Focus On Jesus
By A. Gene Veal

Our natural tendency is to focus on the wrong thing.  We are inclined to focus on our experience, on ourselves, or on others.  I want to encourage you to focus on Jesus: Christ in you.  “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

Did I ever tell you my little parable of the first two denominations?  Two fellows were sitting on a park bench feeding the pigeons.  One looks around and then declares with great expressiveness, “What a beautiful day it is and how wonderful it is to be able to see it!”  The other man responded, “Oh, sir, I most heartily agree.  You know, I used to be blind.”  The other man exclaimed, “You don’t mean it!  I used to be blind, too.”  He went on, “I will never forget the day Jesus healed me.”

The other man said, “What?  Jesus healed you?  Why that is wonderful because Jesus healed me, too.”  They rejoiced together in their mutual blessings.  The first man said, “Yeah, I will never forget that day He spit upon the ground and made mud.  He put the mud on my eyes and told me to go wash at the pool.  I washed and immediately I could see clearly.”

Hearing this with great suspicion, the other man said, “Mud?  What mud?  When Jesus healed me He just touched my eyes and I could see, but men appeared to me like walking trees.  Then Jesus touched me again and suddenly I could see clearly, but there was no mud.  I don’t know what you are talking about.  Are you sure you can even see at all? You must not know the Jesus I know.  How could you see after such a disgusting experience?  I don’t believe you know what you are talking about.”

With that, both men moved to the opposite ends of the bench and never spoke to each other again.  That was the beginning of denominationalism: The Mudites and the Anti-Mudites.

I only made-up that story to illustrate the absurdity of some divisions among believers, but you know, I think it illustrates a natural tendency in all of us to always want to be RIGHT.  Probably the least important element of any relationship is “Who is right?”  In marriage, for example, for most couples with whom I deal, their arguments actually become debates over who is right.

If I were your enemy and I wanted to paralyze you or at least take away your ability to contend with me, my best ploy would be to get you to focus on the wrong objective.  If I can get you to spend your time on what doesn’t matter, I win.

Remember Lee Harvey Oswald?  I never will forget how he used to annoy the man next to him at the rifle range.  Oswald would not only shoot his own target, but also would aim at the target of the man next to him.  He would shoot it dead center every time.

Even though you may “hit the bull’s eye,” if it is the wrong target, you have missed.  The target of Christian living is not for you to be proved right, but for you to have the right spirit.  If we spend all out time proving how right we are, what does that accomplish?  It is the wrong target.

This kind of thinking could stem from continual introspection, always examining ourselves to see if there is anything “not right.”  Then we become defensive when it is something we really want and don’t want to “give up.”  We begin to build an argument around a wrong motive of being right.  We might even incorporate Scripture to “support” our position, taking the Scripture out of context and deliberately ignoring all the laws of Hermeneutics (i.e., the study of the methodological principles of interpretation of the Bible).  Your rights as a Christian are not determined by your performance in the flesh, but become experimentally real in your life by the Spirit of Christ in you.  Examining yourself is paralyzing, aiming at the wrong target.  Examining Jesus (See our article “Consider Jesus”) is profitable and fulfilling.  Focus on “Him in you,” not your natural self.

The continual grubbing on the inside to see whether we are what we ought to be generates a self-centered, morbid type of Christianity, not the robust, simple life of the child of God. Until we get into a right relationship to God, it is a case of hanging on by the skin of our teeth. There is nothing indicative of the miracle of Redemption in that. Launch out in carefree belief that the Redemption is complete, and then bother no more about yourself, but begin to be as Jesus Christ said you are: “the salt of the earth”, “the light of the world”, “witnesses of me”, etc. When you come before the Throne of Grace, pray on the realization that you are only perfect in Christ Jesus, not on the plea, "O Lord, I have done my best, please hear me."

When will we ever be free from the morbid habit of thinking about ourselves?  We need to get sick to death of our fleshly selves; until there is no longer any surprise at anything God can tell us about ourselves.  Just as the disciples responded to Jesus when He told them “one of you will betray me,” each one having been with Jesus for three years, immediately replied, “Lord, is it I?” They often enough heard expression about them from Him like: “Oh, ye of little faith”, “You know not what spirit you are of”, “Get behind Me, Satan”, and “Do you still not believe?”  We cannot touch the depths of the meanness that is in our natural selves apart from Christ in us. There is only one place where we are right, and that is “in Christ Jesus.”  When we recognize who we are “in Him” then we have our focus on the correct view of ourselves: “IN HIM”. Knowing this, we then step into every situation of life “strong in the Lord and the power of His might.”

Another “wrong target” is judging how another Christian is doing instead of dealing with them on the basis of who they are “in Christ.”  Remember when Jesus told Peter what was going to happen to Peter, Peter turned to the Lord and asked what was going to happen to John.  Jesus said, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me.”  In other words, “Change your focus from your brother in Christ to Christ in your brother.”

When we judge one another to discover what our Lord calls “the speck in our brother’s eye” we miss out on the continued discovery of “Christ in us.” We should know that our brother is just where he is in Christ at this time.  Christ will “be formed” in him (Gal. 4:19) as He will “be formed” in us. Like us, he is being “conformed to the image of Christ.” That is God’s business, not ours.  “It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God” because there is “now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus”

Think of this before you judge your brother: "For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again."  This statement is not a haphazard guess; it is an eternal law of God.  Whatever judgment you give, it is measured to you again. There is a difference between retaliation and retribution. Jesus says that the basis of life is retribution - "with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." If you have been shrewd in finding out the defects in others, remember that will be exactly the measure given to you. Life serves back what we sow. This law works from God's throne downwards: “With the loyal you show yourself loyal; with the blameless you show yourself blameless; with the pure you show yourself pure; and with the crooked you show yourself perverse.” (Psalm 18:25-26)

Romans chapter two applies it in a still more definite way, and says that the one who criticizes another is guilty of the very same thing.  God looks not only at the act, He looks at the possibility.  Do we believe the statements of the Bible to begin with?  For instance, do we believe this statement, that the things we criticize in others we are guilty of ourselves? The reason we see hypocrisy and fraud and unreality in others is because they are all in our own hearts. The great characteristic of a saint is humility (See our series on “Humility”).  Yes, all those things and other evils would have been manifested in me but for the grace of God, therefore I have no right to judge (condemn) my brother.

Jesus says - "Judge not, that ye be not judged" if you do judge, it will be measured to you exactly as you have judged.  Who of us would dare to stand before God and say - "My God, judge me as I have judged my brother?"  We have judged our brother as a sinner; if God should judge us like that we would be in hell.  God judges us through the marvelous Atonement of Jesus Christ. Now give your brother the same grace of estimation as God gives you “IN CHRIST.”

If we “SEE GOD” working ALL THINGS “together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose”, there will not be Mudites and Anti-Mudites.  We will say to ourselves (as it says in Romans 14), “Who art thou that judgest another man's servant?  To his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.” “For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.  But why dost thou judge thy brother?  Or, why dost thou set at nought thy brother?  For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.”

Unity with diversity is strength. That is desirable. Unity with conformity is communism. That will always fail. “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”

So, be who you are “in Christ” and “Let brotherly love continue.” Our Christianity depends on it, for the Scripture says: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child.”

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