Monday, November 30, 2009

Standing Up For Christmas

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. That may not resonate with a lot of my fellow Baptists, for whom the liturgical calendar means little beyond actually celebrating Christmas and Easter. Still, in this day of politically correct jargon, believers need to stand up for the uniqueness of Christmas amid all the other festivities of the winter season. Some of the festivities are pure fabrications intended to be substitutes for Christmas. Others are legitimate religious holidays rooted in other religious belief systems. Christians can respect all of these while at the same time making a case for Christmas.

Christmas celebrates the fulfillment of promises strung throughout the Hebrew Bible regarding the coming of a God-sent deliverer for a lost humanity. The first such promise occurs in Genesis 3: 15, where God promises Eve that her seed will "crush the serpent's head." No sooner had the fall occurred than God promised a remedy who would come from the seed of a woman (not a man, a woman). Clearly, there is an implication here of a virgin born Chosen One sent from God to deliver fallen humanity.

Christmas is a joyous celebration precisely because it embodies this good news, this gospel, of the coming of the Deliverer. Wish everyone you see a merry Christmas, and do so from your heart. In the process look for opportunities to explain to people the real significance of Christmas--the good news that God has sent his Deliverer, and that they may find deliverance from sin through him.

1 comment:

  1. what did you think about John MacArturs response to the proclaimation deal?

    ReplyDelete