Chapter 3 — Jesus Christ as the Zero-Point of Reality

If the Holy Trinity is the outermost horizon of all existence, then Jesus Christ, the incarnate Logos, is the zero-point, the center where eternity and time intersect, where Creator and creation meet without confusion. He is not simply one event in history; He is the axis of history. He is not one figure among many; He is the measure by which every other figure is weighed.

A simple number-line helps us grasp this mystery:

  • On a number-line, zero is the center.

  • Everything to the left is measured as “before” (negative).

  • Everything to the right is measured as “after” (positive).

  • Every value is defined by its distance and orientation relative to zero.

In the same way:

  • Christ is the zero of existence.

  • Everything before Him is truly understood only in relation to His coming in the flesh.

  • Everything after Him is truly understood only in relation to His resurrection and ascension.

  • His person is the reference point for all meaning, truth, and reality.

This chapter explores what it means to say that Jesus Christ is the zero-point of reality.

1. The Incarnate Logos as the Center Point, the Zero

On a mathematical line, zero is the unique point where negatives and positives meet. It belongs to neither “side” yet grounds them both. Without zero:

  • The line loses its symmetry.

  • Distances are undefined.

  • Direction has no anchor.

In creation’s story, Jesus Christ is that zero-point:
the Incarnate Logos, the Word through whom all things were made, who entered His own creation as true Man.

1.1. The Intersection of Eternity and Time

Before the Incarnation, eternity and time seem like two different dimensions:

  • Eternity: the uncreated life of the Holy Trinity, without beginning, without end.

  • Time: the unfolding of created history, marked by change, growth, decay, and sequence.

In Christ, these two are joined without confusion:

  • As God, He is eternal, outside the limitations of time.

  • As Man, He is born at a specific place and moment, grows, suffers, dies, and rises.

This joining is not a temporary overlap; it is the permanent union of divine and human natures in one Person. Christ becomes the permanent meeting point of:

  • the uncreated and the created

  • the infinite and the finite

  • the heavenly and the earthly

Just as zero is not merely “one number among many,” the Incarnation is not merely “one event among many.” It is the central event that gives all other events their relation and weight.

1.2. The Humility of Zero

Zero is a paradoxical point: it seems like “nothing,” yet it organizes everything. Likewise, Christ comes in great humility:

  • Born in a marginal region, not a capital.

  • Laid in a manger, not a palace.

  • Crucified outside the city, not enthroned in a royal court.

Outwardly, He appears “small,” yet all authority in heaven and on earth is entrusted to Him. The zero-point humility of Christ reveals the true nature of divine greatness:

  • True centrality hides itself in service.

  • True authority appears in self-emptying love.

  • True lordship is expressed as sacrificial care.

The center of reality does not shout for attention; it quietly upholds all things.

2. All Meaning Flows Outward from Him

In Greek, Logos means more than “word.” It carries the sense of:

  • reason

  • structure

  • meaning

  • inner logic

To call Christ the Logos is to say:
He is the inner meaning of all things.

2.1. Christ as the Meaning-Granting Center

If Christ is the zero-point, then:

  • History receives its meaning from Him.

  • Scripture receives its coherence from Him.

  • Human identity receives its purpose from Him.

  • Suffering, joy, and even death find their deepest interpretation in relation to Him.

Without Christ:

  • History becomes a random sequence of power struggles and accidents.

  • Our moral sense becomes a shifting human construction.

  • Our desire for eternity has no answer beyond speculation.

With Christ at the center:

  • The human story is seen as a journey toward and from Him.

  • Ethical life becomes conformity to His likeness, not just obedience to abstract rules.

  • Our longing for fulfillment is grounded in the reality of His life, death, and resurrection.

2.2. The Logos as the Key to Scripture

Just as zero allows numbers to be ordered, Christ allows Scripture to be rightly ordered and divided:

  • Passages that seem violent, obscure, or contradictory find their evaluation and place when measured against Him.

  • Prophetic texts, wisdom sayings, laws, and narratives are not all equal in clarity; Christ becomes the criterion for their interpretation.

A Christ-centered reading asks of every text:

  • Does this reveal the Father as Christ reveals Him?

  • Does this align with the character, truthfulness, and love of the incarnate Son?

  • How does this passage prepare for, or flow from, the zero-point of the Incarnation?

In this way, all meaning in Scripture flows outward from Him as the center, rather than us forcing Him to fit into pre-existing systems.

