It is Christmas Eve again and everyone is turning to the book of Luke for that traditional story of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus in a stable and the amazing angelic birth announcement to the shepherds in the field with their flock. I love that scripture. It is a comfortable, familiar image of God’s entrance into the world and it is worth reading each year. But if you want more of the story, it is John who sets the stage for us in his gospel and his Revelation.
John reminds us that Jesus always was, is and always will be God. (John 1:1-7) (Revelation 1:8) It was determined before the creation of the universe that God’s love and mercy would require Him to become a man and provide salvation from sin to all who believe through His sacrifice on the cross. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. He is God. He could have simply taken the form of a man or even become half man half God, but that wouldn’t provide the perfect sacrifice needed. He had to be both 100% man and 100% God.
To become 100% human, He had to begin where all human life begins (since the creation of Eve) as a fertilized egg in the womb of a woman. God’s Holy Spirit came over Mary and she conceived. (Luke 1:35) God, who is His father in heaven, also became His father on earth. Jesus became a fetus nurtured and growing in the comfort and safety of Mary’s womb until her delivery time came that night in Bethlehem. We celebrate His birth each year but His human life really began nine months earlier as did yours and mine.
We know when Jesus died and rose from the dead because of the Jewish Passover, so the early church celebrated His death and resurrection in the spring in competition with the pagan spring rituals. The exact date of Jesus’ birth is not known, but it most certainly isn’t December 25th. The early church made the decision to celebrate Jesus’ birth in competition with the pagan winter solstice rituals. The enemy has been trying ever since to take back those celebrations by injecting secular or even pagan symbols into our Easter and Christmas celebrations. None of that really matters. The only thing that does matter is that we focus at least once a year on the miracle of God’s arrival on earth in the form of Jesus. He truly is “the reason for the season” and may we never forget the reason He came. In His own words Jesus tells us, “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16-17)
I pray that each of you have a blessed celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.