We have to be consistently reminded that the gospel is not just the way in, it’s the way through; indeed, it’s the destination!  Through the power of sound theology and the real life stories of Jesus’ followers, the Morrises underline what Jesus taught on the road to Emmaus – that the Scriptures preeminently concern him.  

Missing Jesus: Find Your Life in His Great Story, Charles and Janet Morris (Moody Publishers, 2014), 176 pp.

Titles are sometimes so descriptive that you get the message almost without reading the book.  Consider John Owens’ The Death of Death in the Death of Christ.  In their provocatively titled new book, Missing Jesus, Charles and Janet Morris in two words put their finger on an endemic problem originating in our own prone-to-wander hearts.  That problem? In believing and trusting in the gospel, we still can, and sometimes do, miss Jesus.

Charles Morris is the speaker and host of Haven Today, one of the longest-running Christian radio programs in the country.  His wife, Janet, writes for the program.  Together, with a newsman’s nose for a good story, which Charles Morris still has as a former journalist, they argue for a “Copernican revolution” in our worldview – de-centering us and placing the crucified and risen Jesus Christ at the center.

Our culture militates against that revolution in its consistent mantra that it is “all about you.”  Actually, as the Morrises make clear, it is all about Jesus.  But segments of the church, particularly in the prosperous West, have imbibed at the culture’s well, and in the process Jesus and the gospel have been minimized and compromised.  Jesus Christ becomes nothing but “a little glow light” for our lives, our agent to maximize our comfort in this life, the one who saves us but leaves the rest to us.

We have to be consistently reminded that the gospel is not just the way in, it’s the way through; indeed, it’s the destination!  Through the power of sound theology and the real life stories of Jesus’ followers, the Morrises underline what Jesus taught on the road to Emmaus – that the Scriptures preeminently concern him.  The Morrises remind us that the gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t just accomplish our justification; it powers our sanctification as well, as we, not missing him, fix our eyes on Jesus. In the words of the Apostle Paul: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord,are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor.3:18).

The Morrises insightfully dissect chapter-by-chapter those forces that cause us to marginalize and miss Jesus, including, among them, guilt; ingratitude; the invisibility of God; our failure to comprehend the sufficiency of what Jesus accomplished; our warped notions of fatherhood; the tendency of our own attempts at self-righteousness to turn in on themselves; the idols that our hearts consistently manufacture; and our magnetic attraction to functional pharisaism. I found myself convicted, but also even more profoundly encouraged, by the book’s gospel-centered responses to these gospel-marginalizing realities.

As the story unfolds, we hear from the likes of, among others, J.I. Packer, George Herbert, James Boice, John Owen, C.S. Lewis, Jack Miller and Edmund Clowney. The book ends with a practical and biblical prescription for not missing Jesus that includes God’s ordained means of grace – word and sacrament – as well as a gracious encouragement to pray and not forsake fellowship.

It’s a grand story, because it’s Jesus’ story.  I strongly encourage both laypeople and pastors to read this book.

Ted Hamilton is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and serves as the Senior Pastor of New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, California.