Why Christmas?

[HKHaugan]

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (2Cor.4:18).”

We can't really talk about the meaning of Christmas until we see the idea of birth itself as a spiritually conceived process and event. Birth is a spiritual beginning and beginning starts with the spiritual idea that something needs to begin. That insight to think is the source of existence and everything in it. It is a spiritual God the Father who conceived the idea of a universe. It was the Son of God through whom it came into being. It was the power of the Holy Spirit that got it done. It was a perfectly unified process of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, One God. Both Genesis and the Gospel of John start with “In the beginning...” Both start with God's mind, the Word proceeding from it and the Spirit motivating them.

Creation is the birth of an invisible idea put into a visible context. It can be likened to building a home. The Father being an architect who gives birth to an idea and its plan, the Son of God being the contractor who organizes the way it is to be done and the Holy Spirit being the life force that gets it done. Yet they are completely One. The One God is an 'always God' without beginning or end. He is eternal. He always was, is and will be.

There are three contextual themes that describe God's will when it comes to understanding Christmas. In all three there is a beginning, a birth, an incarnation; the invisible becoming visible..

First, Creation was a spiritual idea that became physical but still held together spiritually. It was the beginning of a universe of astounding proportion to be inhabited by images of the Creator in physical bodies.
Second, the choosing of the Hebrew people was the idea and plan for a spiritual family reflecting God's nature directed by the Word.
Third, there is the birth of the body that would house the Son of God in the physical universe whose heart, mind and Spirit were the presence of God in His Creation. The Son would be the beginning of a spiritual family called the Body of Christ, the eternal family of God. The Son's focus would be carrying out the will of His Father. Thus we would see the invisible character of God acted out in the flesh. “We fix our eyes on what is unseen.”

This brings us to three inescapable and mind numbing questions so pointedly lived every day by every individual over the length of human history: Who am I? Where am I going? How am I going to get there? God has made us central in His plan. He has made us to think, feel and act like Him. While the whole of existence is God-centered we, human beings, images of Him, are central to Him.

But there was a fissure erupting and disrupting His plan, the spiritual rebellion of the devil and his angels that infected humanity. Sin entered the created universe through the disobedience of the first man, Adam and his wife Eve and separated humanity from God. Sin is the devil's spirit and death sentence. Every human being born since Adam has this spiritual affliction. Sin makes us totally self oriented and it has conditioned humanity to focus only on what can be seen by the physical eye and sensed in the physical body. Sin tells us constantly that life is all about you and your desires. So when Adam and Eve pulled out their 'all-about-me' card it was right there in the spiritual core of Creation the Lord God conceived His plan of recovery and restoration called salvation (Gen.3:15). He would expose the devil, sin and his evil dominion through the arrival of His Son who would take it all on Him. Salvation would be the rescue of every person through faith, hope and love in Jesus. In turn they would be given eternal spiritual life starting the moment belief began.

The questions of “Why, what, when, where and how?” occupy the whole activity of sin-influenced mankind and what is most important, the concern and action contained in Scripture, God's personal Word. It is put bluntly before God by two characters in Scripture, the Psalmist and Job, who both ask the same question, “What is man that You are mindful of him and the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels and have crowned him with honor and glory (Ps.8:4-6)?”, “What is man that You magnify him and that You are concerned about him... (Job 7:17)?”

God's answer is in His Word, Holy Scripture. There it gets even better. God has chosen us to be personal, relational and spiritual with Him and others. He accomplished this by overcoming the greatest obstacle facing mankind, sin induced death. Jesus withstood all the sinful conspiracies against Him and went to the Cross. There He sacrificed His life in faith saying, “Into your hands I commit my Spirit.” His life was a sacrifice for every human being. It was a personal sacrifice. It was through faith, His faith, that He was raised by the Spirit and made Himself available to everyone who chooses to believe in Him. His Resurrection guarantees His promises that we too will be raised and join Him in His Kingdom. Jesus' birth, life, death and Resurrection declare His reality as the foundation for our reality and the destiny of the whole of Creation. He is our personal destiny. “I go to prepare a place for you that where I am you also may be (Jn.14).” He has shown by His life, death and Resurrection that the unseen is the final reality, His reality, and through faith in Him, we are a part of it forever.

Now we know through Jesus that not only has He made us images of Himself but He has given us the privilege to make a choice to relate to Him or not. The choice to believe, love, live and carry this truth into the hearts of others. What greater privilege than to have that choice? Now we begin the trek of mind, heart and spirit into the unseen to gather the in-reaching depth of His grace and love. Being His image means we have a mind to reason, consider and believe in Him, a heart to feel the effect of His heart and trust Him. He has given us a soul, a spirit to sense the invisible reality behind all that is physical. Finally, He has given us the exact image of Himself in Jesus. This image is the eternal, personal, relational and spiritual reality of His presence. “When you have seen me you have seen the Father (John 14:9).”

All of this is what it means to born again, born spiritually, born to live forever in a perfect relationship with our God the Father through Jesus the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. Now translate this idea of birth into our experience. Every ministry, every mission, every good and decent enterprise known to man was an invisible, unseen idea given birth into a physical shape. Every advancement in science, medicine, education, economy, social engineering and so on is a direct reflection of us being an image of our Creator God. This is what we were born for and why God the Son chose to have a human birth experience, live in the limitations of a body, in a time, a place and a heritage. It was the will of His Father for us. We were born to celebrate Christmas. The question then is not why, but why not? We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.