As I sit at my laptop this morning, Christmas is less than a week away. Little boys and girls are eagerly awaiting their visit from Santa Claus to see what he will bring them. And many parents are playing the Santa card, encouraging, or perhaps threatening their children, when they misbehave. My husband was just telling our 4-year-old grandson this week, that Santa is watching him, and he needs to be a good boy at school. Santa is a fun fairytale, full of innocence and joy, but he is not the real meaning of Christmas.

The true gift of Christmas is Christ Jesus, His birth, and the reason why He was born. When you think about Santa and his naughty and nice list, you understand that his gifts are based on our behavior. If we are good, he brings us the gifts we ask for. But if we are naughty, we will get a dirty lump of black coal in our Christmas stocking. How much better is the love of Christ! Jesus was born into this broken, dirty, and dark world to bring us to God!

“Everything in the Hebrew worldview militated against the idea that a human being could be God. Jews would not even pronounce the name ‘Yahweh’ nor spell it. And yet Jesus Christ—by his life, by his claims, and by his resurrection—convinced his closest Jewish followers that he was not just a prophet telling them how to find God, but God himself come to find us.”

Timothy Keller, Hidden Christmas

When you really ponder the wonders of Christmas, how can you not be awestruck? God, in His infinite power, glory and majesty, looked down on us, clothed in darkness and suffering, and knowing we had no other hope, outside of Himself, stepped down from Heaven and was born as a helpless baby.

“A God who was only holy would not have come down to us in Jesus Christ. He would have simply demanded that we pull ourselves together, that we be moral and holy enough to merit a relationship with him. A deity that was an ‘all‐accepting God of love’ would not have needed to come to Earth either. This God of the modern imagination would have just overlooked sin and evil and embraced us. Neither the God of moralism nor the God of relativism would have bothered with Christmas.”

Timothy Keller, Hidden Christmas

Christmas is the prequel to Easter. Outside of God coming to His beloved creation, we, His created, have no hope. This world holds us captive under all the trappings that sin affords. We do not have the power to break the chains that bind us. So, Jesus stepped into this world to provide the key, the way for us to come to the Father, forgiven and whole.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

“The purpose of giving his Son was to make God’s great gift of eternal life available to anyone—to whoever believes in him, that is, whoever personally trusts in him.”

ESV Study Bible commentary

John 3:16-17 ESV

It’s so much more than our hearts and minds can conceive. God didn’t tell us, get your act together and when you have, let me know! Nor did he say, I know you are wicked, but I will overlook everything you do because I love you. In Him is perfect love and forgiveness! For as we accept His gift of forgiveness and we set aside our own nature, He forgives us. And as we strive to know Him more, He fills us with Himself, so that we become more like Him, as we let go of our habits and sins of this world.

There is no justification without sanctification, no forgiveness without renewal of life, no real faith from which the fruits of new obedience do not grow.

Martin Luther

As we prepare for Christmas, I pray that we will look beyond the shiny trappings and look towards the cross. Christmas is the cost of God’s perfect love. How can we deny such love? How can we reject such a perfect gift?

It is God’s message of hope this Advent that what is good need never be lost and what is bad can be changed. This is the meaning of Christmas. Oh, that God would waken your heart to your deep need for mercy as a sinner! And then ravish your heart with a great Savior, Jesus Christ.

John Piper