When we look at the Christmas “messages” preached over this season, most are all the same.
They are often boring and of little value. Except for the momentary, sentimental feelings they create.
However, the real message of the birth of Christ is staggering; if preachers would simply preach about it.
IF they, themselves, really understood enough or had experience enough to actually share it.
The Incarnation of Christ is about God taking the form of a man. And living the perfect life; which qualified Him to then offer Himself to God for our sins.
As the One whom God had prepared, before the foundations of the world, to be offered as the Perfect Lamb for the sins of men.
So, OK. We understand that.
We understand about the substitutionary atonement of Christ. How He Alone paid the full penalty for all our sins. How He settled the eternal, judicial penalty due every person that has ever lived.
If a person will believe that and rest upon that.
A Christian must understand and believe this in order to be saved. These are non-negotiable truths.
However, most believers stop right there.
They think that now it is up to them to gut it out for God. To do by discipline and dedication and gratitude what the Lord has commanded believers to do. To prove our appreciation to the Lord for the promise of Eternal Life He has given us.
But there is something missing, regularly missing, from the preaching and teaching we hear on all this.
There is a great, gaping, screaming black hole of truth missing from what Christians need to understand about the life they live out following the New Birth. Following being Born Again by the Spirit of God.
The Forgotten Gift
This missing truth is that the Lord Himself is the One Gift that God has given to us.
That the Lord has given to us the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not a basketful or bucket load or truck load of good things. But His Person.
Many Christians are looking for some second experience or some second work of grace. Some are looking for a Baptism with the Holy Spirit or a deep and profound experience that will fill in what they are missing in their lives as Christians. Something to take them to the next level.
Something to stop the guilt, to fill the loneliness, or to fill whatever other void needs to be filled.
Or to confirm that we are right with God. A righteousness going beyond our faith in Christ as our Savior. Beyond the forgiveness of our sins.
This is a common longing. It is a common search among Christians for the something more.
We seek more righteousness or holiness in our lives. We seek more purity, more love, more generosity, more selflessness, and a million other “more’s” that are actually good things. Things that are not bad in themselves.
But we often fail to see; we ALL often fail to see the Lord has already given us everything we need. Everything we long for.
The problem is that we do not understand what the Lord has given to us.
That He is actually that extra thing we have been longing for.
And He is not hiding behind a chair or behind the Christmas tree. He has not been lost due to someone failing to give us something we have wanted or needed.
May this coming year open our eyes to see all that He is. All that He wants to be for us who have trusted Him as the Total Sufficiency for our salvation.
How He also wants us to Rest in Him as our Life. As the great solution to the longing in our souls.
As the One who is totally sufficient, in Himself, to be our Life; our full and abundant Christian life.
“But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” (I Corinthians 1:30-31)
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Eternal Approach 
December 25, 2022 at 6:35 pm
The Incarnation of Christ is about God taking the form of a man. And living the perfect life; which qualified Him to then offer Himself to God for our sins.
As the One whom God had prepared, before the foundations of the world, to be offered as the Perfect Lamb for the sins of men.
So, OK. We understand that.
We understand about the substitutionary atonement of Christ. How He Alone paid the full penalty for all our sins. How He settled the eternal, judicial penalty due every person that has ever lived.
If a person will believe that and rest upon that.
A Christian must understand and believe this in order to be saved. These are non-negotiable truth
It is not true that Christ is God incarnate. Jesus is Gods only begotten Son. God is the one who told Jesus what to do and say. God is the one who gave Jesus authority. Jesus will give all authority back to God once he/jesus has accomplished his mission. Go to my website, clearbibleverses.com and look under the salvation tab. God Bless, Ron Viehe
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December 27, 2022 at 10:44 am
Hi Ron,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I wanted to think carefully about what you said. And I went to your site to check it out. I am not really sure what you are trying to say here; and don’t want to overreact to your statements.
The discussion of the incarnation of Christ could fill volumes. And even that would not be enough. There are a multitude of verses that establish that Jesus Christ was God when He was upon the earth. In the first chapter of John, with show how Christ – the Word, became flesh. He was as much God as the Father and the Holy Spirit when He was here.
Although, it does not fit our logic. This is not something we can reason through. We accept it by faith in the words of God.
It speaks of Him being the express image of His person, of being the brightness of His glory, and how the Spirit did not dwell in measure upon Him. And how He did not take upon Him the nature or sin of Adam. He was born of the Holy Spirit. Not the physical son of Joseph. As in “the seed of the woman”.
The term “incarnate” may be the problem. Not sure of the Greek root words used in various places and what they technically mean in relation to Philippians 2 when he “took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of man.” How the Lord could be limited and still be God is a mystery we will be wondering on all through eternity. How he suffered “being tempted”, when God cannot be tempted, is another mystery.
Just 2 quick things to say to keep this to a reasonable reply. Hebrews speaks of Him offering Himself without spot to God by the eternal Spirit. I believe that is the key to understand this. He lived the perfect life and did all that He did through the power of the Holy Spirit. Showing us how to live for Him as well. By faith in His working in us, rather than faith in our own efforts.
Also, many today want to believe we also can achieve godhood through making the right decisions. Mormonism teaches such things. That we can be gods, like Jesus, if only we would do the right things. This is a terribly false heresy.
Hopefully, I can get to this in more detail in future posts this coming year. Because it is such a deep and important subject.
I hope this is of value in answering some of your concerns?
Doug
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