By Oyewole O. Sarumi
Dear beloved of the Lord, there is a peculiar paradox that confronts anyone who has spent decades in the trenches of pastoral ministry and theological education. The name of Jesus Christ is spoken more frequently than ever in contemporary Christian discourse, yet the person of Christ himself often remains strangely absent from the lived experience of those who claim his name.
The church has produced a generation of people who are biblically literate but not Christ-intoxicated, doctrinally sound but not devotionally aflame, religiously active but not radically transformed. The statement before us rendered recently by Brother IbunkunOluwa Lawal on the True Christian Faith WhatsApp platform, “No Christ, No Christianity; Know Christ, Know Christianity”, is not merely a clever aphorism. It is a diagnostic tool, a theological scalpel that cuts through the layers of accumulated religious programming and exposes the fundamental question that every leader, every pastor, every teacher, and every disciple must answer: Is Christ himself the actual substance of your faith, or has he become merely the mascot of a religious system you have learned to manage?
The data emerging from contemporary research paints a sobering picture. Pew Research Center’s extensive 2025 Religious Landscape Study, which collected data from more than 36,000 people across all fifty states in the US, reveals that while the decline of Christian affiliation in America may be slowing, the centrality of faith among self-identified Christians has plummeted by twenty percentage points over twenty-five years.
More than half of young adults between eighteen and twenty-nine never attend religious services of any kind, and roughly six people leave Christianity for every one who joins. But the more troubling statistic is not the exodus of the nominally religious. It is the spiritual condition of those who remain. Barna Group’s 2025 Discipleship in Community report found that while nearly two-thirds of churchgoers claim to be presently being discipled, two in five Christians are not involved in any form of discipleship at all. The church is filled with people who have made a profession of faith but have never made a pursuit of Christ.
This is not a new problem. It is the perennial temptation of the religious heart. The Pharisees possessed the oracles of God, memorized the law, tithed mint and cumin, and traversed sea and land to make a single convert, yet Jesus pronounced upon them the most searing indictment in the Gospels: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40).
The tragedy of the Pharisees was not their ignorance of Scripture. It was their failure to recognize that the entire scriptural witness was pointing to a Person, and that Person was standing in their midst. They had the map but rejected the destination. They studied the menu but refused the feast.
THE ANATOMY OF A CHRISTLESS CHRISTIANITY
To understand what it means to know Christ, we must first diagnose what happens when Christ is absent from the center of Christian life. A Christless Christianity is not necessarily a Christianity without Christ’s name. It is a Christianity in which Christ has been reduced from the sovereign Lord of all to a mere accessory to a religious lifestyle. He becomes the ticket to heaven rather than the treasure of heaven itself. He is invoked at the beginning of prayers and at the end of sermons, but he is not the gravitational center around which the entire life of the believer orbits.
This reduction takes several recognizable forms. There is the moralistic Christ, who is valued primarily as an example of ethical living, a first-century rabbi whose teachings on love and justice serve as the blueprint for social improvement. There is the therapeutic Christ, who exists to soothe anxieties and affirm self-esteem, a divine life coach whose primary function is to make us feel better about ourselves.
There is the transactional Christ, who is approached as a mechanism for accessing blessings, a heavenly vending machine into which we insert the coins of faith and obedience and from which we expect to extract health, wealth, and prosperity.
There is the cultural Christ, who becomes a mascot for political ideologies and national identities, a figure invoked to sanctify our preferred vision of society rather than to transform our hearts.
Each of these Christs is a domesticated Christ, a Christ who has been shrunk to fit the contours of our own agendas. And a domesticated Christ is ultimately a false Christ.
As the Puritan Thomas Watson observed with characteristic clarity, “To know God out of Christ is to know him an enemy; but to know him in Christ is sweet and delicious”. The corollary is equally true: to know a Christ who is not the Christ of Scripture is to know a Christ who cannot save, cannot transform, and cannot satisfy.
The apostle Paul was so adamant about this that he warned the Corinthians against receiving “another Jesus” and the Galatians against receiving “a different gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4; Galatians 1:6-9). The most dangerous counterfeit is not the absence of Christ’s name but the presence of a Christ who is not the risen Lord.
