The Bible Is Not Christocentric — It Is Theocentric Part Two
What Yeshua (Jesus) himself teaches us about who is at the center.
By Servant Yosef Ben Levi
Having established in Part One that the Bible is theocentric — that the Father, the one God, stands at the center of creation, history, and human existence — a second question now demands an answer.
There is a stream of Christian theology that agrees the Bible should not be read as a self-help manual for human flourishing, and then proceeds to replace anthropocentrism with what it calls christocentrism: the claim that Jesus Christ is the center of all Scripture, all history, and all of creation.
Every Old Testament text, on this reading, ultimately points to Christ. Every covenant finds its center in Christ. Every promise is fulfilled in Christ. The whole Bible is, in this framework, “about Jesus.”
This is a serious theological claim that deserves a serious theological answer — not from church tradition, not from creedal formulations, but from the witness of Scripture itself. And most decisively: from the witness of Yeshua (Jesus) himself.
Because if anyone could settle the question of whether the center is the Son or the Father, it is the Son.
Yeshua’s ( Jesus’) Own Definition of Eternal Life
In John 17, on the night before his execution, Yeshua (Jesus) li_s his eyes to heaven and prays. This is not a prayer composed for public consumption or doctrinal instruction. It is a window into Yeshua’s own understanding of who the Father is, who he himself is, and what he has been sent to accomplish. And in the opening of that prayer, he offers a definition of eternal life that is irreducibly theocentric.
Yeshua does not say that eternal life is knowing him. He says eternal life is knowing the only true God — and knowing Yeshua the Messiah as the one whom that God has sent. The structure of the sentence is deliberate and theologically precise. The Father is named first and is designated “the only true God.” Yeshua identifies himself not as God alongside the Father, but as the one the Father has sent — the appointed Messiah, the agent, the emissary.
The Greek word monon alēthinon theon — the only true God — is language of absolute exclusivity. Yeshua is not saying that the Father is one member of a divine family. He is saying that the Father alone holds the category of “the only true God,” and that he, Yeshua, stands in relation to that God as the one who was sent.
If Yeshua himself defines eternal life as knowing the only true God — and places himself as the one sent by that God — then a christocentric framework that makes the Son the ultimate center is not following Yeshua. It is departing from what Yeshua taught about himself.
Christocentrism, rigorously pursued, ends up elevating Yeshua to a position Yeshua himself did not claim and did not seek. This is not honoring Yeshua — it is misreading him.
Yeshua’s ( Jesus’) Own Definition of His Mission
John 17:3 tells us what eternal life is. John 7:18 tells us what the Messiah’s entire mission is — and who it is oriented toward.
Yeshua is drawing a contrast between two kinds of teachers: those who speak from themselves — and in so doing, seek their own glory — and those who seek the glory of the One who sent them. He then makes clear which category he belongs to. He is not speaking from himself. He is not seeking his own glory. He is seeking the glory of the One who sent him.
This is Yeshua, in his own words, defining the orientation of his entire mission and ministry. And the orientation is not toward himself. It is toward the Father. The goal of everything Yeshua did — every teaching, every healing, every confrontation with religious leaders, every sign and wonder — was not to magnify his own name. It was to magnify the name and glory of the One who sent him: the Father.
This means that a christocentric reading of the New Testament
- one that makes Yeshua the ultimate end point of everything
- actually runs against the grain of Yeshua’s own self-understanding. Yeshua himself is theocentric. He is not the destination. He is the appointed path to the destination, which is the knowledge and glory of the Father.
The Pattern Yeshua ( Jesus) Establishes
These two verses are not isolated proof texts. They are representative of a consistent pattern that runs throughout the Gospel of John and the New Testament as a whole.
Yeshua says he can do nothing of himself — only what he sees the Father doing (John 5:19). He says his teaching is not his own — it belongs to the One who sent him (John 7:16). He says that the one who has seen him has seen the Father — not because he is the Father, but because he perfectly represents the Father’s character and will (John 14:9). He says that his Father is greater than he (John 14:28). He says that he goes to the Father (John 14:12). And at the consummation of all things, Paul writes that the Son himself will be subjected to the Father, so that God may be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28).
The trajectory of the entire New Testament is theocentric. Yeshua’s exaltation does not displace the Father — it serves the Father’s glory. As Paul writes in Philippians 2:11, every tongue confessing Yeshua as Lord happens to the glory of God the Father. Even the honor given to the Son is, in its ultimate purpose, directed toward the Father.
What Christocentrism Gets Right — and Gets Wrong
It is worth acknowledging what christocentric reading gets right. Yeshua is central to the New Covenant. He is the appointed Messiah, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the mediator of the new covenant, the one through whom the Father’s redemptive purposes are accomplished. He is not peripheral. He is not optional. To know the Father rightly in this age is to know Him through Yeshua.
But there is a difference between Yeshua being the appointed center of the Father’s redemptive work and Yeshua being the ultimate center of all reality. The first is what Scripture teaches. The second replaces the Father with the Son as the supreme object of all things — and in doing so, contradicts Yeshua’s own testimony.
Yeshua does not point to himself as the final destination. He points to the Father. He is the way — not the destination (John 14:6). He is the door through which the sheep enter — not the pasture itself. He is the sent one — and the one who sends is greater.
The Theocentric Confession
The theocentric confession is not a diminishment of Yeshua. It is, in fact, the most faithful way to honor him — because it follows where he actually points.
To honor Yeshua rightly is to do what he did: seek the glory of the One who sent him. To read the Bible rightly is to read it the way Yeshua read it — as the revelation of the Father, the one God of Israel, whose purposes are unfolding across all of history and who will be, at the end of all things, all in all.
The Bible is not about you. And the Bible is not christocentric. The Bible is theocentric — centered on the Father, the only true God, to whom all glory belongs, through Yeshua (Jesus) the Messiah, now and forever.