michael maynard There are three important things to remember during the busy Christmas Season!
Christmas Is the Story of God Putting on Flesh
Did you know that Jesus is eternal? That means he was never created and has always existed as the second person of the Trinity. John 1:1-2 puts it this way:
John 1:1-2 In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. He existed in the beginning with God.
In these verses, Jesus is “the word” John is writing about. Jesus is eternal and he is God.
John 1:14 So the Word became human and made his home among us.
This means that Christmas, which celebrates Jesus’s virgin birth as a human, is our way of remembering how “the Word” – Jesus – came into the world by putting on human flesh and made his home among us.
God Doesn’t Always Look or Act How We Think He Should
The Jews of Jesus’s day believed that the Messiah would be a military leader who would rise up to lead Israel in rebellion against Rome so they could have their country back. But Jesus came into the world as a baby, not a warrior.
Psalm 115:3 Our God is in the heavens, and he does as he wishes.
God is God, and that means he does what he wants. He did not show up in history the way the Jews thought he would, and he does not always show up in our lives the way we would like. Sometimes instead of giving us the things we want, God lets us enter a time of trial to refine us and to teach us to trust him and him alone. But we can trust that God always has our best in mind.
[Related: 4 Myths About the Christmas Story]
Hope Has a Name
If you want to know what God is like, look to Jesus.
Colossians 1:19 For God in all his fullness was pleased to dwell in Christ.
The prophet Isaiah prophesied this long before Jesus was born.
Isaiah 7:14 All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).
Christmas is all about how God is with us through Jesus. When He came to the world as a human he not only lived a perfect life but died in our place as a perfect sacrifice. By being born of a virgin, Jesus was not born a sinner like all other people, who come from Adam. We can look to Jesus not only as “the reason for the season,” but as the reason for life itself!