KNOWING CHRIST AS THE SUBSTANCE OF ETERNAL LIFE
The starting point for any recovery of Christ-centered Christianity must be the recognition that knowing Christ is not a means to an end. It is the end itself. When Jesus prayed in the upper room on the night before his crucifixion, he did not define eternal life in terms of duration, location, or reward. He defined it in terms of relationship: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
The Greek word γινώσκω, used here and throughout the New Testament for “knowing” God, carries a depth of meaning that far exceeds intellectual apprehension. As Pope Benedict XVI observed in his reflection on this passage, “Knowing, in the language of sacred Scripture, is an interior becoming one with the other. Knowing God, knowing Christ, always means loving him, becoming, in a sense, one with him by virtue of that knowledge and love”.
This is the knowledge of covenant intimacy, not the knowledge of academic acquaintance. It is the knowledge of a husband who knows his wife after decades of shared life, not the knowledge of a biographer who has studied his subject from a distance. It is the knowledge of Job after the whirlwind, when he declares, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you” (Job 42:5). It is the knowledge of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, whose hearts burned within them as the risen Christ opened the Scriptures to them, and who recognized him in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:32, 35).
The apostle Paul understood this with a clarity that should rebuke every pastor who has subtly begun to treat Christ as a means to something else. In Philippians 3, Paul enumerates his religious credentials with the precision of a man who knows exactly how impressive they are: circumcised on the eighth day, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, blameless under the law. If any man could have claimed a Christless righteousness, it was Paul. Yet he writes, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (Philippians 3:7-8).
The Amplified Bible renders this passage with a richness that captures the progressive, relational nature of this knowing: “that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly”.
Paul’s language is striking because it reveals that knowing Christ is not a static achievement but a dynamic pursuit. It is not a box to be checked but a horizon that continually recedes as one draws nearer. The greater the knowledge, the greater the longing for more. This is the paradox of spiritual hunger: those who know Christ most deeply are most acutely aware of how much they do not yet know. Ignatius of Antioch, writing on his way to martyrdom in Rome, expressed this beautifully when he declared, “Now I begin to be a disciple. May nothing of things visible and invisible envy me, that I may attain Jesus Christ”. Here was a man who had been a bishop, a disciple of the apostles, a leader of the church in Antioch, yet he understood that the knowledge of Christ was not a destination he had reached but a pilgrimage upon which he had only just begun.
THE SUPREMACY OF CHRIST AS THE FOUNDATION OF ALL THINGS
If knowing Christ is the substance of eternal life, then Christ himself must be understood as the supreme reality in which all other realities find their meaning and coherence. The great Christ hymn of Colossians 1:15-20 provides the theological foundation for this claim. Paul declares that Christ is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” and that “in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers, all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:15-16). This is not merely a statement about Christ’s role in creation. It is a statement about the very structure of reality. Christ is not one good thing among many. He is the reason why there are any good things at all.
The implications of this for Christian formation are staggering. If Christ is the one through whom all things were created and for whom all things exist, then no dimension of human life can be rightly understood apart from him. This is not a claim that every subject must be explicitly theological in its content, but it is a claim that every subject finds its ultimate coherence and significance in relation to the One who is the image of the invisible God. As the great hymn concludes, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:19-20). The Christ who created all things is the Christ who reconciles all things. The Christ who is the head of the church is the Christ who holds all things together (Colossians 1:17-18).
John Owen, that titan of Puritan theology, grasped this with a profundity that continues to challenge the church centuries after his death. In his magisterial work The Glory of Christ, Owen argued that the principal exercise of saving faith is not merely trusting in Christ for salvation but contemplating the glory of Christ himself. As one summary of Owen’s thought puts it, “For Owen, and indeed for Christians throughout the ages, it has been axiomatic that the principal exercise of faith is the pondering, the contemplating, of the glory of Christ”.
