If all there were to the Christmas story was an out-of-wedlock birth in a humble setting with angel-inspired shepherds who probably hadn't bathed in weeks. If all there were to the story was three intellectually-gifted foreign astrologers who traveled afar to bring gold, frankincense and myrrh to a new born King. If all there were was what happened in Bethlehem, no matter how amazing, how miraculous, how audacious of God to engage humanity in this way. If that were all, then this old, old story would be so boring. If all there is to the message of Christmas is the baby Jesus, no matter how awesome it is that God chose to be born as a human in the humblest of circumstances, there would not be much more to this story than there is to current popular moves Avatar, The Princess and the Frog, and The Blind Side. Why? Because a story doesn't change the situation, meet my deepest needs, or allow me to know God personally. I need to know God and be known by him.
But there is more to the Good News of what God has done for us in Chist. And John bears witness to this in his Gospel. He puts the Christmas story succinctly at the beginning of his Gospel. Recognizing that Christmas is salvation and faith and revelation and grace and truth and the glory of God rolled into one awesome package, he declares: And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth (John 1:14) That is the Christmas story for John, an event where human and divine life intersects, changing all things for you and for me, meeting the needs for the new people of God Jesus calls into being and relationship with him through his life, death, resurrection, and ascension.
Like John's Gospel, the Book of Hebrews begins proclaiming that Jesus is more than an infant born at Bethlehem:
Long ago God spoke to our ancestors … but in these Last Days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful Word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
This is the Gospel, the Good News many of us come to hear Sunday after Sunday. This is the finished work of Jesus, the Savior of the world, God who became flesh, atoned for our sins upon the cross, rose from the dead, conquering death, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father, interceding for his own. While we gather to remember the birth of Jesus and proclaim his glory, we do so with the understanding of the totality of his life and work and Heavenly governance. The Incarnation -- God becoming flesh -- is the beginning of a story that is the Gospel, the Good News of what God has accomplished for his people, giving those who receive his Son the power to become children of God, who are born, not of blood or the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
The word become indicates that we are not spiritual children of God by natural birth into the world, or even infant baptism into the church. Become implies a change of nature because we cannot become what we already are. As Jesus tells Nicodemus, you must be born again by divine intervention. Like Jesus, being born again is God's gift, God's choosing, God's will for those he chooses. The Scriptures repeatedly tell us the root and source of all sin is unbelief in the inmost heart. As Romans 14:23 says: For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin. Sin is produced from hearts of stone. We have hearts of stone. That is the Biblical diagnosis for which the divine remedy is faith. Faith is the divine work and gift of God in us through his Spirit. He gives us a new heart and puts a new spirit in us. Faith changes us, making us born anew of God. It kills the old self and makes us altogether different -- a new self in heart and spirit and mind and power to become children of God.
So what does a child of God look like? Martin Luther writes: Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times. A child of God is one who through grace alone lives by faith, staking his very life, his new life, on Jesus. John Piper explains a child of God makes a final, decisive commitment to Jesus, saying: :I'm not looking for another life, another world, another Savior. Jesus, I'm here and I'm yours. [You know me and I know you]. And what brings a child of God to this place is the Spirit of God. And the instrument that he uses are the words of Jesus, who says: The Spirit gives life. My words are spirit and life. Jesus' words give life to your spirit which was dead and unable to come to him. And the Spirit works through his words illumining your mind and your heart so that you see him as more precious than anything else in the world.
I know there are people hurting who are celebrating Christmas without a loved one present. People who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. People who have lost jobs. People who watched their net worth collapse during the last year. People who are suffering and need to see the preciousness of their Savior and his light shining through the darkness of their situations. The good news for the suffering is that Jesus took on our human emotions along with our flesh. He knows us through and through. He took on all our humanity, identifying with it and took that true humanity all the way to the cross for us.
We, as the church, the gathered children of God, are uniquely and strategically placed by God in the world to proclaim the truth of God's glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. We exist as the church to shine the light of Christ into the darkness, so that one may see how precious our Savior is. Our God-given assignment is to turn on the Christmas light of salvation and grace and faith and hope for the world to see -- all that this white candle [standing in the center of the Advent wreath] symbolizes. The light we are called to shine is not we ourselves or our numerous programs or our fine facilities or our Episcopalian niceties, but he who died that we might live.
