Christmas Day

[HKHaugan]

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland (Is.43:18-20 NIV).”

How does this passage speak to us?

For those who understand its implications this is a new day, a new opportunity, a new time and a new place. There is a resurgent sense of the Holy Spirit and the open door to a restoration of God’s plan. Just as each Christmas before, this one brings a lot of ‘re’s,’ restoration, rebuilding, renewal, remembrance, respect, regard, re-determination, repentance, remaking, all of which we know come from the basic fact of Jesus becoming one with man. The Lord Jesus recovered and returned to us what a human being is supposed to be and look like.

By His birth He gave us a picture of the spiritual foundation behind everything we see. Now we know the One God who can’t be seen with the eyes can be seen in the mind and heart through faith just as Jesus saw His Father and knew the Spirit through faith. Now we know love is His nature and is spiritually His presence among us. Now we know He has given us each a personal position, part and purpose in this world. Each one of us is made uniquely to be unique as Jesus was unique. Every single person who has ever been born is unique, individual and different yet loved perfectly by God. It is the spiritual reality behind everything that has become clear in Jesus. “…do you not perceive it?”

What happened at the birth of Jesus as a man? Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, thus bringing five startlingly new realizations.

First, each of us was born brand new, unique and individual in the image of God just as He was in His humanity. What makes our birth different than His is that we were physically and emotionally born separate from God due to our descendants' inherited sin of Adam. He however, was conceived by the Holy Spirit assuring He was always God the Son even in the limitation of His human body. His purpose for us is that we should become like Him, a child of the Father. Therefore, no one has ever been or will ever be the same as us. Every human being is eternally unique. Our self-consciousness is first a consciousness of Him who has made us to be unique forever and then praise of Him who made us and then awareness of others who will retain their eternal uniqueness as well.

Second, His birth showed that we have a second purpose as He did and that is to reach out to others that they too could be spiritually reborn and find their eternal significance in Him. As the Christmas Carol says, “He was born to give us second birth,' a spiritual birth that lasts forever.

Thirdly, His birth started a spiritual family of spiritual brothers and sisters led by the same Spirit that conceived Him. We get to know and grow toward the Lord and each other eternally, the Body of Christ. It is God’s family designed and called to worship God, grow personally and interpersonally in God, to be the visual representatives of the Kingdom of God on earth and to share Him with those who don’t know Him.

Fourthly, sin, evil and their source, the devil, were defined and exposed as our spiritual enemies that threw Creation out of balance. They will disappear from our consciousness in the Kingdom. They are doomed to eradication.

Fifthly, believing and trusting Jesus as Savior and Lord who fills us again with His Holy Spirit is the way we defeat sin and the devil. The imperative for us to is to bring as many into the Kingdom with us as possible. It may be one we meet inadvertently or someone we have been praying for daily. Regardless, they are God's loved ones and He has connected us with them.

God entered His Creation dressed in human nature, limited to live in a human body with all the stress and strain common to us all. But Jesus changed the playing field. He lived totally and completely by faith. Faith in His Father, faith in His Father’s will and faith in His Father’s Word. Even at His death on the Cross He reached out both to His Father and for the lost of the world. His Resurrection proved the destiny of existence was wrapped in Him. All of this accomplished through the power of His Spirit. He narrowed the understanding of the spiritual life to One God who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He made us to be like Him, an image of Him, in mind, heart and spirit. Being faithful, loving and hopeful is that image operating full tilt (1Cor.13).

We are spiritual beings reflecting His presence. That’s what He has shown us by becoming an individual interpersonal being. From that point on everything from what it meant to be human, the meaning of Creation and who God really is, became new for everyone who dared to take on this new idea of personal faith in Jesus Christ changing the world everyday to be a spiritual kingdom, God’s Kingdom.

What we celebrate each Christmas is the birth of something new in and for each heart, each mind and each soul. It is allowing Jesus to bear in each of us His Spirit to do more than change us. He sends His Spirit not only to let us be reborn spiritually but to continue to grow and be transformed spiritually that every next moment we become more like Him and look for opportunities to offer this new unique spiritual rebirth to everyone who has not met Him. In every next moment the Lord offers something new.

This newness, this rebirth, is for everyone who accepts Jesus and becomes part of His Body called the church, in Greek, ekklesia, (called out ones) called out of the world to go back in and see through spiritual eyes God’s Son, God’s people and God’s plan to recover the world of people to Him and our unique part in it. It think it's fitting here to quote a new paraphrase of the same Isaiah passage:

“"Forget about what's happened;
don't keep going over old history.
Be alert, be present. I'm about to do something brand-new.
It's bursting out! Don't you see it?
There it is! I'm making a road through the desert,
rivers in the badlands (Is.43:18-19 The Message).”

Therefore let me repeat what has become the single most important shift in human thinking, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

In whom we trust to live that out is the single most important choice we can make because that is an eternal choice. The Resurrection of Jesus gives us the clear road, the leveled path, to Him who is the unobstructed view where the mountains have been laid low, the valleys lifted to be the plain, the desert filled with springs of living water, the badlands replaced by the 'good land' and Him being the clear path into eternity.

Merry Christmas everyone.