No more poignant or instructive description of the work of the minister of the gospel exists than Paul’s “defensive excursus” in 2 Corinthians 2:14–7:4. Every Christian preacher should aim to possess a good working knowledge of this seminal part of the New Testament, in which Paul simultaneously describes and defends his service as an Apostle of Jesus Christ and a minister of the new covenant. He uses this language explicitly when he affirms, “God has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant” (2 Cor. 3:6). In what follows, he takes us from the outside of his ministry to its deep internal roots:
Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart. Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
It is written, “I believed, therefore I have spoken.” With that same spirit of faith we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Cor. 4:1–18)
All truly biblical preaching is preaching to the heart. Therefore, it is important that we have a clear idea of what “preaching to the heart” means.
The Heart
In Scripture, the word heart only rarely denotes the physical organ. It characteristically refers to the central core of the individual’s being and personality: the deep-seated element of a person that provides both the energy and the drive for all the faculties (e.g., Deut. 4:9; Matt. 12:34). It denotes the governing center of life.
Interestingly, of the 858 occurrences of the Hebrew terms that are translated as “heart,” leb and lebab, almost all have reference to human beings (in distinction from either God or other creatures). Indeed, “heart” is the Old Testament’s major anthropological term.
Modern Westerners tend to think of the heart as the center of a person’s emotional life (hence its use as the symbol of romantic rather than volitional love). But the Hebrew conceptualization placed the emotional center lower in the anatomy and located the intellectual energy center of a person in the heart. Hence, the word heart is frequently used as a synonym for the mind, the will, and the conscience, as well as (on occasion) for the affections. It refers to the fundamental bent or characteristic of an individual’s life.
In this sense, when we think about speaking or preaching to the heart, we do not have in view directly addressing the emotions as such. In any event, as Jonathan Edwards argued with such force, the mind cannot be so easily bypassed. Rather, we are thinking of preaching that influences the very core and center of an individual’s being, making an impact on the whole person, including the emotions, but doing so primarily by instructing and appealing to the mind. Such a focus is of paramount importance for preachers because the transformation and the renewal of the heart is what is chiefly in view in their proclamation of the gospel (cf. Rom. 12:1–2).
This, in fact, is already implied in Paul’s description of himself and his companions as “competent ministers of a new covenant” (2 Cor. 3:6). Built into the foundation of the new covenant is the promise of a transformed heart: “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart. . . . I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezek. 36:25–26).
No matter what circumstances under which we preach the Word of God, no matter to whom we are speaking, insofar as we too are called to be “competent ministers of the new covenant,” our preaching must always have the heart in view.
Threefold Openness
Paul speaks more fully here about his own preaching ministry than anywhere else in the New Testament. One of the key notes he strikes is that his preaching to the heart was marked by a threefold openness:
1. It involved an openness of Paul’s being, a transparency before God. “What we are,” he says, “is plain to God” (2 Cor. 5:11).
2. It also implied an opening out of the love that filled his heart toward the people to whom he was ministering. “We have . . . opened wide our hearts to you” (2 Cor. 6:11).
3. Within that twofold context—his own heart opened vertically toward God and horizontally toward those to whom he was seeking to minister—Paul’s preaching to the heart was also characterized by a disclosing (an opening up) of the truth. He expresses this in an illuminating way when he describes it as “setting forth the truth plainly” (2 Cor. 4:2), what the King James Version describes more graphically as “the manifestation of the truth.”
Thus, just as he is an open book in the sight of God, so also the preacher lays open the integrity of his life to the consciences and hearts of his hearers as though he were a letter to be read by them (cf. 2 Cor. 3:2). But these characteristics are never isolated from the way that we handle the Scriptures, opening up and laying bare their message in both exposition and application. The Corinthians had seen these hallmarks in Paul’s ministry. They were a large part of the explanation for his ministry’s power and fruit. They are no less essential to the minister of the gospel today, if he is to preach with similar effect on the hearts of his hearers.
