Merry Christmas!

Our family wishes you and yours a Blessed and Merry Christmas! Let's remember the true reason for the season and take a few moments to consider the miracle of the Incarnation.

On this day, Christians around the world join together to remember and celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This Christmas, no matter what else we may choose to do, let us take some time to reflect on that glorious moment when the eternal Son of God took on human flesh and became one of us.

Remembering the Reason for the Season

If we're honest, we'll admit that it's easy to become distracted during the Christmas season. Our focus can shift to planning and preparing meals, making travel plans, finding the perfect gifts for our loved ones, or any number of other seemingly obligatory Holiday-related activities. However, if you find that you get to the end of Christmas day, collapse into your bed, and Christ is the farthest thing from your mind, I pray that you will take a moment to reconsider your priorities. Jesus' words to Martha in Luke 10:41-42 serve as a good reminder that we should never let ourselves become too busy to sit at the Master's feet.

Sacrifice

When we consider Christ's sacrifice for us, we often focus primarily on the Crucifixion and the fact that Jesus willingly laid down His life on our behalf. While it's always beneficial for us to meditate deeply upon the atoning work of Christ accomplished through His sacrificial death on the cross, we would also do well to remember the sacrifice He made for us in the Incarnation itself.

Yes, the Incarnation also speaks of God's sacrificial love for us in a powerful way. God the Son, in all His glory and power, willingly left a heavenly throne for a lowly manger. He condescended to us in order to bring us into communion with Himself. Philippians 2:7 tells us that God the Son "emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant". This is the source of the term Kenosis, by which we understand the sacrificial act of Christ, our King, willingly laying aside His heavenly privileges and emptying Himself to become a humble servant.

Truly Human

Few things are as awesome to consider as the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, choosing to leave His throne in Heaven to be born as a baby in such humble conditions. Both fully God and fully Man, Jesus was raised by a poor carpenter and his wife in Nazareth. Just consider for a moment that the God of all Creation felt the same aches and pains as we. He felt hunger and tiredness. He knew what it was like to lose loved ones, to be made fun of and be looked down upon, to experience love, anger and grief as truly human emotions and even face the same temptations we do, though without sin.

Although He was sinless, Jesus chose to live as a man in this fallen and cursed world, full of pain and suffering as a result of sin. He was the only man ever to be born who did not deserve to live under the curse, the shared lot of all of Adam's race. Yet He willingly chose to enter into His own creation and suffer alongside us knowing that He would ultimately bear our sins upon Himself as He would willingly and obediently die a death He didn't deserve in order to give us a salvation we didn't deserve.

I pray that the miracle of the Incarnation will have an even deeper meaning for you and your family this Christmas.