The Meaning of Christmas

Christmas is such a special and memorable time. I know most people will be out buying presents and getting ready for some festive celebration. Shelby and I decided years ago that we didn’t want to participate in the commercialization of Christmas, so we didn’t buy presents.

However, the more I think about what Jesus did on the cross and by giving His life for mine, I realize how significant His gift was to me. The thing is is that gifts are a great thing. But it’s the kind of gift that makes the difference. Shelby and I have everything we need. But to give our time to someone, to help someone who is sick or in need, or to share the greatest gift of all, which is Jesus, is far better than anything we could buy at Walmart or Target.

I am deeply grateful for Jesus and all that He has done for me. He has given me a beautiful and supportive wife who even helps me write these blogs. I often don’t give her enough credit because these blog posts are so much better because of her. And that goes for every area of my life. Thank you Shelby.

This post is actually meant for everyone. But as Christmas draws near, I think of my family and friends. I don’t know each person’s heart or where they stand with God. It’s my prayer that they all know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. But I know from the Bible that I can’t assume that.

I would like to be bold and ask each person what they believe. I’m just not as adept at speaking as I am at writing. These are questions that I so desperately want to ask everyone that I know. Do you know Jesus? How do you know Jesus? What does Christmas mean to you? Do you know for sure that you belong to Him?

I can’t stress the significance of these issues enough. Eternity apart from God is such a horrible thought that it’s like knowing someone is heading toward a cliff and knowing about it but doing nothing about it. No warning, no empathy, no nothing.

But to share God with someone is like caring enough for them to know of the joy, the love, and the blessings that I also know and experience. Since God loved me, He expects me to love Him and to love others. I often fall short of these goals.

It convicts me that I’m not as bold as I should be about my faith. But I do hope that many of my family and friends will read this. Because it’s that important to me and to Shelby. Thank you.

  

The Meaning of Christmas

Every year around this time it seems that this phrase, “the meaning of Christmas,” keeps popping up in conversations. You also hear, “Let’s keep Christ in Christmas." There’s little question the reason behind these phrases is due to certain people, such as atheists deeply opposed to Christianity, trying to remove God from our culture.

It’s understandable, considering the atheists point of view, why they are opposed to God. The definition of atheism, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a disbelief in the existence of deity.” It could be argued that disbelief is a belief in itself. For example, John Doe chooses to believe there is no God versus believing there is a God. The Free Dictionary says that disbelief is, “the inability or refusal to believe or to accept something as true.” Point being is that atheists, in the same vein as evolutionists, are choosing to base their argument on faith. The sad reality is that they’re betting their lives and that is going to end very badly.

What my concern is is that people are adamantly protesting taking Christ out of Christmas without understanding what Christmas means themselves. What do I mean by this? For many, my concern is that they are like those in Isaiah 29:13. Please read this very carefully.

Isaiah 29:13

The Lord says:

“These people come near to me with their mouth
    and honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship of me
    is based on merely human rules they have been taught.

Why does this concern me? Perhaps because this rang true in my life for many years. I considered myself a Christian when I wasn’t. I had convinced myself that because I prayed for God to save me that I had essentially been saved. But there was something missing and I didn’t know it. Or maybe I did but I didn’t want to admit it.

I had stopped going to church. I continued to live my life as if it were my own. I was pursuing a sinful lifestyle and wasn’t concerned about what God thought. But I had been brought up in a family that went to church every week, was baptized as a child, confirmed as a young adult, and followed many of the traditions of Christianity.

The issue is what God says in Isaiah. I honored him with my mouth, like many do when they cry foul when someone says Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. I followed human rules such as going to church on Sunday mornings. I acknowledged that there was a God but so does the Devil and his minions. James 2:19 says, “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.”

What was missing? What do so many people miss? The problem is that many people miss a very important truth. It’s not difficult to see. Consider the Pharisees. You may think that the Pharisees were bad people and that you’re nothing like them. Think again. The Pharisees were even more religious than you. They “were very zealous for the law of Moses,” according to Thorn Crown Journal, and they “had a great zeal for God.” The problem is that just as in Isaiah 29:13, they were also strict adherents to oral traditions. These were traditions of men, even very intelligent men.

