“Remember it’s all about Jesus”.
I don’t know about you, but I hear this every Christmas season. Yes, it is all about Jesus. Yes, we must remind each other of this truth. But why is Jesus’ birth so important? Why is it worth celebrating? Why is the world’s calendar organized around a little baby who was born 2000 years ago in the Middle East?
Breaking it down
To fully understand how amazing Jesus’ birth is, we need to have an understanding of the God of the Old Testament. Yahweh (the Hebrew title for God) was a distant God. He had to be if he wanted to preserve His people. You see, God is holy and mighty and glorious, so much so that He cannot tolerate sin (evil, wrongdoing). If we sinful humans came into His presence, we would be destroyed. This isn’t because God is evil or malicious, but because He is so so good. Humans, on the other hand, are not good. We are inherently wicked and sinful. It is this sin that separates us from God. We cannot approach God’s holiness without being destroyed and were thus doomed to a life separated from our Maker.
Moses was one of the few Israelites who spoke with God. He got a brief glimpse of God’s glory on Mount Sinai. After leaving Egypt, God came down on a mountain in a cloud and met personally with Moses. However, when Moses begged to see God’s glory, God said: “no one may see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20) Because of their sinfulness, God had to keep Himself at a distance from His people. There was nothing that could close the divide between us and God.
But over the centuries, God promised again and again that he would change that. In that dusty little village in the Middle East, God sent a baby. Not just a baby, but God in human form. This baby was Jesus. God humbled himself, became flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:1) Like at Sinai, God came down to meet his people, only this time, he shielded his glory and holiness. He came as a tiny, drooling, helpless baby. This time, God did not hide his face. For the first time ever, we could gaze into the face of God Almighty, expressed in Jesus. Not only did God come down, but He came down to die. By dying on the cross 33 years later, Jesus closed the divide that separated us from God. Now we can approach God as our Father, without fear, and without shame. For an Ancient Jew, this claim would have been scandalous. And it is still scandalous today. Do you realize how amazing and important and wonderful this is? Christ’s birth into the world is not just a tradition-it is the Gospel.
“For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Jesus Christ.”
2 Corinthians 4:6