Preaching to the heart, then, is not merely a matter of technique or homiletic style. These things have their proper place and relevance. But the more fundamental, indeed the more essential, thing for the preacher is surely the fact that something has happened in his own heart; it has been laid bare before God by His Word. He, in turn, lays his heart bare before those to whom he ministers. And within that context, the goal that he has in view is so to lay bare the truth of the Word of God that the hearts of those who hear are opened vertically to God and horizontally to one another.
Paul had reflected on this impact of God’s Word in 1 Corinthians 14, in the context of his discussion of tongues and prophecy in the Corinthian church. Prophetic utterance always possesses an element of speaking “to the heart” (Isa. 40:2). Through such preaching, even someone who comes in from the outside finds that “the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming ‘God is really among you’” (1 Cor. 14:24–25).
In the last analysis, this is what preaching to the heart is intended to produce: inner prostration of the hearts of our listeners through a consciousness of the presence and the glory of God. This result distinguishes authentic biblical preaching from any cheap substitute; it marks the difference between preaching about the Word of God and preaching the Word of God.
The presence of this threefold openness, then, is most desirable in preaching. When there is the exposition of the Scriptures, an enlarging and opening of the preacher’s heart, and the exposing of the hearts of the hearers, then the majesty of the Word of God written will be self-evident and the presence of the Word of God incarnate will stand forth in all His glory.
Man Small, God Great
There is a widespread need for this kind of preaching. We have an equal need as preachers to catch the vision for it in an overly pragmatic and programmatic society that believes it is possible to live the Christian life without either the exposing of our own hearts or the accompanying prostration of ourselves before the majesty of God on high.
It is just here that one notices a striking contrast between the biblical exposition one finds in the steady preaching of John Calvin in the sixteenth century and preaching in our own day. It is clearly signaled by the words with which he ended virtually every one of his thousands of sermons: “And now let us bow down before the majesty of our gracious God.” Reformed biblical exposition elevates God and abases man. By contrast, much modern preaching seems to have the goal of making man feel great, even if God Himself has to bow down.
So a leading characteristic of preaching to the heart will be the humbling, indeed the prostration, of hearts before the majesty of God on high. This is simultaneously the true ecstasy of the Christian, and therein lies the paradox of grace: the way down is always the way up.
But if, through the preaching of the gospel, we want to see people prostrated with mingled awe and joy before God, the essential prerequisite is that we ourselves be prostrated before Him. John Owen’s words still ring true even after three and a half centuries: “A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul. . . . If the word do not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.”
Preaching to the heart—through whatever personality, in whatever style—will always exhibit the following five characteristics:
1. A right use of the Bible. Preaching to the heart is undergirded by our familiarity with the use of sacred Scripture. According to 2 Timothy 3:16, all Scripture is useful (Greek ophelimos) for certain practical functions: for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
If it were not for the fact that a chapter division appears in our Bibles at this point (giving the impression that Paul is now changing gears in his charge to Timothy), we would not so easily miss the point implicit in what he goes on to say. In 2 Timothy 4:1–2, Paul takes up these same uses of Scripture (teaching, rebuking, correcting, encouraging in godly living) and applies them. In effect, he says to Timothy, “Use the God-breathed Scriptures this way in your ministry!”
Those who love the richer, older theology of the Reformation and Puritan eras, and of Jonathan Edwards and Thomas Boston, may be tempted to look askance at the modern professor of preaching as he hands out copies of his “preaching grid” to the incoming class of freshmen taking Homiletics 101. But the fact is that here we find Paul handing out the last copy of his own “preaching grid” to Timothy. This is by no means the only preaching grid to be found, either in Scripture or in the Reformed tradition, but it certainly is a grid that ought to be built into our basic approach to preaching.
Thus informed, we come to see that preaching to the heart will give expression to four things: instruction in the truth, conviction of the conscience, restoration and transformation of life, and equipping for service. Let us not think that we have gained so much maturity in Christian living and service that we can bypass the fundamental structures that the apostles give us to help us practically in these areas.
