Christ and Christmas

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."--Isaiah 9:2

Sadly, when most people celebrate Christmas today, few will take the time to understand just why Jesus Christ came into this world 2,000 years ago.

For many folks, Christmas is just a day to exchange gifts, overindulge in food and drink and be lazy. For others, it's a day to visit all those wonderful relatives you can't stand or to stare at the TV screen for endless hours.

But Jesus Christ didn't come into this world just so we could celebrate his annual birthday party at a time of the year when the nights are long and the days are short and the weather is dreadful in many places. Rather, He came into this world to become the everlasting atonement for sin on a Roman cross that God's infinite justice demanded.

That's the reality of His birth that took place 2,000 years ago. And His death on the cross was far more important than His birth because His death allowed us by faith to be reconciled back to a Holy God that we had been alienated from because of our sins. Christ himself stated it best: "For God so loved the world that He gave his One and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16)

Eternal life through Christ's crucifixion on the cross for our sins is the free gift of salvation that God has offered mankind for 2,000 years. The apostle Paul clearly understood that it was a gift when he wrote this to the early church in Ephesus: "For it is by grace you have seen saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Unfortunately, much of Christendom quickly forgot that salvation was a free gift from God. Instead, many churches set up an ecclesiastical system of works that denied God's grace and forced people to follow a counterfeit path to heaven that couldn't save anyone. Perhaps the best example of that is the bogus system of sacraments that the Roman Catholic Church set up, beginning in the Fourth Century A.D.

Though a Roman Catholic Monk named Martin Luther led many out of that spiritual darkness beginning in the 16th Century when he launched what became known as the Protestant Reformation against Roman Catholic heresies, some Protestant churches have rejected Luther and are returning to that darkness.

Ironically, Christmas is a holiday that was manufactured by the Catholic Church, beginning in the Fourth Century when Rome renamed the pagan festival called the Saturnalia--a celebration of the pagan Roman god Saturn--Christmas to recruit the pagans into the church. December 25th isn't the birthday of Jesus Christ. Then what is the true date of His birth? We don't know. And it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that we recognize why Christ came into this world and why he died an ugly, brutal death on the cross. Death is always ugly and God never intended it for His creation. But it became necessary because of sin that entered the human race through the original transgressions of Adam and Eve. And sin has been passed on to every generation and every human being who has ever lived since the beginning of time.

Though Christ was perfect and sinless, he willingly paid the ultimate price for our sins that we never could have paid ourselves--not through good works, obedience to religions and their doctrines, church membership, baptisms, academic achievement etc. Christ's death opened the door to eternal life for us that nothing else could. For those who reject Christ either because of cultural or religious reasons, they will never gain eternal life. For them, their destiny is eternal death and damnation. (John 8:23-24)

That's what we should be thinking about today. Not parties or toys or presents or reindeer or jingle bells or Santa Claus or Christmas lights or snow-covered landscapes with evergreen trees and a setting sun in the background. Think about Jesus Christ. And think about the real reason why He came into this world 2,000 years ago in the form of a humble man.