I Want a Big One!

How big or expensive does a gift this Christmas have to be to satisfy the receiver? Are you hoping to get a big or fancy gift this year?

Well consider that the biggest gift you could ever receive has already been given to you and you may not even know you have it in your possession. It may be hidden from view, but it is the most expensive, most important, most meaningful gift you will ever, forever receive.

Because the whole of the human race is under divine condemnation for the sin of Adam, we are already under the judgement of God. We can do nothing on our own to resolve our debt to God but to pay our own guilty penalty forever in Hell. Thankfully however, God in His mercy and grace has provided us with a redeemer. Someone able to pay our penalty for us. Erase that debt. Such a gift of mercy and grace has already been offered in the life and death of Jesus Christ, the only person who both as man could live a sinless life before God, and as an eternal being, pay the penalty for we who cannot.

Nothing you seek, give, experience this Christmas can compare to the gift of salvation offered you through belief in Jesus Christ. If you repent of your disobedience and rebellion against God in a humble prayer of appeal for forgiveness of the sins you've committed against Him, and if you believe that Christ died on your behalf, bearing the punishment for your sins, and that God, raising Christ up on the third day after His death, resurrected Him in order that you might experience the same eternal life that Christ has accomplished, you will be saved. Through faith in Christ you will be free of condemnation and will experience eternal life with Him in heaven when you die. You will be free of sin in this life, able to choose between sin and righteousness whereas now you cannot. But belief in Christ comes with a cost, and He asks that you count that cost before coming to Him. It is a hard truth to believe, but it is the greatest truth, the only truth that matters in all of life. It is everything. Literally.

Take a moment this Christmas to remember the reason for the holiday, the birth of God himself in human flesh, born cursed to die on a Roman cross, so that we, those who believe in Him by faith, may be reconciled to God.

Emanuel - God is with us.

Merry Christmas.