Christmas means something different to many people across the world. Some cultures have no concept of what it is, and many people have no concern for Christmas or anything related to Christ. Here in the United States, Christmas is a celebration, a national holiday, a family gathering, a social event and for many it’s just another day. I heard that Japan, even celebrates Christmas. To the Japanese it is more of an exchange of gifts, than a spiritual, Christ centered celebration. In countries where there is a Christian foundation why is Christmas so special? – Better yet…why should Christmas be special?

All the commercialization of Christmas aside, look at what it means. Christmas for Christians around world signifies that Christ was born of a virgin mother… we all know the basic story details, but lets look at it from a distance.

Jesus is part of the Triune Godhead, so He is God – along with the Father and Holy Spirit, three distinct persons – one God. If you are not in accord with this truth, then Christmas would simply signify another human birth. But for me, this truth tells of the extreme love God and Jesus have for His people. Before the world was created, the Father and Son existed. They foresaw the lost state of humanity and that we needed to be saved from this pit of sin. God desires to co-exist with His created beings, those that He loves, and those who Jesus paid for with His life. But God cannot co-exist with sinful man. God cannot live in eternal joy with sinfulness. Man needed to be cleansed and redeemed from his sin. Who better to do this –than God the Son. Jesus took the form a human, the incarnation, so He could be with us on earth, subject to all humanness (yet fully divine as well). Jesus was born of a virgin. He was an infant, a lowly human being, fragile and vulnerable. The creator of the universe was infant child, totally dependent upon His mother and foster father for every need! Jesus was to walk among men, women and child, to experience this life, to feel pain, sorrow, happiness, temptation, and all that being human entails, except Jesus was sinless. Jesus, as God made His mind up before He created the world, to be a human being, a human -just like He created. But not just to be a human, but to life live, to teach, to encourage, express love, to fully experience life a human. Also, to die as a human, a tortuous death, an atoning death, a sacrificial death that paid the penalty for this sinfulness of ours. And a resurrection that was victorious over death and sin. Jesus decided to do this for our sakes.

Does this sound crazy? To many around the world, this does sound crazy, but nonetheless true. Why would God allow His Son to leave heaven and become a human?
Why would Jesus be willing to do this? Huge questions! I don’t have the full or complete answer. Only God and Jesus have the complete answer, and know to what eternal extent this all entails. However, God gives us an answer we can understand in the Gospel of John.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
John 3:16 (NIV)

So there you go. God loves us! Jesus loves us so much that He became a human, so that His church will have eternal and everlasting life and live with Him forever. Jesus is in a glorified body, seated at the right hand of God, literally and figuratively. His church will be able to see Him in His glorified body and together, they co-exist in heaven. Why? God just told us why, because He so loved the world. Is Jesus for everyone? Yes! For many the Christmas story is just that – a story. They cannot and will not accept of believe Jesus is their Savior. They have it all figured out themselves, or they are deceived in some manner by our adversary, so they have no desire nor need for Jesus.

Look at the next verses. “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”
John 3:17-18 (NIV)

Jesus came to save us! That is what Christmas is! It is a celebration of that fact. What do we need saving from? We need saving from our sinfulness, our rebellion against God. It is this sinfulness that separates us from our God. Jesus is the bridge between our sinfulness and our God. Christ is the celebration of God’s supreme love for us. This love called for our God to become a human. This called for God of the universe to be one like us, for the purpose of saving us from our humanness so we can live with our God forever. This love is incomprehensible to the mortal mind. The incarnation of Jesus is beyond our ability to grasp as well. We simply do not fully understand it. That’s okay- God is supreme, sovereign and infinitely wiser that you or I. This much is clear – God so loved us that He gave His Son to us. Now it is up to us to fully take Jesus as our Lord and Savior; to submit our lives to Him, honor and obey Him and whoever believes is not condemned.

It is a bit mind boggling to contemplate this fact. Our God, became a human being for us, to save us, all because of His infinite and incomprehensible love for us. He endured the relinquishing of His Divinity. The God without boundaries, our God without any limitations or inabilities decided to strip Himself of those omniscient qualities and become a man, with a finite body, subject to natural laws and all the characteristics of what it is to be human. I cannot fully grasp that in my pea-sized brain. God became man!
That is a simply statement, but the contrast is staggering. The closest analogy I can think of is: a man stripping himself of his humanity to become an amoeba or some single-celled organism…and even that is not a true analogy. God was born of virgin woman and was an infant child… our God that created the entire universe did that for us!

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All Rights Reserved.

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