Salvation and Selfishness

Frank Sheed in his 1962 book on the Gospels raised a great issue: Is knowledge of Jesus'  public ministry on earth "an extra, interesting but not essential"? Frank J. Sheed, To Know Christ Jesus (1962 Sheed and Ward, Inc.) at page10. After all, our salvation came not from what he did in those two plus years.  We are saved by his death and resurrection, by the risen Christ, not by what he said and did during that earthly public ministry.  As he defends  his "No" answer to this question, Sheed argues that  such thinking - that the public ministry is non-essential – will leave a believer looking mainly at himself:

Our salvation is not all that matters in religion, or even what matters most. That was the mistake of the old type of Bible Christian: he was saved, the rest was mere theology. His fellow Bible Christians might believe that God was three Persons or one only, that Christ was God and man or man only – these were secondary, the sole primary being to accept Christ as one’s personal Savior.  It made the self unhealthily central, unchristianly central. 

To Know Christ Jesus at page10.  The alternative offered by Sheed is to know Christ Jesus based on study of the Gospels, because without that you risk not knowing him at all: 

To know Christ Jesus:  If we do know  not him as he lived among us, acted and reacted and suffered among us, we risk not knowing him at all.  For we cannot see him at the right hand of the Father as we can see him in Palestine. And we shall end either in constructing our own Christ, image of our own needs or dreams, or in having no Christ but a shadow and a name.

                     

To Know Christ Jesus, page 11.