“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.” Luke 2:14
“Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to be doing th works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.'” John 6:28
The great truth celebrated by Christians throughout the world today is that God Himself entered history as a man. The reality of the gospel is the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, born to poor parents in a manger because there was no room for them at the inn. As a writer I like to say that no greater story has ever been told, nor will be, than God’s story of redemption. Who would’ve thought to write such a thing? The God-man born in such humility and poverty! And for what? To bring wrath upon the world that had rejected Him and gone their own way? Surely, we deserve His wrath. But, no.
He was born so that all who believe in Him would not perish but have eternal life. Who can conceive such a thing as a God who’s so infinitely righteous that the slightest sin deserves eternal death? The thought is frightening indeed. His holiness, even the mere glimpse of it, sends shudders of fear and inadequacy throughout our fragile beings because we know that we aren’t holy. Ever since the Garden of Eden men and women have been sowing together fig leafs and trying to find cover behind some bush or another. We try and push out the dread from our thoughts. We find some bushes here – a job, a hobby – or some over there. We play with alcohol or food or sex. Modern America dispenses drugs by the boatload instead of handing out fig leaves to cover our anxieties and depressions. But no leaf or tree or bush is big enough to cover the shame and consequences of sin.
It’s to this that He comes to our rescue. He’s our sabbath rest and the Kinsman-Redeemer. He’s our Jubilee Year of release. In Christ alone, through His love, we have peace with the God we’ve offended – the Creator God who is so unfathomably holy and righteous that only through faith can we approach Him. The birth of Christ for our redemption is the logic of righteousness and sin. No man may boast of his works because all have sinned and fallen short of God’s perfection. Because we are His and His alone we owe Him a perfect life of perpetual and personal obedience. Not only this, made by Him and for Himself, our lives should be characterized by true worship. Romans 13:8 tells us to owe no one anything for the simple reason that every man and woman is the Lord’s and to become debtors/slaves again is unthinkable.
In Christ, through faith alone, all that we owe is credited to us. We have His perfect, personal and perpetual obedience to God. He takes our sin and gives us His righteousness. So, therefore, we have peace with the holy God because of what He’s done for us. This is the reason for our joy today. The birth of Jesus Christ for us…yes, for us personally, bridges that seemingly infinite gap between perfect holiness and love. The logic of the gospel is clear: God’s righteousness is so high that only He can make sinners right with Himself. Thus, the birth of Christ is the greatest gift of all time because God so loved you that He sent Christ into the world to be the perfection you can’t be. And this gift is received by faith and the heart fills with unspeakable joy to know that, indeed, God’s love is one’s own now. Because He was born we rejoice because it means we can say:
“For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” Luke 15:24
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