The Incomparable Christ

Who is Jesus Christ? No human question is more pivotal. No thoughtful answer fails to stretch our language, our categories or our aspirations.

In recent years numerous books have been written on Jesus, books that are shaped by faith or skepticism or follow the Western academic quest for the historical Jesus. The result has been a kaleidoscope of Jesuses, a thicket of viewpoints, some troubling to faith, some puzzling to the intellect, and a few that enrich our vision as they explore familiar terrain from new and promising angles.

Here is a book written by one who for a lifetime has followed Christ with heart, mind, soul and strength. John Stott offers us a vision of Christ whose portrait is discerned in the mosaic pattern of Scripture, whose influence is traced in the great currents of history, and whose compelling call has shaped the story line of ordinary humans who have been charged with extraordinary faith and courage.

The minimalist criteria for weighing the authenticity of Jesus' sayings and deeds yield only a thin outline of Jesus, the barely discernible image of a Jewish sage or prophet. But the criteria of Scripture's testimony and the effective power of Jesus in lives and history point to a multidimensional, incomparable Christ who defies measurement. Jesus is the one figure who, like no other, has changed lives, shaped culture and offers one sure hope for the future. He is the center of history, the focus of Scripture, the heart of mission. He is the incomparable Christ.

In The Incomparable Christ John Stott brings to print his 2000 A.D. London Lectures on Contemporary Christianity. In this landmark book, one of the outstanding evangelical statesmen and intellects of the last half century directs our attention to the One like no other, Jesus Christ.

Stott invites us to view Jesus from four aspects:

The Original Jesus--The New Testament witness to Jesus in Gospels, Acts and Letters

The Ecclesiastical Jesus--How the church has presented him from Justin Martyr, Benedict and Anselm, to Thomas á Kempis, Luther and Jefferson, to Guitierrez, Wright, and the Edinburgh and Lausanne missionary confessions of the twentieth century

The Influential Jesus--How he has inspired people from St. Francis to Tolstoy, from Gandhi to Roland Allen, from Father Damien to William Wilberforce

The Eternal Jesus--How he challenges us today through ten visions from the book of Revelation.

This is the Jesus who is like no other--worthy of our worship, our confession and our obedience as we follow him into the future.