Old: "If we are truly to understand Christian preaching, we must see Jesus Christ as its center."

"If we are truly to understand Christian preaching, we must see Jesus Christ as its center. First, we must see Jesus as the fulfillment of generations of preaching and teaching that went before him, and second, we must see Jesus as the type, or perhaps prototype, of generations of preaching that have followed him. He is both the pattern of preaching and the gospel to be preached.

"We preachers make sense only when we are understood as continuing the ministry of our Master. We have done our job only when we have borne witness to Christ, when we have taught all things that he has commanded us.

"It is the gospel of salvation in Christ that the preacher is commissioned to preach. Nothing the preacher does can be understood except in relation to this, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel. That is the touchstone of the preacher's ministry." -- Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures, p. 8