It is once again the “Christmas Season”, a season that historically centered on the celebration of Jesus Christ, and His coming into this world some 2000 years ago. We see in front of churches, homes and in city squares representations of His humble birth in a stable, with Him lying in a manger below the loving gazes of His earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, along with the angels, shepherds and animals, who are all witnesses of this most glorious event in human history, with the wise men actually coming later in the story (Luke 2:4-18) (Matthew 2:1-11).
However, despite these elaborate scenes of this glorious historical reality, too few people, even many who call ourselves Christians, truly understand and joyfully celebrate this event for what it was, which was the ultimate and defining expression of God’s love for a fallen, rebellious humanity, who have come under His wrath and judgement because of our sin (John 3:16).
This love was demonstrated in the eternal God, God the Son, the second person of the divine trinity, the Lord of Glory (Psalm 24:7-11) leaving His throne in Heaven, and coming into this world in the form of frail humanity, so that He could, as a man, through His sinless life, sacrificial death on the cross and miraculous resurrection, accomplish everything necessary to save His people from their sin (Philippians 2:5-8) (Matthew 1:20-21).
Sin as defined in the Bible is lawlessness (1 John 3:4) and as unrighteousness – a lack of conformity to the nature and character of God in which we were created (1 John 5:17). Sin proceeds from 1) our rejection of God’s purpose for and rule over our lives, and 2) our opposition to and contradiction of His order and design for human flourishing and our individual happiness in Him, having the intention of replacing it with our own (Ecclesiastes 7:29) (Isaiah 53:6) (Judges 21:25).
God, beginning with Adam, warned mankind that the just wage or consequence of sin would be death, being cut off from the glorious life with God for which we were created, subject to His wrath and judgement (Genesis 2:17) (Romans 6:23). We experience His wrath partially while in this world, a world that has been cursed by God because of sin, resulting in all of the miseries and sorrows that ravage our life in this world, life which ends in our physical death (Romans 1:18) (Genesis 3:17-19) (Amos 3:6). At that moment, apart from being joined to God the Son, Jesus Christ, in faith, we will enter and experience the full and eternal wrath of God in Hell, which the Bible refers to as the “second death” (Romans 2:5) (John 3:36) (Revelation 21:8).
All of mankind is guilty of sin (Romans 3:23), slaves to it (John 8:34), spiritually dead and corrupted in all aspects of our being because of it (Ephesians 2:1-3), and enemies of God in light of it (James 4:4). This is what brings us under the wrath and judgement; wrath and judgment which is His just and necessary response to sin’s violent offensiveness toward Him and His holy nature and its corrupting impact on His good and perfect creation (Psalm 51:4) (Romans 8:20-22). As such, in ourselves, we are helpless to overcome or atone for our sin and will not even be concerned about it unless the Holy Spirit in a work of grace convicts us of it (John 16:7-10).
However, the eternal God, who we are told is rich in mercy and delights in displaying it (Ephesians 2:4-5), (Micah 7:18-19), planned from the foundation of the world to send a savior, a Messiah, to reconcile and restore a people out of this present evil, sin-condemned world to right relationship with Him (Galatians 1:4) (Jeremiah 23:5-6). This savior is first identified in Genesis 3:15 as the seed of the woman who will crush the serpent’s (devil’s)head. In Galatians 3:16 He is revealed as the promised seed of Abraham, in Isaiah 7:14 as “God with us”, and in Isaiah 9:6-7, as the child who will reign forever on King David’s throne.
The birth, the coming of this savior, and the surrounding activities are recorded for us in Luke 2:4-18. Luke 2:11 identifies the baby in this way, “For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord”, who the Apostle Peter would identify years later as the “Christ, the Son of the living God”, identifying Jesus as the promised Messiah (the Christ) and divine son (Matthew 16:15- 16).
Having been conceived in Mary’s womb by God the Holy Spirit, Jesus is born without the sin nature that all mankind through Adam are born with (Matthew 1:20) (1 John 3:5) (Romans 5:12). And Jesus throughout His life would have to Himself remain free of all sin if He was to save His people from the ultimate consequences of theirs, namely Hell, and restore those He saves to the glorious life with God which was lost because of sin, what is referred to in John 3:16 as everlasting or eternal life (Matthew 5:29-30) (Hebrews 4:15) (Romans 6:23).
Multiple scriptures clearly present to us why Jesus came. The Apostle Paul, gets right to the point when He proclaims in 1 Timothy 1:15 “It is a trustworthy saying and deserving full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am chief.”
Jesus Himself bears witness to this glorious purpose for His coming in multiple scriptures including Luke 5:32, Luke 19:10, Mark 10:45 and John 10:10. Other scriptures point to purposes relating to salvation such as 1 John 3:8, which tells us that He come into the world “that He might destroy the works of the devil”, works that resulted in our need for a savior.
However, it is how Jesus, in the ultimate and defining demonstration of God’s love for us, accomplished so great a salvation that we must come to understand and embrace if we are to love Him as He deserves to be loved and receive the gift of eternal life (Luke 10:25-28) (1 John 4:19) (1 John 5:11-12).
Jesus accomplished our salvation by living the perfectly righteous, sinless life required to live in God’s presence (Psalm 24:3-5), and imputing or crediting that life to all who would in faith entrust their life to Him (Philippians 3:8-9). Most importantly, He took upon Himself, on the cross, the judgement, the wrath of God which we deserve for our sin (Matthew 27:46) (1 Peter 2:24) (Isaiah 53:5-6).
We read in 1 John 4:9-10, “In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
The term propitiation is used only in a couple other places in the New Testament (Romans 3:25), however the concept reverberates throughout the Bible. It means a sacrifice of atonement, or in this case a sacrifice that satisfies the just wrath of God. It is the means by which God can justify – declare not guilty – sinners who by faith repent of their sin and entrust their life to Jesus (Romans 3:26).
It is the means by which God demonstrates His love toward us, graciously opening to us the glorious relationship with Him for which we were created; a means which when rightly understood and embraced, will produce in our heart a deep enduring gratitude and love for God that will empower our glad obedience to Him (Romans 5:8-11) (1 John 4:19) (John 14:15).
And He invites all to come to Him to find peace of mind, ease of conscience, rest in your soul and joy in your heart in Him as the object of our deepest love and source of our greatest joy, who will come a second time to bring us into His eternal presence wherein we will from that moment on, know only fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore (John 14:27) (Romans 8:1) (Matthew 11:28-30) (John 15:11) (Psalm 16:11).
Thus, as we have come to this Christmas season, I would encourage you to not just celebrate the Christmas season and its associated madness, but to focus your celebration on God the Son, Jesus Christ, who loved you and gave His life for you, and who thus alone is the reason for the season (Galatians 2:20).
I would also invite you to view and listen to this beautiful and encouraging Christmas song that will warm your heart, https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?&q=Song+0+Come+All+Ye+Unfaithful&&mid=07027690614C5CC97C0D07027690614C5CC97C0D&&FORM=VRDGAR
Grace and Peace ×