What “Christmas Spirit” Should Actually Mean

The Christmas Spirit

For the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that although he was wealthy, but to your sake he turned poor, so that you just by his poverty would possibly grow to be wealthy.
—2 Corinthians 8:9

It’s right here, within the factor that occurred on the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie. “The Phrase turned flesh” (John 1:14); God turned man; the divine Son turned a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human child, unable to do greater than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises. Needing to be fed and adjusted and taught to speak like every other baby. And there was no phantasm or deception on this; the babyhood of the Son of God was a actuality. The extra you consider it, the extra staggering it will get. Nothing in fiction is so implausible as is that this reality of the incarnation.

How are we to consider the incarnation: The New Testomony doesn’t encourage us to puzzle our heads over the bodily and psychological issues that it raises, however to worship God for the love that was proven in it. For it was an amazing act of condescension and self-humbling. “He, Who had all the time been God by nature,” writes Paul, “didn’t cling to His prerogatives as God’s equal, however stripped Himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as mortal man. And, having grow to be man, He humbled Himself by dwelling a lifetime of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the dying he died was the dying of a typical legal” (Phil. 2:6, phillips). And all this was for our salvation.

The important thing textual content within the New Testomony for decoding the incarnation is just not, subsequently, the naked assertion in John 1:14, “the Phrase turned flesh and made his dwelling amongst us,” however relatively the extra complete assertion of two Corinthians 8:9, “ the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that although he was wealthy, but to your sakes he turned poor, so that you just by means of his poverty would possibly grow to be wealthy.” Right here is acknowledged, not the actual fact of the incarnation solely, but additionally its that means; the taking of manhood by the Son is ready earlier than us in a approach that exhibits us how we must always set it earlier than ourselves and ever view it—not merely as a marvel of nature, however relatively as a marvel of grace.

For the Son of God to empty himself and grow to be poor meant a laying apart of glory; a voluntary restraint of energy; an acceptance of hardship, isolation, ill-treatment, malice, and misunderstanding; lastly, a dying that concerned such agony—non secular, much more than bodily—that his thoughts almost broke below the prospect of it. It meant like to the uttermost for unlovely males, who “by means of his poverty, would possibly grow to be wealthy.” This Christmas message is that there’s hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory—as a result of on the Father’s will Jesus Christ turned poor and was born in a steady in order that thirty years later he would possibly cling on a cross. It’s the most fantastic message that the world has ever heard, or will hear.

We speak glibly of the “Christmas spirit,” not often that means extra by this than sentimental jollity on a household foundation. However what we’ve stated makes it clear that the phrase ought to the truth is carry an amazing weight of that means. It must imply the reproducing in human lives of the mood of him who for our sakes turned poor on the first Christmas. And the Christmas spirit itself must be the mark of each Christian all of the yr spherical.

If God in mercy revives us, one of many issues he’ll do shall be to work extra of this spirit in our hearts and lives.

It’s our disgrace and shame in the present day that so many Christians—I shall be extra particular: so most of the soundest and most orthodox Christians—undergo this world within the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human wants throughout them, however (after a pious want, and maybe a prayer, that God would possibly meet them) averting their eyes, and passing by on the opposite aspect. That isn’t the Christmas spirit. Neither is it the spirit of these Christians—alas, they’re many—whose ambition in life appears restricted to constructing a pleasant middle-class Christian house, and making good middle-class Christian buddies, and citing their youngsters in good middle-class Christian methods, and who go away the sub-middle-class sections of the group, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.

The Christmas spirit doesn’t shine out within the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those that, like their Grasp, stay their complete lives on the precept of creating themselves poor—spending and being spent—to complement their fellow males, giving time, bother, care, and concern, to do good to others—and never simply their very own buddies—in no matter approach there appears want. There usually are not as many who present this spirit as there ought to be.

If God in mercy revives us, one of many issues he’ll do shall be to work extra of this spirit in our hearts and lives. If we need non secular quickening for ourselves individually, one step we must always take is to hunt to domesticate this spirit. “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that although he was wealthy, but to your sakes he turned poor, that ye by means of his poverty is likely to be wealthy.” “Let this thoughts be in you, which was additionally in Christ Jesus.” “I run within the path of your instructions, for you’ve gotten set my coronary heart free.” (Ps. 119:32)

This text is by J. I. Packer and is customized from Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus: Experiencing the Peace and Promise of Christmas edited by Nancy Guthrie.

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