When you think of Christmas, what’s the first thing to pop into your mind? Is it a tree covered with ornaments with gifts just waiting to be opened? Is it a song? Is it a stable or a manger? For me it’s probably the tree or the nativity scene. It makes sense that we would think about these things. That’s what has been put into our minds for years!
What is Christmas truly, though? The word was first invented by the Catholic church as a way to express a certain mass (they have other holidays like this, such as Michaelmas), and it stuck around even outside Catholicism. In the end, the simplest definition for Christmas would be the day that we celebrate Christ’s birth.
The thing that needs to be considered here, though, is the fact that Jesus’s birth was only the beginning! The beginning of the long story of the New Testament, and, ultimately, the history of Christianity. That’s the beautiful part. Imagine the end of the Bible if Jesus had just stayed a baby! We wouldn’t have hope, we wouldn’t have salvation!
And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him. ~ Luke 2: 40 (nkjv)
The above verse says that Jesus grew! He was no longer a baby, no longer the child in the manger, but He grew into a boy. A boy who was already teaching and asking hard questions. Later in that same chapter, verse 52, it states that He “increased in wisdom and stature.” There it is talking about how He grew from the boy that taught in the temple into the man who had His ministry here on earth, the man that died for the sins of all who would believe.
And then he lived His life on earth, the most important life there ever was, holy and blameless and perfect (see 1 Peter 1:9 and 22, 1 John 3:5, Hebrew 4:15, etc.). This allowed him to be the sacrifice for us, just as in the Old Testament spotless lambs were slaughtered as appeasements, so Jesus became our propitiation. Romans 3:23-26 states that “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (nkjv, emphasis mine).” This verse might be familiar to a lot of us, but it can also be confusing. What it is basically saying here is that though we all sin and deserve God’s wrath, Jesus set himself forward as our propitiation. A propitiation is an appeasing sacrifice, and in this context, referring to Jesus, it means the most perfect sacrifice that could appease all of God’s wrath for all who would believe. He did this so that God could still be just while forgiving us our sins. The way he did this was by being perfect, as seen before, but also in the verse below.
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ~ 2 Corinthians 5:21 (nkjv)
You see how amazing that is?! We, all of us the chiefest of sinners, can one day stand before God and He will look on us and see no sin! And yet it still isn’t the end! He will still come again one day! When He comes again, there will be no more darkness, for he shall be the light.
The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. ~ Revelation 21:23 (nkjv)
Just as He was the Light of the World in the beginning of the world before he even created the sun, so He will be our Light again. So this Christmas, when you are remembering how the Light of the World came to us, remember that He will come again and be our Light forevermore.
Author Bio: Haniah Avery is a girl who loves writing about God through Middle Grade Historical Fiction. When she’s not writing that she enjoys writing poetry, writing other genres, reading, listening to music, watching movies, and occasionally drawing. She lives with her family in small-town Kansas. You can find her online and keep updated on her future writings by signing up for her email list at haniahavery.com
Thanks so much for having me as a guest!