December 19, 2023
What God gave us at Christmas was not just his Son. He gave us a Truth—a Truth that transforms us when we take it in. What God gave us at Christmas is a whole new life.
In the first chapter of Luke, Elizabeth says, “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.” Elizabeth is saying to Mary—and to us—“if you really believe what the angel told you about this baby, if you take it in, you’ll be blessed.”
But our English word “blessed” is so limp and lightweight. In English we use blessed to mean something like “inspired.” But in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, the word for blessed meant something much deeper than that. To be blessed brings you back to full shalom, full human functioning; it makes you everything God meant for you to be. To be blessed is to be strengthened and repaired in every one of your human capacities, to be utterly transformed.
What Elizabeth is saying to Mary, and what Luke is saying to us is, “Do you believe that this beautiful idea of the incarnation will really happen? If you believe it, and if you will take it into the center of your life, you’re blessed, transformed, utterly changed.” …
If you believe in Christmas—that God became a human being—you have an ability to face suffering, a resource for suffering that others don’t have. No other religion—whether secularism, Greco-Roman paganism, Eastern religion, Judaism, or Islam—believes God became breakable or suffered or had a body. Eastern religion believes the physical is illusion. Greco-Romans believe the physical is bad. Judaism and Islam don’t believe God would do such a thing as live in the flesh.
But Christmas teaches that God is concerned not only with the spiritual, because he is not just a spirit anymore. He has a body. He knows what it’s like to be poor, to be a refugee, to face persecution and hunger, to be beaten and stabbed. He knows what it is like to be dead. Therefore, when we put together the incarnation and the resurrection, we see that God is not just concerned about the spirit, but he also cares about the body. He created the spirit and the body, and he will redeem the spirit and the body.
Christmas shows us that God is not just concerned about spiritual problems but physical problems too. So we can talk about redeeming people from guilt and unbelief, as well as creating safe streets and affordable housing for the poor, in the same breath. … Christmas is the end of thinking you are better than someone else, because Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you.—Timothy Keller1
It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises. Needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this; the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this truth of the incarnation…
For it was a great act of condescension and self-humbling. “He, who had always been God by nature,” writes Paul, “did not cling to His prerogatives as God’s equal, but stripped Himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man. And, having become man, He humbled Himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the death he died was the death of a common criminal” (Philippians 2:6). And all this was for our salvation. …
For the Son of God to empty himself and become poor meant a laying aside of glory; a voluntary restraint of power; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice, and misunderstanding; finally, a death that involved such agony—spiritual, even more than physical—that his mind nearly broke under the prospect of it. It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely men, who “through his poverty, might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).
This Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory—because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later he might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has ever heard, or will hear….
For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor—spending and being spent—to enrich their fellow men, giving time, trouble, care, and concern to do good to others—and not just their own friends—in whatever way there seems need.
“Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).—J. I. Packer2
The heart of Christianity is that Jesus is God. Believing this is what makes one a Christian. If He isn’t God, then the heart of our faith doesn’t exist and our faith is unfounded. Jesus claimed to be God. His disciples believed it, preached it, and began the Christian movement that has lasted for over 2,000 years, a movement which presently consists of over two billion people who believe this one fundamental truth.
The New Testament proclaims that Jesus existed before anything else, that all things were made by Him, that He entered into His creation by becoming man, that He forgives sins, that through His death and resurrection He has brought salvation and victory over death. His miracles all point to His deity, as does His unique relationship with the Father. His teachings point to it and the claims of His judging mankind attest to it.
One of the major turning points of Jesus’ ministry was when His followers began to understand who He was:
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:13–17).
Like Peter, we can make the same statement of faith—that Jesus is the Son of the living God. Not only that, we know that He is God. Because He is God, He is the Water of Life, the Light of the World, the Bread come down from Heaven, the Resurrection and the Life, He who forgives our sins and grants everlasting life to all who receive Him. The result of His life, death, and resurrection is the precious gift of God, our salvation.—Peter Amsterdam
On this side of eternity, Christmas is still a promise. Yes, the Savior has come, and with him peace on earth, but the story is not finished. Yes, there is peace in our hearts, but we long for peace in our world.
Every Christmas is still a “turning of the page” until Jesus returns. Every December 25 marks another year that draws us closer to the fulfillment of the ages, that draws us closer to ... home.
When we realize that Jesus is the answer to our deepest longing, even Christmas longings, each Advent brings us closer to his glorious return to earth. When we see him as he is, King of kings and Lord of lords, that will be “Christmas” indeed! ...
We stand on tiptoe at the edge of eternity, ready to step into the new heaven and the new earth. And I can hardly wait. I can’t wait to sing “O Come, All Ye Faithful” as I gather with my friends and family to worship the Lord in heaven. I can’t wait to give him the gift of my refined faith, the “riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18).
On bended knee, alongside kings and shepherds, together we will praise him and sing “Glory to God in the highest” (Luke 2:14)! And for eternity we will follow the one who is “the bright Morning Star” (Revelation 22:16).—Joni Eareckson Tada3
Published on Anchor December 2023. Read by John Laurence. Music from the Christmas Moments album, used by permission.
1 http://www.godrenews.us/by/advent-gifts
2 J. I. Packer, Knowing God (1973).
3 Joni Eareckson Tada, A Christmas Longing (Multnomah, 1990).
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