Why were the traditions of men so wrong? In many ways, the traditions became more important than God’s Word. The Pharisees were rebuked by Jesus because they treated their traditions as having equal authority as God’s laws. Like Got Questions Ministries state, “we are not to allow our relationship with God to be reduced to a legalistic list of rules and rituals.”

So what is everyone missing? Why does it seem that there is a world with their hearts far from God, despite the fact they profess Him with their lips? Ironically, there are so many people who say “Lord, Lord,” but are going down the path to destruction and don’t even know it. Jesus said, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

What many people are missing and what I was missing is “surrendering.” Think about it. What good is it when a person asks God to save them and continues about his or her lifestyle without any consideration of changing? But it’s not just that, it’s also a recognition that God is King, He is Lord, and He is Sovereign over our lives. So am I saying that it takes some effort on our part to get right with God? No. Surrendering is just that…surrender. Our sin caused us to be enemies of God. Just as in war, there is a supreme power that wins. When we surrender to God’s ways and lifestyle, we surrender to the Supreme Power and His authority over our lives. Isaiah 55:9 says, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

We all need to understand that we have sinned against God by living contrary to His ways. The law, otherwise known as the Mosaic laws, helps us to see what are God’s ways. Do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, and so on. Have you ever told a white lie? Have you ever taken a penny that didn’t belong to you? Have you ever in your anger say that you hated someone? If you have, then you’re a lying, thieving murderer. And by God’s standard, we all have sinned against God and have come short of His glory.

Though most everyone believes that God is love, and He is, God is also just. He cannot tolerate sin or for sin to go unpunished. That would be like having a judge in court say to a lying, thieving murderer deserving of the death sentence to say, “I love you and forgive you. I’ll give you a pass. You are free to go.” Would that be a just judge? Wouldn’t every person who witnessed such a judgment realize how wrong and inequitable that is to a civilized society? How much less would that be to a just God who is the ultimate Judge over our souls?

Many of these things were not explained to me early in my life. I thought all I needed was to pray some prayer, confess Jesus in front of others, and try to live a good life. Though that is what I believed, I didn’t even do that well. Suffice it to say, I missed it by a mile. I didn’t realize that to truly belong to God, or be considered one of His children, that I needed to surrender. I needed to make him Lord of my life. Even that statement isn’t completely accurate. Got Questions Ministries helps explain that Jesus is already Lord. It’s for us to submit to His Lordship.

Why is all of this so important to understand? It’s because too many people live a life of religion. It’s just like in Memphis or throughout the Deep South. This area is commonly referred to as the Bible Belt. However, like in the days of the Pharisees, there appears to be traditions of men that are viewed with higher priority. People are judged harshly and legalism becomes a common occurrence. As a result, there are church pews filled with people going through the motions, becoming Sunday Christians, and for the rest of the week blending in with the world.

True Christians would not want to blend in with the world. The world is antagonistic against God. 1 John 2:15-17 says that we should not love the world but love God. And to love God is to do the will of God.

1 John 2:15-17

¹⁵ Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. ¹⁶ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷ The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

If we truly know Jesus, we would know that His desire is relationship, not religion. God doesn’t just want us to know about Him. He wants us to know Him personally. Think of your own parents. Don’t they want you to identify with them as part of the family? Don’t they want you to know them as Mom and Dad and not just know about them as some distant parental unit? Don’t they long for you to want to be with them and love them? Doesn’t God want many of the same things from His children? Hosea 6:6 says, “I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices. I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings.”

So what does Christmas truly mean for the Christian? Is it about being offended by those who prefer Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings to Merry Christmas? No. We should care about our neighbor and more importantly, their eternal destination. Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus, of course, but the miracle of the virgin birth is only the prelude to the greater event, Jesus’s ultimate sacrifice on the cross for the sins of all the world.

What Jesus did was satisfy the righteous requirements of the law and justify us before the Judge of all mankind for our sins. He took our place and bore our sins and nailed them to the cross. But while Jesus died for the sins of the world, it is still our individual responsibility to ask Jesus to be our Lord and Savior. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) We need to receive God’s gift. We need to surrender to His will.

