Within the Western hemisphere, and especially in the United States, Christmas suffers from a crisis of multiple identities. It has no focused meaning. It is clearly commercial, and political. It is for children's fantasies, adults partying together, for family time, feasting, for giving, for getting, for humbugging. Among Christians there is a tendency toward a reflexive response of, "Jesus is the reason for the season." and, "Keep Christ in Christmas." We hear of offense taken at well wishes of , "Happy Holidays." or a written, "Merry X-mas." because it omits the name of Christ. While the intention may be good...We may have missed the point entirely already. We have marginalized Christ into a trite saying and an image of a cooing babe. Christmas is much more than a baby in a manger. Sweet little Jesus child, when not remembered with the whole of the gospel, is nearly as empty of meaning as the most generic of, "Seasons Greetings."
The babe born in Bethlehem...was GOD! This was cataclysmic.
*He, the Word made flesh, was there in the beginning. All things came into being thru HIM!
*Through Adam's sin, all of us were separated from God.
*We all, of our own free will, have transgressed and sinned against God.
*The just punishment for sin is Gods full wrath, and death. We can do nothing to be right, we are already fully undone. We could never attain God's standard of holiness
*God is perfect and holy, and He requires no less than a reflection of His own perfection.
*The only answer was the unthinkable... God the Father loved us so much (His desire to be in right relationship with us was so strong) that He came, in the person of God the Son, Jesus, and took on the form and life of one of His own creatures.
*He was fully God and also fully man but without sin.
*His birth was foretold to us thru the prophets of the Old Testament.
*He was born into His created world in a remarkably humble manner-not even in a home but in a stable. He lived a life very like our own. He experienced our pains, temptations and fears.
*He took on himself the weight and penalty for the sins of all who call him Lord, from the beginning of time until the end. He died as the only possible sacrifice to pay the penalty for those sins.
*He physically rose from the dead three days later, breaking the power of death to separate us from Himself.
*His physical body still bears the marks of the great price He willingly paid for all who believe.
*By His grace alone was this done. By grace alone are we quickened to come to Him. Only by His grace are we justified. Our own works could never do it.
*Only thru faith may we be justified and made right with God. That faith, gifted to us from the third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit, lays hold of the absolute righteousness of Christ, and God freely credits that rightness to those who believe.
*Only by the blood of Christ can we enter into this grace. We may be saved by the work of Christ alone, and come to God only in that way.
* The only way we can know about saving faith and how God desires us to live is revealed in His holy scriptures, the Bible.
A true and complete gospel , and a true and complete Christmas, is that which gives all glory to God alone. For all glory is due to Him.
Do you see the amazing mercy of God??? The baby in the barn was just the beginning...a very important beginning - worthy, I think, of remembrance, but none the less just the beginning. Be careful to remember not just that He was born, but WHY he was born.
What is Christmas to me?
My creator, come as creature, willingly laying aside His glory and majesty to bear the weight of His own wrath over my sin, His love for me so great, that He did the inconceivable to bring me into right relationship with Him and make me his own child.
The glorying in Him, and sense of deep humility which fall over me as I consider this is unutterable.
John 3:16-18
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. "For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
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