As John's Gospel and the opening verses of Hebrews make abundantly clear, Jesus must be first in all that we say and do. He is the Word made flesh. He is life and light. He is heir of all things. He is the reflection of God's glory. He is the exact imprint of God's very being. He is grace and he is truth.
The church exists to focus on one thing, and that is Jesus. Today is such a day to focus on Jesus. Today is such a day to recapture our first love, when we were born again, remembering that while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us. Today is such a day to recapture the Gospel, the Good News of what Jesus has already done because the Gospel is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. Today is such a day to take God at his Word and recaptures what it means to become a child of God. To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
Today is the day for someone to receive him and be born of God, as you say in your heart: I need you today LORD because I am hopeless, my life is hopeless, things are hopeless without you. God has placed that longing there in your heart and given you, through his Spirit, the power to become a child of God. Receive this gift. In receiving a gift, we demonstrate our confidence in its reality and trustworthiness as if becomes our own possession. As we believe in Jesus, putting our confidence and trust in him, things change. Before believing in Jesus, we had no spiritual rights, no power to become children of God. But now that God adopts us as his children through faith, we have rights and power given to us through the Spirit.
Paul explains this in Romans:
You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit …if Christ is in you. … For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry: Abba! Father! The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs -- heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
God's Word tells us that we get two wonderful gifts from Jesus to become children of God. The gifts he gives us are faith and suffering. However, if we are honest with ourselves, we don't really want them. We want to think that faith is something we ascend to in choosing to follow Jesus. After a long sermon in which Jesus managed to drive away 4,988 people from a crowd of 5,000, he said to his disciples: No one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him. It is the work of the Father to give us faith in the Son. And to make the point clear with Peter, who had just said to Jesus: We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God, Jesus says to his disciples: Have I not chosen you? In other words: This is my doing.
There is an objection to being chosen; the argument being that God gives man free will to choose him. But when we take the whole of Scripture into account, I think we must ultimately side with our reformed faith as stated in the 39 articles and with Martin Luther, who said: Man's free will without divine grace … is totally corrupt. Sinners need help and faith is the answer. Faith is a gift from God that gives us a will to love him. The Christmas message of John's Gospel is grace, the free gift of faith that comes from the fullness of Jesus to us undeserving sinners.
And then there is suffering. We think we shouldn't have to suffer as Christians, but we do. However, unpopular this thought is today, Christian suffering is a gracious gift from God. Hebrews [chapter] 12 explains that our suffering as children of God is the divine gift of discipline:
The LORD disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. It is through suffering that God matures us as his children. Those closest to Jesus do and will suffer. Paul says in Romans:
We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
The New Testament bears plain witness to this as do the lives of the saints. Yes, Jesus was born into a suffering world. He came to rescue suffering people. He came to heal the suffering. He came to love the suffering. He came to suffer for you and for me and even to call us to follow him most intimately by suffering for him. He was not immune from suffering and neither are we. However, I want to close by focusing on another set of gifts, what I call the Whoever gifts. Sometime we forget all we have received as children of God. So I close with these wonderful gifts of Jesus to his brothers and sisters as recorded in John's Gospel:
God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have Eternal Life. John 3:16
Whoever believes in him is not condemned. John 3:18
Whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. John 3:21
Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. John 4:14
Whoever hears my Word and believes Him Who Sent Me has Eternal Life. He doesn't come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. John 5:24
I AM the Bread of Life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. John 6:35
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. John 6:37
Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. John 6:56
Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said: Out of his heart will flow rivers of Living Water. John 7:38
I AM the Light of the World. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. John 8:12
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Whoever is of God hears the Words of God. John 8:47
I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. John 11:25
Whoever sees me sees Him Who Sent Me. John 12:45
And finally:
I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. John 12:46
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us to give us his flesh for the life of the world. He is the source of forgiveness and righteousness and life. We sinners, we born again children of God, can receive grace upon grace from his fullness because he came to die for us. Christmas at Bethlehem, from the beginning, was a preparation for Good Friday at Golgotha. Christmas was God's response to human sin. Christmas means God will set the world right because Christmas leads to the cross, the greatest Christmas gift you and I and the world will ever know.