Owen understood that faith which does not continually feed upon the beauty and excellency of Christ will inevitably wither into mere formalism. The soul that does not behold the glory of the Lord is a soul that is not being transformed into his likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18).
KNOWING CHRIST AS TRANSFORMATION, NOT INFORMATION
The critical distinction that must be maintained in any discussion of Christ-centered spiritual formation is the distinction between knowing about Christ and knowing Christ himself. This is not a distinction between head and heart, as if doctrine were unimportant. It is a distinction between information and transformation, between accumulating facts about a person and being changed by an encounter with that person. One can study the life of a historical figure for years and remain fundamentally unaltered. But to encounter the risen Christ is to be radically undone and remade.
This is the consistent pattern of Scripture. When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, his immediate response was not intellectual enlightenment but moral devastation: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5).
When Peter encountered the power of Jesus in the miraculous catch of fish, he did not ask a theological question. He fell at Jesus’s knees and said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8).
When Saul of Tarsus encountered the risen Christ on the Damascus road, he was not merely intellectually convinced of a new proposition. He was blinded, shaken, and redirected in the entire trajectory of his life (Acts 9:1-19).
The knowledge of Christ is not a piece of information to be filed away. It is a fire that consumes the dross, a light that exposes the darkness, a love that melts the frozen heart.
Thomas Watson captured this transformational dimension of faith with an image that has stayed with readers for nearly four centuries. “Faith is an assimilating grace,” he wrote. “Looking on a bleeding Christ causes a soft bleeding heart”. The knowledge of Christ is assimilating because it does not leave the knower unchanged. It conforms the knower to the known.
This is what Paul means when he writes, “I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10). The knowledge of Christ is inseparable from conformity to Christ. To know him is to become like him, and to become like him is to share in both the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings.
This has profound implications for the way spiritual formation is approached in the church. Too often, discipleship is conceived as a curriculum to be completed, a set of classes to be attended, a list of disciplines to be practiced. None of these things are inherently wrong, and all of them can be means of grace. But if they are pursued as ends in themselves, they become a new form of works-righteousness. The goal is not to produce people who have read all the right books, memorized all the right verses, and checked all the right boxes. The goal is to produce people who know Christ, and who are being transformed into his likeness by the Spirit of the living God.
Research on effective spiritual formation consistently confirms this. A 2024 study examining the role of Christian education in shaping student spirituality in the digital age found that “contextual, reflective, and experiential Christian education significantly contributes to holistic spiritual formation” and that “worship learning, when designed meaningfully, serves as a powerful medium to deepen faith experiences and initiate authentic spiritual transformation”.
The emphasis on experience and transformation, rather than mere information transfer, is a crucial corrective for a church that has sometimes equated discipleship with the acquisition of theological knowledge. Another study published in the journal Christian Education Journal argues that “to the same extent that students need biblical and theological knowledge, they also need knowledge of how to apply the information to mature in Christ”. The purpose of all Christian education, all preaching, all pastoral care, and all discipleship is to produce people who know Christ and are being conformed to his image.
THE COST AND JOY OF KNOWING CHRIST
It is essential to acknowledge that the knowledge of Christ is not a path of ease. Paul’s words in Philippians 3:10 make this abundantly clear: “I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.” The knowledge of Christ involves fellowship with his sufferings. It involves the crucifixion of the old self, the putting to death of the deeds of the flesh, the daily taking up of the cross. There is no resurrection power without participation in the death of Christ. There is no glory without the cross. There is no life without the surrender of life.
This is a hard saying, and it is one that the contemporary church is often tempted to soft-pedal. We prefer the Christ who blesses to the Christ who breaks. We prefer the Christ who comforts to the Christ who confronts. But the Christ of Scripture is both. He is the Lamb who was slain and the Lion who reigns. He is the suffering servant and the conquering king. To know him is to know him in the fullness of his person, and the fullness of his person includes the scars of the cross.
