The Headless Gospel
Headless for Happiness, Power, and Identity
I know you’ve seen it – everyone is chasing a headless gospel.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt it.
I think it’s the same feeling and depth of pain Christ carried when He entered into Jerusalem for the last time.
Jesus wept because:
The people of Jerusalem did not know the way of peace.
They missed their opportunity to be saved due to spiritual blindness.
And now judgment was inevitable.
When He approached Jerusalem, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known on this day, even you, the conditions for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you when your enemies will put up a barricade against you, and surround you and hem you in on every side, and they will level you to the ground, and throw down your children within you, and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.” — Luke 19:41–44
Take a drive and look around.
Observe humanity.
You see the pain. You see the heartache. You see the search for peace.
And yet they start and end the search along the same familiar pathways, believing the next time will be different.
Their pursuit is a headless gospel, void of their Maker to direct their paths.
But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, slanderers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness although they have denied its power; avoid such people as these. For among them are those who slip into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. — 2 Timothy 3:1–7
For them, happiness is found at the end of a needle, the bottom of a bottle, or in the arms of multiple partners—reducing what God has made sacred to the profane and cheap.
It feels so good in the moment.
But it’s a slow ebbing away of the soul and a numbing of the conscience, leading to only more reprobate ways to travel in this one experience called life.
And how far they travel and degenerate should be alarming, considering many will never find their way home.
Without a Head, one is forever lost and permanently blind.
As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is, Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. — Ephesians 4:14–16
They think they can find what they’re looking for in power.
So they set about building an empire.
They use. They abuse. They manipulate.
Their audacious plan does not consider their fellow man.
Those who are made in the image of God become collateral damage in their race to the top.
But money does not insulate under the weight of the coming wrath.
Men are nothing but a mere breath; human beings are unreliable. When they are weighed in the scales, all of them together are lighter than air. Do not trust in what you can gain by oppression. Do not put false confidence in what you can gain by robbery. If wealth increases, do not become attached to it. God has declared one principle; two principles I have heard: God is strong, and you, O Lord, demonstrate loyal love. For you repay men for what they do. — Psalm 62:9–11
They long for a blue check.
They want a nod from the culture.
They want to be recognized and accepted.
It’s a headless gospel devoid of any true love and predicated only on what they do.
Without a Head, it’s impossible to come to a knowledge of the unconditional love that God has for you.
It’s impossible to understand that it doesn’t matter what you do.
You are Imago Dei — made in the image of God, brimming with inherent value and so precious in His sight.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.” — John 3:16
Pursue the only Gospel that makes sense in a fallen world.
Pursue the Lamb.
Pursue your Maker, the Author of life, and breath of the universe.
Pursue the Head, which is Christ.
For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over every ruler and authority. — Colossians 2:9–10
This is a beautiful expression of real empathy for the hurting - and the only prescription for healing, which is Christ on the throne of our lives. Thank you.