You may have heard the phrase bandied about or even on the sign when you entered this building: "Jesus is the Reason for the Season." This is usually a statement in response to the overcommercialization of Christmas by the culture, and this is true, but the solution to this problem is not just remembering Jesus at this time of the year. We can remember that he is the reason for the season, we can stop ruining his birthday, but do we understand WHY he is the reason for the season?
The reason is in the words Jesus spoke to Philip in John 14: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Before the incarnation of Christ, we were dead in our sins. There was nothing for us beyond death. We hit it like a wall, and that was it--the end. Now, with Jesus' incarnation, his death and resurrection, he has punched a hole through this wall of death to the other side, where there lay a new form of life for his children. This is an imperishable, everlasting life. Now, the hole is small, and none of us can find it. It takes God's guidance to lead us to the pinhole in death and through to the other side.
Christ was with God from the beginning. He has always been from the beginning. But it took the incarnation, it took the human form, for the God-Man to do the thing that none of us could do, and that God the Father could not do as the first person--the mind--of the trinity. It took the second person of the trinity--the Word--to become flesh and take upon himself the sins of the whole world, to distract death, to impute his righteousness to us, and to smuggle his children--the ones who believe in him--through that hole to the other side of death--to everlasting life.
This Christmas season don't just remember that Jesus is the Reason for the Season, also remember that the reason is a single and amazing way for God to save his children from destruction. We had no way, and now we have a way. Thank God that we have a way.
