What about Christmas?

Christmas  2011  A Time to Think

What are the chances of us being remembered in 2,000 years time?

Why does history remember some people and ignore most people?

Consider this:  There was a man named Augustus. He was the first and greatest emperor of the Roman empire.  Augustus ordered a census that brought a man named Joseph and his wife Mary to Bethlehem where he son Jesus was born.  The month of August is named after Augustus. Why don’t we remember his birthday?

This brings us to Christmas. Why, out of the billions of people who have lived is so much attention still given to a  baby born in Palestine 2,000 years ago?  Why have thousands of books been written about his life and teachings. Why in the year 2011 do over a billion people follow him?

The story of Jesus is amazing: It’s about God appearing on earth as a human being.

Why did Jesus come? 

The historian Luke knew Jesus personally.  He wrote extensively about his birth and life. According to Luke, when Jesus was born an angel appeared to some shepherds. Luke wrote that the angel talked  with the shepherds about a baby just born in nearby Bethlehem.  The angel said:  ‘Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born for you; he is Christ the Lord’   (Luke 2:11)

The apostle Paul wrote this about Jesus some 50 years after Jesus was born: ‘When the time set by God arrived, He sent his son, born of a woman. (Galatians 4:4-5)

Here is a mystery:  God sent his son––Jesus came from God, yet he entered our world through the body of a women. No wonder people were still talking about this 50 years later and even  today.

Why did God send a saviour.

God sent a saviour because people were lost from God and didn’t know it.

People hadn’t forgotten God existed. They had just forgotten how to live in relationship with him as creature to Creator.

What happens when people are lost from God? 

We get  pretty much the kind of world we have now.  A world where people  make things of great beauty that enrich life.  Yet at the same time we make things that cause great suffering and destroy life.

When people are lost from God there are consequences.  Individuals and nations fall towards a spiritual and moral vacuum.  Why have family breakdown, suicide and depression reached epidemic proportions in this wonderful land of Australia? Because people are lost from God!

Christmas is a happy time of giving and family re-union for many people.  But it’s also a sad time of loneliness, alienation and depression for many others. 

Why is it that in the last century we saved millions of lives through scientific discoveries and in the same century millions of lives were destroyed by war?

Why are people wiping themselves out with alcohol & other drugs? These are all consequences of being lost from God.

Think about this: Everything that takes away our happiness is a consequence of being lost from God.

What does the coming of God in a person 2011 years ago say to us?

It tells us that although we may be lost from God God isn’t lost from us.

As savoir Jesus came to bring lost people back into relationship with God.

Christmas is about the beginning of the work of the Saviour. He was born to be our Saviour.  And he had to become a man to complete our rescue.

What happened to cause us to be lost from God was so terrible that Jesus  had to die to rescue us.   There’s a mystery here but mystery does not take away truth. Easter completes the story of Jesus coming to be the saviour. Our rescue is achieved at great cost––not to us but to God.

‘“God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16)

To find and know God in a personal relationship we must first receive Jesus as our eternal leader and follow him through the twists and turns of our lives.

Religion or Gospel

Having just read ‘The Reason for God’ by Timothy Keller I was particularly taken with the thought that we respond to the good and bad of life from one of two motivating principals: Religion or the Gospel. The test to help us know whether we live from a religious or a gospel foundation is answered by how we deal with the good and bad things that enter our lives.

I hope the following comments encourage you to develop a mind-set that raises religious warning bells and guides you to live under the gospel.

There is a great difference between the understanding that God accepts us because of our efforts and the understanding that God accepts us because of what Jesus has done. Religion operates on the principle, 'I obey––therefore I am accepted by God’ But the operating principal of the gospel is ‘I am accepted by God through what Jesus has done––therefore I obey.’

Two people living on the basis of these two different principles may be part of the same church. They both pray, give money generously and are loyal and faithful to their family and community, trying to live decent lives. However, they do so out of two radically different motivations, in two radically different spiritual identities. The result is two radically different lives.

The primary difference is that of motivation. In religion people try to apply God’s standards out of fear. They believe that if they don’t obey they will loose God’s blessing in this world and the next.

In the gospel, the motivation is one of gratitude for the blessing we have already received because of Jesus Christ. The religious person is forced into obedience, motivated by fear of rejection, When we understand the gospel we rush  into obedience, motivated by a desire to please and resemble the one who suffered and gave his life for us.

Religion and the gospel also lead to different ways of handling troubles and suffering. Religion is deceptive and leads people to the conviction that if they live a ‘good’ life, then God (and people) owe them respect and favor. These people believe they deserve a decent, happy life. If, however, life begins to go wrong, religious people (moralists) will experience devastating anger. Either they will be furious with God (or the universe) because thy feel that since they live better than others; they should have a better life. Or else they will be deeply angry at themselves, unable to shake the feeling that they have not lived as they should or kept up to standards.

 The gospel, however, makes it possible for us to escape the spiral of bitterness, self-recrimination and despair when life goes wrong. We know that the basic premise of religion- that if you live a good life, things will go well for you–is wrong. Jesus was the most morally upright person who ever lived, yet he experienced poverty, rejection, injustice and even torture,

The Threat of Grace

When many people first hear the distinction between religion and the gospel, they think that it just sounds too easy. ‘Nice deal!’ they may say. ‘If that is Christianity all I have to do is get a personal relationship with God and then do anything I want!’ Those words, however, can only be spoken on the outside of an experience of life changing grace. No one from the inside speaks like that. In fact, grace can be quite threatening. The religious/moralistic person can find the reality of grace very threatening. Grace calls us to reject our claim––that God should accept us because we are trying to be good. Then the way is open to receive Jesus as Lord. Then and only then will we be free to follow Jesus out of gratitude and ‘do as we please’

Bill Saville