the message of the cross is summarised in Isaiah 53, and this is indeed true. But he is highly selective, skipping quickly over Isaiah 53:10-11 which is clearly a reference to the resurrection:"Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand. After he has suffered, he will see the light of life and be satisfied..."Yes, the cross is important, but it cannot be disconnected from Christ's resurrection, and we are seriously in error if we focus on one and not the other. As someone has said: the cross freed us from the penalty of sin, but the resurrection freed us from the power of sin. Paul stated this clearly in Romans 6 (vv8-9 - "Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.")Paul also put it elegantly in Philippians 3:10:"I want to know Christ - yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead."The whole of the Book of Acts is about the power of the resurrection, not the power of the cross. This may be an 'inconvenient truth' for CJ Mahaney, but the early Christians lived resurrection-centred lives, not cross-centred lives! In Acts 1:22, the Apostles selected a replacement for Judas who was to "become a witness with us of his resurrection". In Acts 4:33 we read that "the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection." In Acts 17:18 Paul "was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection."Some have criticised CJ Mahaney's Sovereign Grace Ministries for its authoritarianism (see [...]) and if this selective reading of Scripture is anything to go by, once can see how SGM has gone off track.Read this book with great care!

Very short, yet powerful, book that brings people back to the basics of Jesus. No nonsense, no fluffy/wishy-washy words or self-help jargon. Extremely pleased with the book overall and I would highly recommend for young and old Christians alike

One of the best Christian literature books I've read. It's a book that you'll want to read again and again and will not sit on your shelf collecting dust. Really brings the gospel to life, the love of God and the brutality of the crucifixion. If you're feeling distant from God and need encouragement to pick yourself back up again, this is the book to read (and of course the Bible itself) =)