Preaching, therefore, involves teaching—imparting doctrine in order to renew and transform the mind. It implies the inevitable rebuke of sin, and brings with it the healing of divine correction. The language of “correction” (Greek epanorthosis) is used in the Septuagint for the rebuilding of a city or the repair of a sanctuary. Outside of biblical Greek, it is used in the medical textbooks of the ancient world for the setting of broken limbs. It is a word that belongs to the world of reconstruction, remedy, healing, and restoration.
This brings us to another characteristic of the Apostle Paul: a masterful balance between the negation of sin and the edification of the Christian believer, “so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” If we are going to preach to the heart, then our preaching will always (admittedly in different kinds of balance) be characterized by these four marks of authenticity.
But such preaching must first be directed to the mind. When we preach to the heart, we are not engaged in rebuking the conscience or cleansing the emotions directly. Rather, preaching to the heart addresses the understanding first, to instruct it; but in doing so it also reaches through the mind to inform, rebuke, and cleanse the conscience. It then touches the will to reform and transform life and equip the saints for the work of ministry (Eph. 4:12).
When we preach to the heart, the mind is not so much the terminus of our preaching but the channel through which we appeal to the whole person, leading to the transformation of the whole life.
2. Nourishment of the whole person. There is an important balance to be pursued here—the balance of ministering to the understanding, affections, and will. It is very easy to lose sight of this. Its significance may perhaps best be underlined by means of a personal illustration.
Many years ago, I had the privilege of preaching on a few occasions to a particular congregation. During this period (and with no connection between these events!), the pastor of the church received and accepted a call to serve elsewhere. Friends whom I made during these occasional visits confided in me some time after the departure of their pastor (to whom they were extremely loyal): “As we have sought to assess the impact of these last years of ministry on our lives, we have come to this conclusion: while we were thoroughly well-instructed, we were poorly nourished.”
There is a difference between a well-instructed congregation and a well-nourished one. It is possible to instruct yet fail to nourish those to whom we preach. It is possible to address the mind, but to do so with little concern to see the conscience, the heart, and the affections reached and cleansed, the will redirected, and the whole person transformed through a renewed mind. By contrast, in the picture of preaching first painted for Timothy, Paul is teaching us how to preach to the heart in a way that will nourish the whole person.
One of the characteristics of such preaching is pathos, the stimulation in us of a sense of sadness, even broken-heartedness. Pathos is not mere emotion for its own sake, certainly not the kind of emotionalism that tends to descend into an insincere, over-the-top expressiveness. In preaching it is, rather, the communication and evoking through our words of the responsive “mood” appropriate to sinners who are listening to the gospel being preached. In this way, our hearers become aware of the power of the truths we are preaching about human sin, divine grace, and glory.
The great Welsh preacher Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once made a fascinating and illuminating (to me, at least) self-critical comment on what he felt had been a weaknesses of his own preaching ministry. He thought it had lacked in at least one particular aspect: pathos.
Christians of an earlier time sometimes spoke of sermons as “pathetic.” We, of course, would not cross the street to hear preaching if it was “pathetic” in the modern sense of the word. But our forefathers meant something quite different by this expression—namely, preaching that leaves its hearers with melted hearts. The preaching that does this comes from a similarly broken and melted heart that already has placed itself under this fourfold applicatory grid of Scripture: the preaching heart has been instructed by the truth of Scripture; the conscience rebuked by the holiness of Scripture; and the spirit nourished by the correction, healing, and restorative power of Scripture, so that the man of God, the preacher, is equipped to relate God’s Word from his own heart to our hearts.
3. An understanding of the condition of the hearers. Preaching to the heart always reflects an awareness of the actual condition of our hearers. In one form or another, most preaching books underscore this point. The preacher emerges from the world of the biblical text to speak in the name of Christ to the world of his hearers.
One of the hidden snares in systematic biblical preaching is that we may become so taken up with the task of studying and explaining the text that we forget the actual poverty and falsehood that it addresses. One distinctively Reformed manifestation of this is that our love for the works of the past (coupled with their ready availability today)—our discovery, for example, of the depth of Puritan preaching by comparison with contemporary preaching—may suck us into the very language and speech patterns of a past era, thus making us sound inauthentic to our own generation.
