A Christmas Message

Because it is December and we have officially entered the yuletide season, I want to tell you how Jesus is the reason for the season and how this season is also about you.

In John chapter 3, verse 16, the Bible tells us how much God loves us. He loves us so much that he gave us his one and only Son so that no one would need to be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and everlasting life.

You don’t need to be Alan Turing to decrypt that for someone to die, he would have to be born first of all. Now Jesus had to be born for him to die. In the days of the Bible, the forgiveness of sin had to be done by the shedding of the blood of an animal- usually a lamb- this is where the phrase “sacrificial lamb” stems from.

The way people of old attached the remission of their sins to the death of animals is the way we are to attach ours to the death of Christ. All you need to do is attach yourself and do this by believing in the Gospel. When you do, he takes away the sinful nature of your flesh because he was born to be the sacrificial lamb for your sake.

Christ came to earth just to die. But he didn’t just die, he didn’t have a bad ending at all. He also resurrected and because he did, he can and will be back for us again so we can live with him forever. The fact alone that Jesus agreed to be born a man just so he could die for our sins is a very big deal.

There are a lot of hymns that express the love that came down at Christmas. They tell the story of how our savior, so tender and mild, was born in a manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes. They also spread the joy of that love because our deliverer had finally been brought to us in the tiniest and most fragile form after many years of promise.

This message has however been lost over time in all the festivities that have been carried out to celebrate this miracle. The celebrant had inadvertently been forgotten in the mix of Christmas parties and free food, and the message has been changed from the love that God had so much for us into the “spirit of giving”. And even with the small chances where Christ should generally still be seen, like in the spelling of the literal celebration, it has been replaced with the letter “X”.

We have to try our best not to get carried away with the festivities that come with the season and try to remember why the season even exists in the first place. Christmas is not about “French hens” or “turtle doves”; this season exists to celebrate the endless life in Christ. Jesus came so that we celebrate it. And it is a big deal worth celebrating.