Christmas means everything. Christmas is where Jesus humbled Himself and became like one of us. It was such a glorious event that even Linus of the cartoon strip Peanuts recognized the significance. Watch this video and see for yourself.

It is every true Christian’s prayer that all people come to know Jesus. What is the meaning of Christmas to you? I hope that for you that it means you invited Jesus into your heart and surrendered your will for His. That is the only way Christmas can be truly celebrated.

Why Christmas?

Picture by BARTON DAMER at CreationSwap 

Why Christmas?  That’s a fair question, isn’t it?  Why do we celebrate Christmas at all?  It seems like our culture wants to make it out to be something it isn’t anymore.  It’s not a new phenomenon, of course, but the numbers of those who would find Christmas offensive is rising and the level of animosity against this Christian tradition is stronger than ever.

So naturally, it seems that the culture is going to do whatever it can to take the focus off what Christmas is about.  Hollywood and the media have been on the attack for years.  Other non-Christians are doing what they can to take the focus off God or His Son, Jesus, as well.

Part of that strategy is to integrate other traditions to take the attention off Christ and place it on other seemingly non-invasive or harmless activities.  (Note:  I recognize that some of the traditions such as Christmas trees and presents began with the right purpose and intention.  However, just as with anything good that God gives man, man has a way of perverting God’s gifts to make them sinful in their use.)  These days, workers in stores and businesses are even afraid to say “Merry Christmas,” as to not offend someone.  They want to say something like “Happy Holidays” instead.

With this in mind, why do Christians persist on forcing “Christmas” on others?  Why do they continue to emphasize God or Jesus Christ when they know that it will likely offend someone and cause division and anger?  Wouldn’t it be more Christian-like to back off and let people live and let live and not force their religion down peoples’ throats?  Couldn’t we call Christmas something like “Earth Day?”  Oh wait, there already is that one.

But, let’s back up a minute.  Why should we change the name?  Why change the reason why we celebrate the day?  Why is it important enough for some people, like Christians, to say it matters?

To be fair, this day, this holiday, wasn’t always celebrated.  In fact, it wasn’t until after 400 A.D. that perhaps Christmas gained world-wide acceptance.  The actual day, December 25^th, is also a point of contention considering no one knows exactly when Jesus was born.

The reason why the name Christmas is important is for the very reason it is celebrated…the birth of our Messiah, Jesus Christ.  Obviously, this isn’t a huge revelation.  But that’s because we have forgotten the significance of that event.

Many theologians, philosophers, and educated people have written numerous papers and books on this subject, but the event by which Jesus was born bears huge significance and to complicate it would be a tragedy.  It is the single most important event that actually includes Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

To rank these events regarding Jesus separately would make the others less significant, and that is just not the case.  From the moment Christ put down His crown and humbled Himself and became a man to the day He ascended into heaven to sit at the Father’s right hand are all equally important.

So why is Christmas so important?  It’s because without it, mankind would be left without hope.   (This is where Christianity becomes offensive.)  Jesus is, without exception, the One and only True God.  But by becoming man, taking on the form of flesh, Jesus also became fully man.

By being God and man, Jesus is the only One who can truly be our Mediator.  But why the need for a mediator?  Good question.  Without getting too complicated, we sinned.  By sinning against God, we rebelled against God by saying, “We don’t want you, we want something else to take your place.”  Ultimately, that is what sin comes down to.  We can try to deny it, but at the core of who we are we are very selfish and self-centered.  We think we know better than God, and that’s how it began in the Garden of Eden (the very beginning.)

Think about it.  God tells us to love Him with all our hearts.  But what do we do?  We give our hearts to sports, money, career, sex, or other things that we’re passionate about.  We can do the same things with spouses and children.  We give priority to other areas of our lives when God is the sole reason for our existence.