2.3. Personal Meaning Anchored in Christ

On an individual level, every human being seeks meaning:

  • Why am I here?

  • What is my destiny?

  • How do I live truly and not in illusion?

If Christ is the center of reality, then:

  • Your deepest identity is not exhausted by your family, culture, achievements, or failures.

  • Your true self is discovered in relation to Him, not apart from Him.

  • The vocation of every human person is, at root, a call to conformity with Christ—to be reshaped after the pattern of the zero-point.

Each life becomes a unique way in which Christ’s light is meant to be refracted, but the light itself is always His.

3. Everything Before Christ Points Toward Incarnation

On a number-line, all negative numbers are defined as “this far left of zero.” They are oriented toward the center, even if they appear to be moving away from it. Likewise, everything before the Incarnation is truly understood only as a movement toward that central event.

3.1. The Long Preparation of History

Before Christ:

  • Peoples groped toward God with partial insights and deep confusions.

  • Philosophies searched for ultimate meaning, order, and the principle behind reality.

  • Religions developed symbols, sacrifices, and myths to express longing for the divine.

Within Israel:

  • Covenants, sacrifices, temple rites, prophetic words, and psalms formed a unique story of relationship with God.

  • Genuine revelations from the true God appeared alongside human distortions and incomplete understandings.

  • A tension ran through Israel’s history: a promise of a coming One who would reveal God in fullness and heal the world.

Outside Israel:

  • Nations sensed the divine but often projected their own fears and ambitions onto their gods.

  • Yet even in pagan myths and philosophies, one can discern fragments of desire for truth, justice, and immortality.

Taken together, all of this is not random religious noise; it is the negative side of the number-line, the long approach toward the zero of the Incarnation.

3.2. The Incarnation as the Fulfillment, Not the Afterthought

The coming of Christ is not a last-minute fix to a failed project. It is:

  • The fulfillment of an eternal purpose.

  • The manifestation in flesh of the Logos through whom all things were made.

  • The unveiling of the One toward whom every genuine movement of truth and goodness was secretly oriented.

Thus:

  • True wisdom in ancient philosophy finds its completion in Him.

  • True prophecy in Israel’s history finds its object in Him.

  • True longing in all peoples finds its answer in Him.

Every authentic glimmer of truth before Christ was, in some sense, pointing toward this central event—even when those who spoke did not understand how.

3.3. Right Division of the “Before”

Not everything in the “before” is equally pure:

  • Some religious expressions were deeply distorted.

  • Some claims about gods and powers reflected spiritual deception, fear, or coercion.

  • Some images of God are incompatible with the revelation Christ gives of the Father.

The task of discernment is to rightly divide:

  • What genuinely anticipates the Incarnation
    versus

  • What stands in contradiction to the character of the Father revealed in Christ.

In the light of the zero-point, we can say:

  • Whatever in the “before” leads toward the humility, justice, mercy, and self-giving love we see in Christ was a preparation for Him.

  • Whatever leads away from these marks belongs to confusion, distortion, or other powers.

Thus, everything before Christ is re-read as orientation: either moving truly toward Him or resisting the approach of His light.

4. Everything After Christ Flows from Resurrection

If the negative side of the line is oriented toward the Incarnation, the positive side flows out from the Resurrection. The zero-point is not just birth; it is the whole paschal mystery—Christ’s life, death, descent into the depths, resurrection, and ascension.

4.1. Resurrection as the Hinge of Time

The Resurrection is not just a miracle within time; it is the turning point of time itself:

  • Death, previously the unquestioned boundary of human existence, is breached from within.

  • The human nature that Christ assumed is not discarded but glorified.

  • The future is no longer simply an extension of the old pattern of corruption; it becomes the unfolding of a new creation.

From the Resurrection onward:

  • Human history is divided between those who live in the light of the risen Christ and those who ignore or oppose that light.

  • Time itself becomes the arena in which the implications of the Resurrection work themselves out.

4.2. The Church as the Life That Flows from the Zero-Point

After Christ, the Church is not a human association invented to preserve memories. It is:

  • The community formed by the Holy Spirit around the risen and ascended Lord.

  • The sacramental extension of Christ’s life in the world.

  • The space where the power of the Resurrection is tasted, even before the final renewal of all things.

Baptism, Eucharist, confession, prayer, and the life of holiness are all post-zero realities—ways the Resurrection flows outward into the concrete existence of persons and communities.

