Significance of Christmas

Christmas is upon us again. Every year we put up the decorations and buy the gifts. We make cookies and pies and special breads and put out the hard candies and candy canes. Christmas songs play over the radio and on CD players. The Salvation Army volunteers ring their bells next to their trademark red kettles, collecting donations for the needy. We hurry through the busy weeks leading up to the 25th of December and barely give a thought to the Child whose birth the holiday was intended to celebrate. And why should we? What was, or is, the significance of the birth of a baby in first century Palestine?
From the beginnings of human history mankind has been in rebellion against the God who created and sustains him. Yet, rather than violating His perfect justice by merely winking at this treachery, God made a plan by which His wrath may be satisfied and His mercy shown to some of His special creatures. In this plan, made within the Trinitarian Godhead, the Father sent the Son to earth by means of the intervention of the Holy Spirit. A young woman in Palestine who had never had relations with a man became pregnant with the most unique child ever conceived. This child had a fully divine nature and yet was fully human as well. Skeptics sometimes opine that many pagan religions have stories of gods coming down and seducing women and that children sometimes resulted from these illicit liaisons. The primary difference is that these children had mixed natures. Only Jesus was fully divine and fully human. Another difference can be found in the fact that these divine-human unions resulted from the unbridled lusts of the pagan gods for the women of earth where this occasion was brought about by the plan of God to bring the way of salvation to mankind.
In order for the plan to be accomplished, Jesus had to have a full human nature and a full divine nature. He had to be fully human in order to fully represent mankind in the sacrifice He was to make. In order to bring comfort to man, he had to suffer the sorrows and pains of being man. He had to be fully divine in order to have the capacity to atone for the rebellion and wickedness of those he came to save from the wrath of God. In order to satisfy the infinite wrath of God, He had to be infinite God.
In the birth of Jesus on that night in Bethlehem the unthinkable occurred. The infinite, transcendent God of the entire universe left His throne in Heaven and condescended to cloak Himself in the limited and weak flesh of man. He did this in order to become the high priest that can relate to man in all his afflictions and to be the perfect sacrifice to satisfy the holy and righteous wrath and judgment of God. This is the miracle of Christmas. Take some time to think about it this week.
God bless you.