Your Mission is Only as Good as Your Jesus

Without a high and balanced view of Jesus Christ, the church will lose its way. If we stress the humanity of Jesus at the expense of His deity, we will tend to be compassionate and involved, but lacking in authority. If we stress the deity of Jesus at the expense of His humanity, we tend to be aloof and self-righteous. Mark Driscoll sums it up well:

Sadly, without an acknowledgement of the full humanity of Jesus, we are left with a Jesus who appears eerily similar to Superman. We are left to believe that although Jesus looked like a Galilean carpenter, he did not really endure temptation and suffering as we do. The deity of Jesus without the humanity of Jesus tragically leaves us to see Jesus as a faker, not unlike Clark Kent. All we are left with is someone who cannot really sympathize with us in our weakness, as Hebrews says, because he was not fully human.
By itself, an incarnational Christology, though true, is not truly complete. Without a robust recognition of the corresponding deity of Jesus, the humanity of Jesus has the propensity to leave us with a marred false image of Jesus—little more than a limp-wristed, marginalized, hippie-esque, unemployed Galilean pacifist in a dress with feathered hair and open-toed sandals—a guy that the average man would be remiss to worship because he could beat up that Jesus. Therefore, in addition to the humble incarnation of Jesus where his humanity shines forth, we must also retain the glorious exaltation of Jesus where his divinity likewise shines forth.

If we were to see Jesus today, we would not see him in his state of humble incarnation. Rather, we would see Jesus as both Isaiah and John saw him enthroned in glory as King of kings and Lord of lords. This Jesus rules over gays and straights, men and women, young and old, rich and poor, black and white, simple and wise, healthy and sick, powerful and powerless, Republicans and Democrats, married and single, Christians and non-Christians, angels and demons, and the living and the dead.
The sovereign, unprecedented, and glorious exaltation of Jesus is typified by a throne. The imagery of a throne is used roughly 196 times in Scripture, with 135 occurrences in the Old Testament and 61 occur­rences in the New Testament. Of the New Testament occurrences, 45 of the 61 are in the book of Revelation. The imagery of the throne appears in seventeen of its twenty-two chapters. The book of Revelation breaks into earthly scenes of sin and the curse, as well as heavenly scenes of worship and rule.
(Mark Driscoll, “The Church and the Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World,” in The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor)