The Promises of Christmas – Week 2
“The Promise of Love!”
Galatians 4:4-7 & 1 John 3:1-3 (NAS95)
Christmas is the true story of the first royal visitation of Jesus Christ!
I want you to think about how upside down the story of Jesus’ birth really is, especially, when you think about who Jesus is and claimed to be. Jesus claimed to be, and is, in fact, nothing less than the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the incarnate God, the Savior of the World.
That alone, the fact that this person came to earth for a royal visitation, is enough to shake the foundations of the world, but the Christmas story is not only miraculous—for the incarnation and the Virgin birth are supernatural in and of themselves are enough to stop the presses and cause a collective sigh throughout all of history—but the Christmas story is also upside down because of the scandal of who God chose to be the main players of this story:
- A poor rural teenage girl from a backwater village gets pregnant before she is married (add an angelic visitation to the virgin birth announcement to add some legitimacy).
- A hardworking Carpenter wants to break off his engagement to his fiancé because she is the aforementioned unwed pregnant teenage girl who, also, said that an angel visited her (add another angelic visitation to the story to keep him in the relationship).
- A parallel miracle happens as the closed womb of the aged Elizabeth is opened, which harkens back to the miracle of Abraham and Sarah (add another angelic visitation to Zacharias, who didn’t believe the angel and was struck mute until it was fulfilled with the birth of John the Baptizer).
- Fast forward 9 months to the angelic visitation to the shepherds who were the first to come and worship Jesus the Christ, born in an animal stall, placed in a manger, and wrapped in the not-so-royal swaddling cloths. He was, literally, born in a barn.
Does this sound like what the royal visitation of God should be like? Really!?!
Jesus should have been born to an important family in an important location. There should have been no scandal around his parentage or birth location, and the first witnesses should have at least been a class of people who could testify in court (side note: isn’t it interesting how shepherds were God’s chosen first witnesses to Jesus’ birth and women were God’s chosen first witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection?).
You couldn’t make up a story as ridiculous and as unbelievable as this one. If this was a religious conspiracy to take over the world, then it is a horrible one! Amazingly, this IS the story of the royal visitation of God to His creation! I would have made it a big deal, filled it with pomp and circumstances, with important people in important places, and notable eyewitnesses.
The miracle of Jesus’ birth is not only found in the incarnation and virgin birth, but also in its scandal to the power structures of those God came to save and redeem. The fact that it happened in a way that no powerful person would want the story of his or her birth to be told is evidence unto itself! Let’s be honest, Christmas is a scandal of epic proportions to the powers and principalities of this world! Christmas was very different on purpose!
That’s because Christmas was not a power play, like Caesar’s census. Caesar wanted to show the world how powerful he was by counting how many people were under his authority. Rather, Christmas is a love story where God entered into His creation, compelled by love, to become one of His people in order to save and redeem His people back to Himself.
Paul explains this in Galatians 4:4-7,
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.
The unbelievable reality of the first royal visitation of God is that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:16-17).
Christmas is about God’s love and the promise of His adoption into His family! The Father sent His Son into the world so that we can share with Jesus in having God as our “Abba! Father!”.
Love compelled God that first Christmas! John declares in 1 John 3:1-3,
See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
Love still compels God and His love compels us to live according to the promise of Christmas, the promise of Immanuel, God is with us—the Love of God has come to redeem us! Listen to this powerful explanation:
In like manner, we should be compelled by the love of Christ. If our reading of Scripture, as illumined and applied by the Spirit, does not release the compelling love of Christ in us and through us, then our hearts are not right with God, and our service constitutes nothing more than ashes upon a rusty altar! For it is not our love to Christ that is in view here, but rather it is the love of Christ working in us—mastering, driving, and compelling us. It is the love of God “poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Such compelling love never flags, never falters, never fails. It is “the expulsive power of a new affection.”[1]
We learn that the promise of love, like all of God’s promises, comes with the praxis to love in 1 John 4:7-21:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.
These are the promises of Christmas—that we would walk in the same love of God’s first royal visitation. Every promise of God comes with a praxis—a lifestyle that was modeled by Jesus Christ for us to walk in. Jesus is the greatest example of love this world has ever been given. We should do likewise!
Paul teaches us about Jesus’ example of surrendering all for love in Philippians 2:5-11:
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Jesus emptied Himself by coming from Heaven to earth to show us the only way to the Father for He is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). This is the promise of the first royal visitation and we are still awaiting its completion when Jesus will return. Until that Day, we are to empty ourselves so that His love can fill us.
Jesus taught us love by intentionally turning the world upside down with the love of God and introducing His Kingdom—the upside-down Kingdom where the conquering King comes through the virgin womb of a teenage bride.
Jesus invites us to turn the world upside down by loving and living like Jesus did—as witnesses of the upside-down Kingdom; the same way that the conquering King defeated the principalities and powers of this world, by allowing them to crucify Him upon that rugged old cross. Jesus was compelled by love to pay the price for our redemption—He gave us His all—He surrendered all so that what had been turned upside down could now be filled with a new life, a new love!
The key to understanding Jesus’ first royal visitation was that from the beginning to the end, it was intended to turn you upside down so that you could be emptied of your pride; so that, you can be filled with love!
We are still waiting for Jesus’ second royal visitation. Until that Day, we are called to love one another on earth as it is in Heaven—to continue the work of the upside down Kingdom, the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as misunderstood and opposed as it is by the powers and principalities of this world.
We are invited to turn the world upside down through His revolutionary love of Jesus Christ that came to earth in the womb of a poor rural teenage girl named Mary who risked everything with these faithful words of full surrender: “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
Footnotes:
[1] Stephen F. Olford and David L. Olford, Anointed Expository Preaching (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1998), 301.