What about loving others?  Are you easily offended when someone cuts you off in traffic?  How about your money?  Do you give sacrificially to help those who are less fortunate?  (I didn’t ask if you give to charity.  To give sacrificially means you give up part of yourself, something that is important to you or something that will make life very difficult for you to help someone who would benefit.)  To truly love your neighbor as yourself requires a lot of selfless giving and living.  But too often we come up with excuses.  We have excuses as to why we shouldn’t tell the truth, or why we can’t be somewhere on time, or how it is we can’t forgive someone for an offense they committed against us.  Sometimes these things, too, mean sacrifice.

The question then is how did Jesus fix this big mess?  The answer lies all the way back in time to a place called Eden.  In those days, God was engaged in a relationship with man that was perfect.  Everything that man did was in regard to living as if unto the Lord.  But somewhere along the line, mankind listened to a lie and gave in to temptation.  Instead of looking to God as the object of our affections, we pursued other interests…ourselves.

God, fortunately, didn’t leave it there.  In that dramatic event, God gave hope that the enemy of man would be defeated by the woman’s offspring.  Even though this prophecy doesn’t give great detail, it foreshadowed an event whereby in future generations many prophets would proclaim:

Isaiah 7:13-17

13 Then Isaiah said, “Hear now, you house of David! Is it not enough to try the patience of humans? Will you try the patience of my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel. 15 He will be eating curds and honey when he knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, 16 for before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right, the land of the two kings you dread will be laid waste. 17 The LORD will bring on you and on your people and on the house of your father a time unlike any since Ephraim broke away from Judah—he will bring the king of Assyria.”

In fulfillment of this, and many other prophecies, God became flesh and was born into the world to live among His creation.  Again, to avoid making this complicated, let’s just make the point that this was necessary.  It was necessary because we needed Jesus to save us from the penalty of our sins.  Jesus came into the world to reconcile us back to Himself.  But how did He do that?

By coming into the world, Jesus’ life showed that God did care about mankind.  He had a plan and He was going to use His own Son, Jesus, to be made a sacrifice so that the penalty for our sins could be paid for.  John 3:16, one of the most recognizable verses even among non-believers, tells us, “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.”

The issue today is not whether God loves us or even cares about us.  That much has been settled.  God proved it once and for all by placing His Son up on a cross.  The issue is whether or not we want to receive Jesus as our offering for the propitiation for our sins.  Propitiation is a big word, but what it means is this:

In the general sense, propitiation is the act of appeasing an offended power; to reconcile, to attain friendship or goodwill, attempt to make compatible.

In a spiritual sense, God is the power whom we have offended by our wrong actions and behaviors.  In and of ourselves, we cannot appease him or gain a good standing with him, but Jesus has acted on our behalf to accomplish that as our "propitiation.”

So what did Jesus do for us?  By dying on the cross, He exchanged His righteousness for our sin.  This, however, is a gift.  Not something that was forced on us.  You see, what God wants are people who want to be with Him.  He wants people to know Him, to love Him, to desire Him, and to worship Him.  And that by doing all of this He would receive glory.

The question needs to be asked again.  Why Christmas?  Because God is offering Himself to us through His Son, Jesus.  The fact that Jesus was born by the virgin Mary and brought into this world proves that God loves us.  If He did nothing else, which is utterly untrue, He would have done everything that we ever needed to have hope for a future.

You see, Christmas is important because the day helps remind us of this important and significant fact.  God continually is looking for those who would put their faith and trust in Him.  Christmas is a very specific way to bring to mind what God has done.  If the world takes away Christmas and leaves us with nothing but a holiday, then in a sense the world is removing the only hope that mankind has.

That is why Christians are so adamant about keeping CHRIST in CHRISTmas.  Christians are called to be ambassadors for our Lord Jesus.  They know that people are in a big mess and they want and desire all to know the hope that they have in Jesus.  Because He is the reason that we have hope and He is the reason Christmas is celebrated.

Think of it this way.  If you knew that your mom, dad, brother, sister or loved one were about to board a plane that you knew had a bomb on it, wouldn’t you do everything you could to save them?  You definitely would.  In the same way, Christians know that those who don’t know Jesus are headed toward eternal death, an eternity spent in hell.  Isn’t that reason enough to keep Christmas…Christmas?