The Real Love Story Behind Christmas
The Real Love Story Behind Christmas
While Christmas is the most celebrated day in the world it could mean differently to individual person. It is a wonderful winter holiday season to some, it's a long awaited school holiday for students, it's a big SALE time for shoppers, time to celebrate family with Santa, time to celebrate the birth of Jesus for the religious, and many more meanings that we perceive about Christmas.
To me they all are good, I could enjoy all meanings of Christmas, on top of that I love the Jazz & orchestral sounding of Christmas Carols where ever I go, and that gives me reason to play all the Christmas songs I know. Oh...and don't forget to spend time to stroll at Orchard Road to see the Christmas decoration, what a great street we have here in Singapore. I feel like extending the season as long as I could, I totally agree with Andy William, "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year".
While I personally don't believe that Jesus was born in December I use this time to celebrate the intention of God's incarnation as human by becoming a baby Jesus. So it's more of "the intention" of Christmas rather than "the date" itself.
There was a prophet that historically lived in about 700BC, Isaiah prophesied about the coming Messiah, it's written in the book of Isaiah (one of the Bible books) :
Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
Isaiah 9:6 "For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
Another prophet called Micah (about the same timeline as Isaiah) also prophesied about the place of where "the ruler of Israel" would be born :
Micah 5:2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
Interestingly, since the book of Genesis (the first book of the Bible where the "gen" of the world comes from), God Himself did some prophetic act about "the innocence blood for the guilty".
Ok, let me weave these facts....
There's a God, and He is so good. He's not the cause of your problems, but He's in fact the solution. Once upon a time He created our world good for us (Genesis chapter 1 & 2) But there was His archangel that committed high treason against God as he wanted to be like God (Isaiah 14:12-15), he then become the devil himself. The condemned devil tricked the first humans (Adam & Eve) to also sin against God so he could test God's justice too, if he was condemned due to his sin then a just God should condemn humans too as they also sinned. Justice is justice & there shouldn't be any favouritism in a just God.
God is just, but He is also love. He loves humans as His creation after His own image (Genesis 1:26). He couldn't just forgive Adam & eve by ignoring their sin as He holds justice, there must be some legally righteous payment need to be made from human side to be righteous again in God's eyes. If He could just ignore sins then He would't be in the throne of justice anymore. The fact that we could see that we are in the fallen world & we are no longer in the garden of Eden (the place in the middle eastern where God first created human) proves that something cocked up in some generation before us (and the book of Genesis tells us the reason).
Since then sin has taken it's place in human blood & DNA. To keep His justice God could have just condemned human since human fell. We, mankind, had no hope in & of ourselves. We are debtor & bankrupt. No amount of our goodness could trade-off our sin, sin is not only about what what we do, but who we are, it's in our blood, our status.
While Christmas is the most celebrated day in the world it could mean differently to individual person. It is a wonderful winter holiday season to some, it's a long awaited school holiday for students, it's a big SALE time for shoppers, time to celebrate family with Santa, time to celebrate the birth of Jesus for the religious, and many more meanings that we perceive about Christmas.
To me they all are good, I could enjoy all meanings of Christmas, on top of that I love the Jazz & orchestral sounding of Christmas Carols where ever I go, and that gives me reason to play all the Christmas songs I know. Oh...and don't forget to spend time to stroll at Orchard Road to see the Christmas decoration, what a great street we have here in Singapore. I feel like extending the season as long as I could, I totally agree with Andy William, "It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year".
While I personally don't believe that Jesus was born in December I use this time to celebrate the intention of God's incarnation as human by becoming a baby Jesus. So it's more of "the intention" of Christmas rather than "the date" itself.
There was a prophet that historically lived in about 700BC, Isaiah prophesied about the coming Messiah, it's written in the book of Isaiah (one of the Bible books) :
Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
Isaiah 9:6 "For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
Another prophet called Micah (about the same timeline as Isaiah) also prophesied about the place of where "the ruler of Israel" would be born :
Micah 5:2 “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”
Interestingly, since the book of Genesis (the first book of the Bible where the "gen" of the world comes from), God Himself did some prophetic act about "the innocence blood for the guilty".
Ok, let me weave these facts....
There's a God, and He is so good. He's not the cause of your problems, but He's in fact the solution. Once upon a time He created our world good for us (Genesis chapter 1 & 2) But there was His archangel that committed high treason against God as he wanted to be like God (Isaiah 14:12-15), he then become the devil himself. The condemned devil tricked the first humans (Adam & Eve) to also sin against God so he could test God's justice too, if he was condemned due to his sin then a just God should condemn humans too as they also sinned. Justice is justice & there shouldn't be any favouritism in a just God.