By contrast, preaching to the heart will not be encrusted with layers of ill-digested materials from the past, however relevant these were in their own day. Those preaching helps must rather be thoroughly digested, made our own, and applied to people today in today’s language. That is what it means to bring the truth to bear upon men, women, boys, and girls in such a way that it opens up and penetrates their hearts.
In this sense, biblical exposition must speak to the people sitting today in the pews, not to those who sat in them hundreds of years ago. This, in fact, is one of the cardinal principles expounded by William Perkins in his great work The Art of Prophesying, the original Puritan manual on preaching. Perkins argues that we have to understand the soul-condition of those to whom we preach, and address them in an appropriate and relevant way.
We always preach to people in a variety of spiritual conditions. Perkins realized that if he was going to touch people with the truth of the gospel, then he must—always in a manner consistent with the gospel—explain and apply his text. Only then would it serve as a sharp instrument that the Holy Spirit, the Divine Surgeon, might use to cut open the hearts of the people and bring healing to their diseased spirits. In that sense, the way we explain the Scriptures can never be abstracted from the characteristics, personality, and maturity level of those to whom we preach.
Perkins’ own grid is inherently interesting and valuable, if one employs it in a way that makes it genuinely one’s own. He suggests that preaching should be shaped to six categories of hearers:
- Non-Christians who know nothing about the gospel and have unteachable spirits.
- Non-Christians who know nothing about the gospel but who are teachable.
- Those who know what the gospel is but who have never been humbled to see their need of a Savior.
- Those who have been humbled, some of whom are in the early stages of seeing their need, and others who see that they need salvation, not merely improvement, and are now convinced that only Christ can save them.
- Genuine believers who need to be taught.
- Backsliders, either because of a failure to understand the gospel clearly or a failure to live consistently with it.
As Perkins acknowledged, most preachers will serve mixed congregations. In other words, they will generally preach simultaneously to all six types of hearers.
But we do not need to appeal to the Puritans for the authority to operate with this type of “preaching grid”; our Lord Jesus did so Himself. On at least one occasion, He divided His hearers into four categories and likened them to different kinds of soil distinguished by their receptivity to the cultivation of seed: the hard-packed soil of the pathway, the rocky soil, the weed-infested soil, and the good soil (Mark 4:1–20).
It would make a fascinating academic study of the ministry of Jesus to take this parable of the sower, the seed, and the soils as a lens through which to examine, categorize, and analyze His preaching. For preachers, too, it is a fruitful exercise to consider the ways that He applied His message to the four spiritual conditions to which He saw Himself speaking.
Is it because expository preaching is such a demanding activity, and we are so consumed by its demands, that some of us pay so little attention (or at least too little attention) to the spiritual condition of those to whom we are preaching? If so, we need to reconsider our approach.
If it is important that we know the condition of the hearts of our hearers, the best place to begin is, of course, with our own hearts. If we apply the Word there, we soon will learn to be like surgical attendants: our exposition of the text will become like sterilized knives, perfectly tooled, that we hand to the Spirit for the precise spiritual surgery that our people need.
A further feature that characterized our Lord Jesus’ preaching was that the common people heard Him gladly (Mark 12:37). We ought not to dismiss this with the cheap comment that they soon changed their tune. They immediately and instinctively recognized the difference between the book learning and authority-citing style of the scribes and the applied biblical wisdom and heart knowledge displayed in Jesus’ preaching. The scribes and teachers of the law spoke about the Bible in a manner removed from daily experience. Jesus, in stark contrast, seemed to speak from inside the Bible in a way that addressed their hearts.
Sadly, some of our preaching carries with it the atmosphere of being “about the Bible” rather than conveying a sense that here the Bible is speaking, and indeed God Himself is speaking. This will be changed only when we come to Scripture in the spirit of the Servant of the Lord: “The Sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary. He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears, and I have not been rebellious; I have not drawn back” (Isa. 50:4–5).
