THE INCARNATION

CHRISTMAS: HOPE FULFILLED FOR US SINNERS

Exclusive: Rita Dunaway emphasizes God's sacrificial love that's resonated for centuries

Because Jesus Christ was born in a stable over 2,000 years ago, there is hope for each one of us – no matter how failed, flawed, or frustrated we may be. Jesus is the embodiment of a Creator so caring and compassionate that He condescended into the hot mess of humankind so that we could know Him and be reconciled to Him.

Jesus told us that it is through Him, the Son, that we can know God, the Father. By studying the life of Christ depicted in the four gospels, we see that God is the very essence of kindness. Not only did Jesus heal the sick, raise the dead and feed the hungry, but he dined with social outcasts – at the expense of his reputation – and welcomed children into his presence. He delivered grace and mercy to those who needed it most.

On the other hand, Jesus reserved his harshest words for the self-righteous. He called out the sanctimonious “religious” sticklers who were hung up on outward keeping of ceremonial laws but were lacking in love and kindness, naming them “whitewashed tombs” whose hearts were far from God.

At the same time, Jesus was relentless in upholding Truth and the Moral Law. Yes, he challenged the adulterous woman’s accusers to “cast the first stone” if they were without sin, but having exposed the crowd’s hypocrisy and double standards, he then gently commanded the woman to go and “sin no more.” 

Jesus never gave sin a “pass,” but he was utterly gracious toward those who recognized their sin-sickness and desired to turn from it.

He also showed us that God is utterly sovereign over His world. He calmed storms. He healed the sick and raised the dead. As he hung on the cross, daylight turned into night.

From his resurrection, we learn that even the most tragic event we could imagine – the crucifixion of Christ – was never out of God’s control. 

It was all part of His perfect plan, from before the beginning of time, to redeem a people who would glorify Him and enjoy Him forever.

God is the essence of all that we recognize as good. Through the birth of Jesus, He demonstrated love so perfect and so complete that it willingly makes the ultimate sacrifice.

As the lyrics of the lovely Downhere song ask, “How many kings step down from their thrones? How many lords have abandoned their homes? How many greats have become the least for me?”

And who ever heard of a father volunteering his perfect, faultless son to pay the death penalty in place of vile thugs, even as they waved their angry fists in his face? Yet this is what God has done for us through Jesus.

This is love profound, and it is the kind of sacrificial love that has resonated with every nation, people, tribe and tongue the world over, since the dawn of time. 

It resonates because, as Blaise Pascal observed, each of us was created with a God-shaped vacuum in the center of us.

This vacuum is the reason we search for meaning in life. It is why we work hard to be “good people” and to conform to some code of moral standards.

Our reality, however, is that even the best among us is not consistently “good,” according to God’s standards. 

The beauty of genuine Christianity is that it looks this reality in the face and doesn’t flinch.

It never requires us to deny what we know to be true about our condition or pretend we are something other than what we really are – people who are inconsistent, at best, in living up to our own paltry standards, much less fulfilling those of a perfectly holy God. 

If God requires our own performance to “measure up,” then we would be utterly helpless and hopeless.

But the great joy of Christmas is that the Creator of the world has seen our deepest need – it’s the need for a substitute to resolve our sin problem so that we can have peace with the One who made us and who upholds a perfect, unchanging Moral Law. 

Then He, himself, met this need, by sending the baby who was born in that stable over 2,000 years ago.

For those who see this and believe, those who turn from their own feeble efforts to be “good,” and place their trust in Christ instead, 

He is hope fulfilled.

http://www.wnd.com/2017/12/christmas-hope-fulfilled-for-us-sinners/