Christmas- Eve

As I worshipped during our church’s Christmas eve service 7PM, with an invited friend on one side of me, and my wife and four kids on the other, the full weight of the words we were singing pounded down on my heart.

A momentous thing happened that first day of Jesus’s life in the flesh. A plan, who knows how long in the making, had gone fully into effect. The Lamb, the only sacrifice fully acceptable to God in order to appease His need for justice and order in the universe was born.

Romans 6 through 11 in “The Message”:

Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we're at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!

Merry CHRISTmas!