Putting the Christ back into Christian?

Reading Revelation 5 with my family last week, I was struck again by how central to the whole Christian worldview is Christ.

Now that might sound like a statement of is-the-sky-blue obviousness. But bear with me; because this is something which we are far more prone to forgetting that we might realise.

Lessons from Revelation: radically centred on Jesus

Let’s look at Revelation 5. With strong echoes of Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1, John sees the indescribable majesty of the heavenly throne room of God. Unable to get close to describing God Himself, John can only speak of what surrounds Him: a throne of gemstones and a rainbow, and coming from it the most terrifying of thunderstorms. Surrounding Him is a heavenly retinue of never-ending worship, in which creatures of unimaginable glory never cease night and day to praise the thrice-holy God. And if our Bibles finished John’s vision there, I suspect that many of us would not feel that anything was missing.