Christmas in the Biblical Context

[HKHaugan]

Christmas in the Biblical Context 

The event of Christmas, the Nativity, the birth of our Lord, signifies something that is cataclysmic to say the least. It marks the end of an era and the beginning of an era. It is end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. It is the start and finish of a program God had in mind before Creation. How we understand it all is beyond us but only makes sense as we see Jesus as the direct answer to what we can’t understand. The universe is begun in Him and ends in Him. It is all wrapped up in the person of His Son Jesus. The universe in its entirety with all its physical being and all its spiritual reality is about Him, points to Him, focuses on Him and revolves around Him.

 Heb.12:2 Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

 Personal transformation is the effect of the gospel, not the gospel itself. The Gospel is about what God has done in Jesus Christ for us, not about what happens inside of us or through us in the world. That is the effect of the Gospel, our testimony to the Gospel, our witness to the Gospel. Only when we recognize that crucial point does the Gospel then truly transform us within and make us active agents of God's love for and service to our neighbors. We believe the Gospel, grow into it and then share it. We grow into it as we embrace His Word and learn to live it where we are. Jesus is the Gospel.

 The whole idea of the Christian faith is Jesus Himself. It is not about what I have experienced, how maybe I have been changed, how others have changed. What it all comes down to is what God did in Jesus and why. While we are called to witness to what He has done for us, the real witness we are to give is to what He did as it is recorded in His Word. The most effective witness is His story of taking human nature on Himself and living in it, making it a whole experience, a spiritual revelation in it and offering it as a sacrifice even to death for our sake.

 First, in the beginning God created heaven and earth. The point is that by Jesus’ death and resurrection, it was proven. His words were true.

 Second, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

 Third, what we see happening in Jesus is the Good News.

HE came in the flesh.

HE fully embraced our human nature.

HE revealed God’s nature.

His Word came alive through His Holy Spirit.

 In the beginning God’s Word was physical and visible. When He spoke, His words were His thoughts expressed in making a universe. He said, “Let there be light, let there be earth, let there be trees, let there be waters and lakes and oceans and finally let there be man” and He created images of Himself in Adam and Eve.

In the beginning God’s Word was spiritual and invisible. He created man to experience what He experiences, relationship, love, faith, sharing, intimacy, oneness.

 But the devil had other plans. 1Jn.3:8 we see the devil has been sinning from the beginning. He devises a four-fold plan of separation:

Doubt God’s Word

Doubt God

Think and act apart from God

Get someone else involved.

 He tempted man to think apart from God by promising him wisdom and life apart from God. Man took his word apart from God and fell, became ego oriented instead of God oriented, self-centered instead of God centered, self-controlled instead of God controlled.

 This resulted in separation from God, spiritual and physical aloneness, self-conscious fear, guilt, hiding from God and one another, fixing blame for his condition on God and others, vulnerable to evil spirits manipulation, hate, bitterness, unforgiveness, revenge and exploitation for personal gain. No longer living in and by the Holy Spirit which they lost through self-willed choices they found themselves alone and living by their own resources in a wilderness from which they could not escape.

 But God had another plan, a plan of salvation, a plan to save man from the devil and his aloneness.

 God chose men to walk with Him like Noah, Abraham Moses and Joseph to begin a family to demonstrate how He planned to recover and restore mankind to Himself. Thus, the Jewish people. He gave them a land and a law to live in that land to be a witness to all the nations. This people lived a history of rising and falling to show that without God Himself among them they would always fall not only as a people but also as individuals.

 Therefore, He comes Himself in Jesus to show who He is, what man’s problem really is and to be a sacrifice in man’s place to rescue, reclaim and restore His people and His Creation.

 In Jesus we see not only the history of the Jewish people relived but the creation reborn in Him. He takes us back to Creation and its intention to show our future in God and His intention. In Christ is the entire drama of the Creation replayed. In Him the recovery is played. He took our fall into sin upon Him, He defeated the devil. He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God. He took the faith necessary to be at One with the Father in a human body with all its limitations and lived a perfect life in the Spirit. That perfect life He sacrificed for us because we could not sacrifice ourselves on any level necessary to obtain Oneness with God. The good news is that what He did in His life, death and resurrection could only happen in Him and it was given for and to us that we might be one with Him. That was His prayer in the Garden before He died.

 Paul puts it so beautifully,

Ro.5:1   Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. All this accomplished in Christ that it may be accomplished in us.

 There appeared in Jesus a new beginning. Behold I make all things new.

 Just as the power of the Spirit had been the power of Creation so Jesus was born of a virgin to show that birth is a spiritual reality not just a physical reality. Creation on the universal scale and birth on a personal level show the breadth of God’s mind and heart.

 In the enormity of things comes the most small and intimate heart that is the object of God’s love. This shows that God’s heart is at the heart of all hearts.

 In Christ is demonstrated that love, that fondness, that care for the individual heart in each of us. He carries in Himself the mind, the heart and the Spirit of God.

 Tonight, this very night, this conscious night we, each of us, are in His heart, personally involved in His Creation.