Why Christmas?

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, and around the world people will begin their Christmas celebrations. Yet, while it is good and right to celebrate Jesus’ birth, it is important also to ask ourselves why His birth mattered.

The answer can be found in the message the angel delivered to Joseph:

“and thou shalt call His name Jesus: for He shall save His people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)

You see, mankind needs a Savior. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Every one of us has broken God’s law in some way or another, and because of that, we each deserve the penalty for our wrongdoing. What is that penalty?

“For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)

And not just any death. The Bible teaches that the penalty for sin is spiritual death: eternal punishment in hell. We all stand guilty and condemned. Under this condemnation, death is the ultimate point of no return: the beginning of eternal and inescapable torment.

However, God never intended any of us to experience that eternity in hell we each deserve. To get there, we must literally go over His dead body. That’s because He offers salvation to anyone and everyone who wants it.

There’s more to that verse I quoted above. Notice the contrast:

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

I always feel like putting an exclamation point at the end of that verse. You see, Jesus came to be the perfect sacrifice. We cannot pay the penalty for our own sins because sin requires a sacrifice that is sinless.

Jesus, God Himself, came to live on earth as one of us, so that He could pay the price of our sins. He lived the only sinless life in the history of the human race and voluntarily took our place, dying an excruciatingly painful death on the cross to pay the price of my sins and yours.

And yet, the wonder of Christmas is not just that Jesus was born to die for us, but that He was also born to live for us. He not only paid the price for our sin, He conquered sin and death once and for all by coming back to life again, nevermore to die.

2 Corinthians 15 summarizes Christ’s saving work:

“For I delivered unto you that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; And that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (15:3-4)

The significance of Jesus’ resurrection is that it showed His sacrifice had been accepted and that He really did have the power to defeat death.

Christmas, then, is not just a celebration of the baby in a manger, but also of the Man on a cross. It is not the story of a filled-up inn, but an emptied tomb. It is not just about the beginning of a life, it is about the end of death.

That is why Christmas matters.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

John 3:16