What is Christmas About?

Resolved

Resolved, to inquire every night, before I go to bed, whether I have acted in the best way I possibly could, with respect to eating and drinking.

Jonathan Edwards

The Incarnation

The incarnation is the most important event in history.  But how do we understand its relationship to creation?  Well, creation is another great event in history.  In creation God created the entire universe out of nothing.  All He did was speak it into existence. Yet in John 1:1-5 we read that Jesus is the Word and that Word was with God and He and God are one.  Nothing was made without Him.  In Genesis we read that God says come and let us go down and make man in our own image.  This verse says “our” and “us” instead of” me “and “my”.  God was talking to the other triune heads.  Jesus was part of the creation just as God was.  They are all one.  

So Jesus created the world and it was all very good.  Then man rebelled and broke relationship with Him.  But Jesus loved us and came down and incarnated into a human child to live life as a poor carpenter born in a manger.  Not as nice as His heavenly throne.  He lived in our sinful environment without sinning and got mocked, betrayed, cursed and killed, even when He was on the cross God the Father turned away from Him.  Then Jesus rose from the dead and defeated death.  He saved us, who are evil, rebellious, and a prideful people.  It is good to know that the one, who created us, saved us.  One day He will return and bring His children together and give them a glorified body and renew the earth.  Jesus, the creator and the redeemer will be glorified forever amen. 

Tristan Albert

 

Why Christmas?

The Innkeeper by John Piper

God’s grace is stronger than my sin

Oh how is struggle with sin! Many times I feel like Jekyll and Hyde. I have an enemy within me. It’s powerful and ruthless. It despises my new desires to love and serve my King. Theologians call it “indwelling sin”.

“¹⁵ For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. ¹⁷ So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸ For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. ¹⁹ For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

 ²¹ So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. ²² For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, ²³ but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴ Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Romans 7:15-24

Indwelling sin is a “law” (Romans 7:21) “²¹ So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.” Every urge and inclination in me is trying to force me to fulfill its demands and bow in submission to its evil.

“But hasn’t Christ defeated sin in the Christian?” you ask. Yes, praise God! “³⁶ So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:36. Jesus has overthrown its rule, weakened its power, and killed its root. Yet, sin is still a force present in the Christian until he dies.

Indwelling sin is like a raging river. I wasn’t aware of it before God saved me because I was surrendered to its force and was carried along by its control. Now, as a believer, I must swim upstream against its current and strain under its strength.

Indwelling sin consistently fights against the Christians desire to obey God.  It’s an enemy that never rests, BUT neither does God’s grace, which is stronger than the Christians sin. This is my hope against such an enemy.

God’s grace is stronger than my sin

Grace is rooted in its source, and the source is my King. He loves me. He is for me. He is all-powerful. He is present with me. He controls all things. And thus, His marvelous grace follows His good character.

“² For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:2

“¹⁴ For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” Romans 6:14

Miles

"For your sakes he became poor."—2 Corinthians 8:9.

HE Lord Jesus Christ was eternally rich, glorious, and exalted; but "though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor." As the rich saint cannot be true in his communion with his poor brethren unless of his substance he ministers to their necessities, so (the same rule holding with the head as between the members), it is impossible that our Divine Lord could have had fellowship with us unless He had imparted to us of His own abounding wealth, and had become poor to make us rich. Had He remained upon His throne of glory, and had we continued in the ruins of the fall without receiving His salvation, communion would have been impossible on both sides. Our position by the fall, apart from the covenant of grace, made it as impossible for fallen man to communicate with God as it is for Belial to be in concord with Christ. In order, therefore, that communion might be compassed, it was necessary that the rich kinsman should bestow his estate upon his poor relatives, that the righteous Saviour should give to His sinning brethren of His own perfection, and that we, the poor and guilty, should receive of His fulness grace for grace; that thus in giving and receiving, the One might descend from the heights, and the other ascend from the depths, and so be able to embrace each other in true and hearty fellowship. Poverty must be enriched by Him in whom are infinite treasures before it can venture to commune; and guilt must lose itself in imputed and imparted righteousness ere the soul can walk in fellowship with purity. Jesus must clothe His people in His own garments, or He cannot admit them into His palace of glory; and He must wash them in His own blood, or else they will be too defiled for the embrace of His fellowship.

O believer, herein is love! For your sake the Lord Jesus "became poor" that He might lift you up into communion with Himself.

C. H. Spurgeon

A brief history of Christian discussion concerning the Christological incarnation

1.    Greek Gnosticism suggested Jesus only “appeared" to be human” – Docetism.
 

2.    Ebionites (Jewish Christians) asserted Jesus was fully human, and Holy Spirit descended upon Him at baptism - Adoptionism.

3.    Arius (c. 250-336) argued that Jesus was subordinate to God the Father. “There was a time when the Son was not” – Subordinationism; denial of pre- existence.

4.    Council of Nicea (325) affirmed that Jesus was fully God and fully man in homoousion.

5.    Apollinarius (c. 310-380) posited that human rational soul of Jesus was replaced by divine logos in single nature – Monophysitism.

