Month: December 2021

Don’t Grow Up, Little Jesus

/ Steve Drake / Leave a comment

Dearest hijas and hijo,

In anticipation of the celebration of Christmas 2021, may I refer you back to the post I wrote last year (see post: Hark the Herald Angels Sing: The Real Message of Christmas), and encourage you to read it again and meditate on the conclusions contained therein.

(The juxtaposition of a humble manger and the cross. What is the connection?)

God came down. Every other religion or system of thought in the world has man going up—man doing something to reach up and please the deities above him. Only Christianity has God coming down. Only Christianity has God becoming man—becoming one of us—and coming down to our place of residence and living among us. This is utterly profound. Think about it. Man is not taking the initiative to do something—God is. God is the one taking the initiative to be in relationship to us. He does that through taking on the form of man—the Son of Man Jesus Christ—and instituting a rescue mission for man.

What? You don’t think you need to be rescued? You’ve pretty much got your stuff together? Then Christmas is not for you. Don’t pretend to celebrate Christmas with your Santa Claus and all your Christmas lights and reindeer and snowmen on your lawns and your Christmas trees with all the baubles if you don’t want little Jesus to grow up. It’s a Christian holiday. We are celebrating God coming down to die.

That’s it. It’s actually quite sobering. We celebrate Jesus as that God-man coming down to us as a babe to grow into a young man who would die for us. This young man was deliberately provocative to those who carried in their faces and actions the indifference of thinking they had their stuff together—of thinking they had no need of Him. He brooked no false notions of ‘going along to get along’; of turning down the rhetorical heat to keep His message ‘cushy’ for popular opinion. He didn’t cave to a self-deluded sentimentalism and lovey-dovey hand-wringing just so you can feel good about yourself.

His approach was the exact opposite. His messages were filled with rebuke and urgent pleas for repentance. He was not being pugnacious—He was being truthful. His message and the reason He came down was to force you and I to declare whether or not we loved the truth; to choose one side or the other. He claimed to be the Truth (John 14:6), so the choice is for Him or against Him. He was looking then, and still looking now, for people with a contrite and humble heart, and who tremble at His word (Isaiah 66:2). He was looking then, and still looking now, for people who recognize they are sinners in need of rescuing (Isaiah 59:1&2, Isaiah 45:22).

His plea was to come to Him and find rest (Matt. 11:28-30). A spiritual rest for your soul that transcends the physical death of your body. In order to do that you must first recognize your need. You need to be rescued from the disease that has so infiltrated your mind and body it can be compared to a Stage IV cancer multiplying uncontrollably within all your members. It’s called sin. We all do.

So where is your allegiance? Is it in yourself, or in the babe that came down and would grow up to be a man who offered Himself in death to be the rescue we so desperately need. Celebrate that this Christmas.

“FOR A CHILD WILL BE BORN TO US, A SON WILL BE GIVEN TO US; AND THE GOVERNMENT WILL REST ON HIS SHOULDERS; AND HIS NAME WILL BE CALLED WONDERFUL COUNSELOR, MIGHTY GOD, ETERNAL FATHER, PRINCE OF PEACE”(ISAIAH 9:6).

“BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN SHALL BE WITH CHILD, AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME IMMANUEL, which translated means, GOD WITH US” (MATTHEW 1:23).

All my love,

Dad

Vaya con Dios!