“The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” Zephaniah 3:17
Christmas day is many things. It’s family. It’s songs and presents and twinkling lights on the tree. And, yes, all those things and more are wonderful. There’s no sin nor superficiality in cherishing them, so we should rejoice in the Lord for our Christmases and all they mean to us.
One thing above all of that isn’t to be lost, though, for if it is then all those other things are lost too. Upon this one thing is all others; without it, everything vanishes in the puff of smoke that is a single lifetime. Gone. Lost to history. Lost to the grave. With it, everything is blessedness and eternal beauty; without it, like a single wave rolling in, breaking, and then lost to the tide of life.
Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, yes. But not only that, it’s the meaning beyond the event that should mark the day. Christ was born so that sinners would be reconciled to God through faith. Christ lived the sinless life – the life of holiness and devotion to the Father that all persons owe God. This personal righteousness is credited to us through faith. More than that, He was crucified for our sin. He bore the penalty we deserve. And then He rose again for our justification, which is proof that the Father accepted the sacrifice of His perfect Son on our behalf. This means that in Him, through the gift of faith, we have the personal, perfect and perpetual (since He’s not dead, but alive) righteousness of Christ in our account.
Christmas is, therefore, not only the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ but the festival of love and gratitude toward Him who first loved us. Love is not a human attribute, but a divine one. Unless God shows us love and pours it into our hearts, our sins will destroy whatever likeness we have to our Creator in the same way a child would inevitably deface priceless art entrusted to him.
So, we rejoice today in the love of God. To be loved by God! Who can fathom such a thing? We puzzle over lesser things, don’t we? We puzzle over predestination and the trinity and so forth. This all shows how little we understand of the divine nature. That sinners are loved by God so much that He died for us is the greatest fact of life – and the most incredible. For Christians, no other fact in the world makes sense without this one at the bottom of it.
When we look at our lives we’re confronted with the nagging questions. Doubts roll ashore the beach of our consciousness without rest. What should we do? Are we doing the right thing? Are we going to be okay in the future? What’s going to happen with this or that? To settle our troubled hearts we should look to the great truths of Scripture that too often escape our notice because we’ve been trained not to think categorically.
To wit, since we exist, and we’re personal – this much we know without doubt – there are only a few options.
The first option is that we and everything else in the world are accidental and there’s no ultimate authority or plan. Things just happened. The second explanation for life is we created ourselves…which would mean we had to exist before we existed. Both of these are absurd and self-defeating.
The third option is that some impersonal force created us and the world. We can call it karma. We can call it evolution. This force, whatever it may be, is impersonal. It’s a thing. Thankfully, this also is logically impossible for the simple reason that we, as personal beings, are asking questions about it. Persons seek truth and meaning. If what’s ultimate is impersonal, we wouldn’t be unique individuals, nor would we care. If what’s ultimate is impersonal, personhood and meaning wouldn’t exist.
You see what’s happened? The obvious facts of life have already ruled out an accidental, meaningless universe, as well as all forms of pantheism and panentheism. The only option – since we exist as personal beings, who seek truth and meaning – is that we were created by a personal God. No other explanation for the basic things of life make sense except this. Just as there can’t be square circles and two-plus-two equals four, life as we know it, with all due respect to Descartes, requires a personal, creator God.
God is the necessary fact of life.
Ah, but we’re alone and afraid, aren’t we? We suffer in this world. We lose. We cry. All of this confirms the Biblical narrative about sin, by the way. But here on Christmas day we note that the birth of Jesus Christ on our behalf, to bring sinners to Himself, to repair the fracture that sin has caused, is the great fact of our lives. It means that the personal God has come to us. He isn’t far off, but has bridged the gap between heaven and earth. In Christ and because of Him we know that our lives matter right now. It’s not just that we’re saved but also that our daily walk with Him is special. His life means that spirituality doesn’t obliterate the physical world, nor render it unimportant. Instead, it provides its needed context. Yes, your life matters to the Lord who lived for you. If daily life and the obedience of faith didn’t matter then why did Christ live for us? In the personal Savior we have the reconciliation of the eternal and temporal. We have the answer to the great question, which answers all the little ones by providing context.
So, if you sit in traffic and choose to see His hand in your tedious trip, you glorify the Lord. If, in His name, you suffer a wrong, or endure a frustration, or choose faith over anger or self-pity, your act of obedience resonates forever. Right now, in Christ and because of Him, counts forever. When you do the dishes, drive to work, take out the trash, or simply smile through the struggles because of Him, you are living in faith. And when you resist sin because you at last see its ugliness and that it’s a counterfeit of truth and righteousness, you are living the triumphant life of faith. To see Him through your doubts and to give Him your all, every day anew, is part of the eternal life that awaits. If Christ hadn’t been born we couldn’t say this. His life proves that ours matter.
It’s the love of Christ for us that changes everything. So, on Christmas, don’t merely thank God for the birth of Christ but rejoice and celebrate for the personal love of God. It changes everything. It’s all that love of His that changes us and makes us new creations.
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