4.3. History Under Judgment and Hope

Because the zero-point has already appeared:

  • History is no longer open-ended in the old sense. It has a revealed center and a revealed goal.

  • Every empire, ideology, and project is now measurable by one standard: Does it align with the risen Christ or stand against Him?

  • Human decisions acquire eternal significance, because they are made in a world where the central truth—Christ and His Resurrection—has been revealed.

Yet this is not merely judgment; it is also immense hope:

  • The worst that has happened—betrayal, torture, injustice, death—has been taken up into Christ’s own story and overcome.

  • No wound, no loss, no death is outside the reach of the Resurrection’s power.

  • The positive side of the number-line is ultimately not a slide into ruin but an invitation into glorification with Christ.

Everything after Christ is either the outworking of the Resurrection’s power or the resistance to it. There is no neutral zone.

5. Christ as the Cosmic Reference Frame of All Existence

In physics, motion is described relative to a reference frame. Without such a frame, statements like “fast,” “slow,” “moving,” or “standing still” have no absolute meaning. In the same way, Jesus Christ is the cosmic reference frame for:

  • truth

  • goodness

  • beauty

  • sanity

  • reality itself

5.1. The End of Relative Truth About God

Without Christ, humans construct conceptions of God:

  • Some imagine God as primarily wrathful.

  • Others imagine God as indulgent and indifferent.

  • Many project their own fears, ambitions, and traumas onto the divine.

But once Christ appears as the incarnate Son and sole Mediator:

  • All images of God must be tested against His life and teaching.

  • The Father’s true face is seen in the Son.

  • Any “god” who does not resemble the Father revealed by Jesus is not the true God.

Christ becomes the non-negotiable reference:

  • If an idea about God contradicts the character of Christ—His truthfulness, humility, mercy, justice, and sacrificial love—it cannot be taken as a final revelation of the Father.

  • Theological systems, old and new, must be adjusted to Him, not He to them.

5.2. The Measure of Humanity and Ethics

Christ is not only the reference frame for God-talk but also for:

  • what it means to be truly human

  • what is morally right or wrong

  • what is beautiful and worth pursuing

He is:

  • the true Human who reveals what humanity was created to be

  • the living standard of love, justice, purity, and courage

  • the pattern after which each person is called to be reshaped

Ethics, in this light, is not merely rule-keeping; it is alignment with Christ:

  • To forgive, because He forgives.

  • To speak truth, because He is the Truth.

  • To serve, because He came not to be served, but to serve.

The moral life becomes participation in the zero-point, not just compliance with external instructions.

5.3. Discerning Spirits and Powers

In a universe still influenced by various spiritual forces and human systems, Christ as cosmic reference frame enables discernment:

  • Some spiritual experiences may be emotionally intense yet lead away from Christlike truth and love.

  • Some religious or ideological systems may use Christian language while embodying the opposite spirit.

The criterion remains the same:

  • Does this spirit, teaching, or structure lead us closer to the Father revealed in Christ?

  • Does it deepen humility, love, truthfulness, and participation in Christ’s life?

  • Or does it produce fear, pride, domination, deception, and exclusion?

In this way, Christ is not merely a point of doctrine; He is the living axis by which we distinguish between what is genuinely aligned with God and what is not.

5.4. Living in the Right Frame

To acknowledge Christ as the zero-point and cosmic reference frame is not an abstract confession; it is a call to conversion of perception:

  • To reinterpret your past in the light of His presence: seeing where He was drawing you, even in your darkness.

  • To reframe your present: viewing every choice, relationship, and struggle in relation to Him.

  • To approach the future: trusting that whatever comes will unfold within His lordship.

Your life is not random. It is a story unfolding inside the reality where Christ already stands as center, judge, healer, and friend.

Conclusion: Reality Re-Centered

In this chapter, we have contemplated a profound truth:
Jesus Christ, the incarnate Logos, is the zero-point of reality.

  • He is the center point where eternity enters time.

  • All meaning flows outward from Him—Scripture, history, and personal identity.

  • Everything before Him is rightly understood as pointing toward the Incarnation.

  • Everything after Him is rightly understood as flowing from the Resurrection.

  • He is the cosmic reference frame, the standard by which God, humanity, ethics, and spiritual realities are discerned.

To be truly orthodox is not merely to hold correct ideas about Christ, but to live in a world re-centered around Him—to think, pray, discern, and act in the awareness that He is the zero from which all lines of reality draw their meaning.