4. The use of the imagination. Preaching to the heart is aided by our recognition of the true nature of our task. The great question is, How, through the work of the Spirit, can I best get the Word of God into the hearts of the people?
Those who do this with the greatest fruitfulness and success are marked by many gifts and characteristics, often very diverse. But one thing all of them seem to have in common is imagination—an imaginative creativity that bridges the distance between the truth of the Word of God and the lives of those to whom they speak.
In some preachers, this is most evident in the imaginative power of their illustrations. George Whitefield’s use of illustrations was sometimes so vivid that people thought they were actually caught up in the events he was describing, confusing what they were hearing with reality. By contrast, the congregation of St. Peter’s Church in Geneva listened to John Calvin preach an average of five forty-minute sermons a week during the course of his lengthy ministry, but with virtually no stories or illustrations of that kind.
Like most of us, Calvin did not possess Whitefield’s imaginative power (or his magical voice). Nevertheless, Calvin’s sermons lived and had the power to stir young men to be willing to suffer martyrdom for Christ, for he had an ability to use language with such imaginative power that his preaching bridged the gap between life in ancient Judah and Israel and life in sixteenth-century Switzerland. He expressed and applied the truth in a way that was saturated in the language of the daily life of his hearers, bringing the Word of God right into the nitty-gritty practicalities of their experience.
Similarly, Richard Baxter preached in such a way that his sermons so connected with life in seventeenth-century Kidderminster, England, that the truth he spoke exploded during the week like time bombs planted in his congregation’s memories.
The Spirit is able to use different sets of imaginative skills employed in different contexts but producing similar effects. But clearly the ability to imagine the Word being taken from the Scriptures and implanted into the minds of the hearers is common to all lively exposition.
Scripture itself employs different metaphors to help us grasp how important it is to “see ourselves into” the hearts and situations of those to whom we preach. Here are some drawn simply at random: the preacher is a sower of seed, a teacher of students, a father of children, a mother giving birth, a nurse feeding infants, a shepherd caring for his flock, a soldier engaging in warfare, and a builder constructing the temple of God.
We need only to think of ourselves in terms of these metaphors to see what is involved in bringing the Word of God to bear on the hearts and consciences of those to whom we are preaching. What does a farmer do? He plows the ground and sows the seed, then prayerfully waits for the fruition of his work. What does a builder do? He clears a building site and erects the building. What does a shepherd do? He feeds and protects his flock. How, then, can I get the seed into this soil? How can I clear the site and lay the blocks? How can I prepare this meal for these people?
In these different ways, we come to recognize what it means to be a preacher. Our own imagination is fired and we begin to learn how to preach to the heart.
5. Grace in Christ. The fifth key to fruitful preaching to the heart is the preacher’s own grasp of the principle and the reality of grace. This needs to be set within the multifaceted context of a growing familiarity with the uses of sacred Scripture, an awareness of the actual condition of our hearers, and a conscious recognition of the preacher’s task. But always the melody line of preaching to the heart lies in our own grasp of the principle of grace. That is what makes preaching “sing,” and it applies to two aspects of our preaching.
First, it applies to the content of our preaching. Only the preaching of grace can open the sinful heart. Unaided law, imperatives without indicatives, cannot pry open locked hearts. It is grace, and—yes—the preaching of the law in the context of grace, expounding the grace of law, that brings conviction of sin. This is the very point John Newton so famously made in the best-known of his Olney Hymns, “Amazing Grace!”:
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved.
Paul stressed this to the Corinthians. The heart and soul of his ministry was this commitment: “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Through such preaching, there was a phanerosis, a manifestation (“setting forth”; 2 Cor. 4:2) of the truth, a making known of what Paul calls “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4). For when “Jesus Christ as Lord” is thus manifested in preaching, God again makes “his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).
A caveat is in order here, which is particularly relevant to a time like our own when the ancient patristic and Reformation style of consecutive exposition (the lectio continua method) has undergone something of a revival. We must never make the mistake of thinking that any system of consecutive exposition of Scripture absolutely guarantees the preaching of Christ. It is possible to naively assume that because we are preaching systematically through books of the Bible, we are inevitably preaching Christ and Him crucified. That ought to be the case, but it is not necessarily so. Sadly, one may preach in a consecutive way through the Bible without truly preaching Christ-centered sermons.
