This is a repost from several Christmases ago, but It's definitely worth sharing again!
Another word to you all from my book "Knowing God." I actually read this chapter
about God incarnate(in human form) a couple months ago. But it is something that
I went back and reread because it has everything to do with the Christmas season
for this is what Christmas is all about.
It is all too easy for us to get
wrapped up in the world's definition of Christmas when we are surrounded by it
every day everywhere we go. Let's take the time to meditate on our Savior and
the reason why we even have Christmas and why we as Christians may have true
"joy" in our hearts as we celebrate the birth of our Lord. May we be reminded of
what it meant for Him to come to earth to die, and let's pray that the Lord will
use us to share this hope with others who are in need of salvation.
Merry
CHRISTmas!
~
"The Word became flesh." (Jn 1:14) God became man.
The
Christmas message rests on the staggering fact that the child in the manger was-
GOD.
The baby born at Bethlehem was God made man. The Word had become
flesh: a real human baby. He had not ceased to be God; He was no less God than
before; but He had begun to be man. He was not now God MINUS some elements of
His deity, but God PLUS all that He had made His own by taking manhood to
Himself.
ALL THIS WAS FOR OUR SALVATION!
He became poor. We see now
what it meant for the Son of God to empty Himself and become poor. It meant
laying aside of glory. It meant love to the uttermost for unlovely human beings,
that they through His poverty might become rich.
The Christmas message is
that there is hope for a ruined humanity- hope of pardon, hope of peace with
God, hope of glory- because at the Father's will Jesus Christ became poor and
was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross. It is the most wonderful message that the world has
ever heard, or will hear.
We talk glibly of the "Christmas
spirit," rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis.
But what we have said makes it clear that the phrase should carry a tremendous
weight of meaning. It ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper
of Him who for our sake became poor at the first Christmas. And the Christmas
spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year
round.
The Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their
Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor-
spending and being spent- to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble,
care and concern, to do good to others- and not just their own friends- in
whatever way there seems need.
"For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you
through His poverty might become rich." 2 Corinthians 8:9
"Have this
attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus." Philippians 2:5