6.    Gregory of Nazianzus (330-389) stated, “the unassumed is the unhealed”

7.    Nestorius (c. 380-451) suggested that there were two separate beings in Jesus Christ; no real union.

8.    Eutyches (c. 378-454) indicated that the human nature was absorbed into the divine in a synthesis – Absorption.

9.    Tome of Pope Leo (449), Council of Chalcedon (451) established orthodoxy as “two natures (divine and human) in one hypostasis or Person (Lat. personae).”

10. Leontius of Byzantium (c. 500-560) introduced concept of enhypostasia, that human nature of Jesus did not have independent existence.

11. German theology of 18th and 19th centuries – quest for “historical Jesus.” Led to R. Bultmann’s “demythologization.”

12. Nineteenth century theology – argument of kenotic theories of Christology.

13. Karl Barth (1886-1968) – Christocentric revelation of God. Humanity of God- assumption of humanity into Deity, leading to universalism.

James Fowler

Excerpted from: Christology, Study Outlines, 1999, www.christinyou.net.

The importance of the Incarnation

"And we know how necessary it was that Christ should come forth as God and man; for salvation cannot be expected in any other way than from God; and Christ must confer salvation on us, and not only be its minister. And then, as He is God, He justifies us, regenerates us, illuminates us into a hope of eternal life; to conquer sin and death is doubtless what only can be effected by divine power. Hence Christ, except He was God, could not have performed what we had to expect from Him. It was also necessary that He should become man, that he might unite us to Himself; for we have no access to God, except we become the friends of Christ; and how can we be so made, except by a brotherly union?"

John Calvin

The wonder of the Incarnation

"He is not humanity deified. He is not Godhead humanized. He is God. He is man. He is all that God is, and all that man is as God created Him."

C.H. Spurgeon

An excellent thought for Christmas

"Our Savior must be fully man in order to take the place of men and die in their stead, and He must be fully God in order for the value of His sacrificial payment to satisfy the demands of our infinitely holy God. Man He must be, but a mere man simply could not make this infinite payment for sin."

Bruce Ware

Fully God and fully man

"Nowhere does the Bible ever declare that Jesus' deity makes Him something more than a man or something other than a human. Scripture never allows the divine nature of Christ to overshadow or diminish His human nature"

Phil Johnson

The Word of the Father was made flesh

"The Word of the Father, by whom all time was created, was made flesh and was born in time for us. He, without whose divine permission no day completes its course, wished to have one day for His human birth. In the bosom of His Father He existed before all the cycles of ages; born of an earthly mother, He entered upon the course of the years on this day. The Maker of man became man that He, Ruler of the stars, might be nourished at the breast; that He, the Bread, might be hungry; that He, the Fountain, might thirst; that He, the Light, might sleep; that He, the Way, might be wearied by the journey; that He, the Truth, might be accused by false witnesses; that He, the Judge of the living and the dead, might be brought to trial by a mortal judge; that He, Justice, might be condemned by the unjust; that He, Discipline, might be scourged with whips; that He, the Foundation, might be suspended upon a cross; that Courage might be weakened; that Security might be wounded; that Life might die. To endure these and similar indignities for us, to free us, unworthy creatures, He who existed as the Son of God before all ages, without a beginning, deigned to become the Son of Man in these recent years. He did this although He who submitted to such great evils for our sake had done no evil and although we, who were the recipients of so much good at His hands, had done nothing to merit these benefits."

Augustine

The most amazing miracle in the whole Bible

"It is by far the most amazing miracle in the whole Bible-far more amazing than the resurrection and more amazing than the creation of the universe. The fact that the infinite, omnipotent, eternal Son of God could become man and join Himself to a human nature forever, so that infinite God became one person with infinite man, will remain for eternity the most profound miracle and the most profound mystery in all the universe."

Wayne Grudem

Our Savior is perfect man as well as perfect God

"We should settle it firmly in our minds, that our Savior is perfect man as well as perfect God, and perfect God as well as perfect man. If we once lose sight of this great foundation truth, we may run into fearful heresies. The name Emmanuel takes in the whole mystery. Jesus is "God with us." He had a nature like our own in all things, sin only excepted. But though Jesus was "with us" in human flesh and blood, He was at the same time very God."

J.C. Ryle

Fellowship with Persecuted Christians this Christmas

Sasha was just 10 years old when authorities in Uzbekistan burst into her family's home to arrest her father, Dmitry Shestakov, for preaching the gospel. Although Sasha was devastated by her father's imprisonment, she was encouraged by his commitment to the church. “I am proud of my father's strength, that God gives him power,” she said. “I'm proud that my father is passing this exam. He is in prison because he is pastor of a church. I ask you to pray for him.”
Praise the Lord, Sasha's prayers were answered this year when her father was released after serving four years in prison.
But there are many other children whose parents remain in prison or are persecuted in other ways.
Click here to learn more and to order a prayer calendar, so that your family can come alongside individuals and families such as Sasha's.
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