Yet this suffering is not the end of the story. The fellowship of Christ’s sufferings leads to the power of his resurrection. The cross is never the final word. The grave could not hold him, and it cannot hold those who are united to him. The knowledge of Christ is ultimately a knowledge of triumph, of victory, of the inextinguishable life of God flooding into the souls of those who were once dead in trespasses and sins. As Paul writes in Ephesians 1, the same power that raised Christ from the dead is at work in those who believe (Ephesians 1:19-20). The Christian who knows Christ knows the power that conquered death itself.
RECOVERING CHRIST-CENTERED FORMATION IN THE CHURCH
If the diagnosis is a Christless Christianity, the prescription is not more programs, more strategies, or more techniques. It is a return to the simplicity and profundity of knowing Christ. This has concrete implications for leaders who are entrusted with the spiritual formation of others. The first and most important implication is that no one can lead another into a knowledge of Christ that they themselves do not possess. This is not a matter of having attained perfection but of being genuinely on the pilgrimage. The discipleship that transforms is the discipleship that flows out of an overflow of personal encounter with the living Christ. As Barna’s research reveals, personal mentors are the primary source of discipleship for churchgoers, followed by small groups and family members. The most effective discipleship is not the most programmatically sophisticated. It is the most relationally invested. It is the ministry of someone who knows Christ walking alongside someone who wants to know him more.
The second implication is that the content of formation must be Christ himself, not merely doctrine about Christ. This is not to set doctrine against Christ, for doctrine is the articulation of who Christ is. But it is possible to teach doctrine in a way that leaves people impressed with the teacher rather than in love with the Savior. It is possible to study Christology in a way that produces theologians rather than worshippers. The goal must be to present Christ in all his beauty and loveliness, so that the affections of the heart are stirred and the will is moved to obedience. As Owen insisted, the contemplation of the glory of Christ is the principal exercise of faith. And such contemplation is not the preserve of the ivory tower. It is the birthright of every believer, the privilege of every disciple, the calling of every Christian.
The third implication is that the formation of Christ in the believer is a lifelong process, not a momentary event. Paul’s language of “progressively becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him” indicates that knowing Christ has an upward trajectory. The Christian is never a graduate of the school of Christ. There is always more to know, more to love, more to become. This should be a source of profound encouragement to every believer who feels that their knowledge of Christ is small and their love for him weak. The one who has begun the good work will bring it to completion (Philippians 1:6). The mustard seed of faith will grow into a tree. The child of God will become like the Son of God, for “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
THE UNSEARCHABLE RICHES OF CHRIST
As we conclude here, I need to draw us back to the statement of Brother Lawal with which we began: “No Christ, No Christianity; Know Christ, Know Christianity”, is more than a clever formulation. It is the distilled essence of the gospel and the foundational principle of all spiritual formation. A Christianity without Christ is not a Christianity at all. It is a skeleton without flesh, a body without breath, a religion without power. But a Christianity that knows Christ is a Christianity that has tapped into the very fountain of life, a tree rooted by streams of water, a city set on a hill that cannot be hidden.
The apostle Paul, in a burst of doxological wonder, speaks of “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Ephesians 3:8). These riches are not merely a storehouse of blessings to be distributed. They are the person of Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3).
To know him is to possess all things, for he is all in all (Colossians 3:11).
Thomas Watson put it simply and sublimely: “Christ is the quintessence of all good things, and all good things are found in Him”. The church that recovers this vision will recover everything else. The leader who pursues this knowledge will lead others into the same pursuit. And the disciple who drinks deeply from this well will never thirst again.
The great challenge before the church in this generation is not primarily intellectual, political, or cultural. It is the challenge of recovering the centrality of Christ in a world that offers countless substitutes for him. The challenge is to preach Christ, to teach Christ, to live Christ, to love Christ, and to lead others into the knowledge of Christ until he becomes the all-consuming passion of the church’s life. Nothing less than a full-throated, unapologetic, joy-filled proclamation of the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ will suffice. For if Christ is all, then Christ is enough. And if Christ is enough, then the church that knows him is a church that has everything it needs, not only for survival, but for the abundant, overflowing, eternal life that Jesus promised to those who follow him. Amen.
Prof. Sarumi, a disciple of Jesus and teacher of the Word of God, writes from Lagos