In addition, we may major on the theme of grace in a way that is disconnected from Christ Himself, treating it as a commodity and losing sight of the fact that it can be found only through a person.
There is a center to the Bible and its message of grace. It is found in Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected. Grace, therefore, must be preached in a way that is centered and focused on Jesus Christ Himself. We must never offer the benefits of the gospel without the Benefactor Himself. For many preachers, however, it is much easier to deal with the pragmatic things, to answer “how to” questions, and even to expose and denounce sin than it is to give an adequate explanation of the source of the forgiveness, acceptance, and power we need.
It is a disheartening fact that evangelical Christians, who write vast numbers of Christian books, preach abundant sermons, sponsor numerous conferences and seminars, and broadcast myriad TV and radio programs actually write few books, preach few sermons, sponsor few conferences or seminars, and devote few programs to the theme of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. We give our best and most creative energies to teaching God’s people almost everything except the person and work of our Lord and Savior. This should cause us considerable alarm, for there is reason to fear that our failure here has reached epidemic proportions.
We need to return to a true preaching to the heart, rooted in the principle of grace and focused on the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then people will not say about our ministry merely, “He was an expository preacher,” or “That was practical,” or even “He cut open our consciences.” Instead, they will say: “He preached Christ to me, and his preaching was directed to my conscience. It was evident that he gave the best of his intellectual skills and the warmth of his compassion to thinking about, living for, and proclaiming his beloved Savior, Jesus Christ.” This is what will reach the heart! And when you have experienced such preaching, or seen its fruit, you will know what true preaching is. And you will agree that its fruit lasts for all eternity.
Second, this principle of grace in Christ applies to the manner of our preaching.
Even today, 165 years after his early death, when we read the memoirs or the sermons of someone like Robert Murray M’Cheyne, we can still feel the power that must have gripped people as his preaching reached into their hearts. On the morning of M’Cheyne’s death, a letter of gratitude for what turned out to be the last sermon he ever preached reached him. It was left unopened on his desk, and he never read the words of a grateful listener who commented, “It was not so much what you said as your manner of your speaking.” This is a major key to reaching the heart in preaching. For while preaching involves bringing the world of the Bible to bear on the world of our contemporaries, it also involves bringing the message-in-words of the Scriptures through the message-in-manner of the preacher.
There needs to be a marriage between the message and the manner; therein lies the heart of the mystery of preaching. As our hearts are opened wide to the grace of God in the gospel, and simultaneously opened wide to our hearers, the power of the gospel is set on display (see 2 Cor. 6:11). Paul expresses this memorably in 2 Corinthians 4:5: “We do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord.” But there is a corollary to this: “We ourselves are your bondslaves for Jesus’ sake.” The evidence that I preach Jesus Christ as Lord is found not so much in my declarations as it is in the manifestation of the lordship of Christ in my life and preaching—when I, His bondslave, am willing to be and actually become in my preaching the bondslave of others for Jesus’ sake.
In the last analysis, preaching to the heart is preaching Christ in a way that reminds people of Christ, but also manifests Christ to them, and draws them to Him. If, among other things, preaching is (as Phillips Brooks’ famous description claims) “the bringing of truth through personality,” then the personalities of the preachers of the cross must be marked by the cross. So we are called to be cruciformed (shaped by the cross), Christophers (bearing the Christ of the cross), and Christplacarders (setting Christ and Him crucified on display; cf. Gal. 3:1) in our preaching as we “try to persuade men” (2 Cor. 5:11).
Perhaps such preaching of Christ is less common than we assume. If so, it is because we do not yet know Him nearly well enough.
Let us then resolve, above all other ambitions, to know Him, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings (Phil. 3:10). Let us also be determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2), so that, as we preach to the heart, God Himself will speak to His people heart to heart.