God is just, but He is also love. He loves humans as His creation after His own image (Genesis 1:26). He couldn't just forgive Adam & eve by ignoring their sin as He holds justice, there must be some legally righteous payment need to be made from human side to be righteous again in God's eyes. If He could just ignore sins then He would't be in the throne of justice anymore. The fact that we could see that we are in the fallen world & we are no longer in the garden of Eden (the place in the middle eastern where God first created human) proves that something cocked up in some generation before us (and the book of Genesis tells us the reason).
Since then sin has taken it's place in human blood & DNA. To keep His justice God could have just condemned human since human fell. We, mankind, had no hope in & of ourselves. We are debtor & bankrupt. No amount of our goodness could trade-off our sin, sin is not only about what what we do, but who we are, it's in our blood, our status.
The initiation of salvation didn't come from mankind, it is from God. The only way for a loving holy God to have a relation with sinful human is to punish all the mankind's sin, but in His own body - that's why He needs, a human body that has blood. With this He could make a legal redemption of mankind.
Right at the beginning God did a prophetic act killing an innocence animal to clothe Adam & Eve (Genesis 1:26), this is more appropriate to Him rather than their own "hand-made" clothing from fig-leaves (Genesis 3:7) since no shed blood in the fig-leaves. This shows He would redeem back human, saving mankind from eternal destruction.
All along different time line in history which are recorded in the Bible, different writers talked about the same thing over & over again, it's about "bloody redemption". Abraham was about to sacrifice his so, Isaac, but the Lord changed it with a lamb, hundreds of years after Moses brought out the Israelites from Egypt with passover lamb, even Isaiah also mentioned about the lamb - Isaiah 53:7 "He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth."
About 700 years after Isaiah & Micah, in Bethlehem a baby born out of a virgin, all the keywords of the prophecies were fulfilled in this baby Jesus. Why must be a virgin birth unlike other mankind? Because His blood & DNA needed to be sinless the pregnancy should happen not because of normal conception, but He would grow as normal human grow.
Jesus is the Messiah/Christ, the lamb of God (as John the Baptist testified in John 1:29), He is what Isaiah described as the Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish (as the consequence of his/her own sin) but have everlasting life."
Not only Jesus' birth, His death, resurrection & ascension are part of world history. God's work in creation was fallen, but His greater work of redemption has successfully reconcile us back to Him. We just need to receive His salvation as a gift, an expensive gift that He's paid by His own life and made it available for us.
What a true love story behind Christmas
Right at the beginning God did a prophetic act killing an innocence animal to clothe Adam & Eve (Genesis 1:26), this is more appropriate to Him rather than their own "hand-made" clothing from fig-leaves (Genesis 3:7) since no shed blood in the fig-leaves. This shows He would redeem back human, saving mankind from eternal destruction.
All along different time line in history which are recorded in the Bible, different writers talked about the same thing over & over again, it's about "bloody redemption". Abraham was about to sacrifice his so, Isaac, but the Lord changed it with a lamb, hundreds of years after Moses brought out the Israelites from Egypt with passover lamb, even Isaiah also mentioned about the lamb - Isaiah 53:7 "He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth."
About 700 years after Isaiah & Micah, in Bethlehem a baby born out of a virgin, all the keywords of the prophecies were fulfilled in this baby Jesus. Why must be a virgin birth unlike other mankind? Because His blood & DNA needed to be sinless the pregnancy should happen not because of normal conception, but He would grow as normal human grow.
Jesus is the Messiah/Christ, the lamb of God (as John the Baptist testified in John 1:29), He is what Isaiah described as the Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish (as the consequence of his/her own sin) but have everlasting life."
Not only Jesus' birth, His death, resurrection & ascension are part of world history. God's work in creation was fallen, but His greater work of redemption has successfully reconcile us back to Him. We just need to receive His salvation as a gift, an expensive gift that He's paid by His own life and made it available for us.
Your eternal salvation no longer depends on your effort, but it's solely by His grace.
Ephesians 2:8-9 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."
As a glorious King God didn't just stay put & demand our righteousness & self-effort to please Him, but He came down to our level, not only that, He really humbled Himself by being born in a small town, in a lowly manger & to give up His own life to redeem undeserved us. What a 'crazy" love story.
Let's celebrate Christmas, let's celebrate the truth that the Lord has come, let's celebrate the security of our eternal life with God. What a joy to the world :D
What a true love story behind Christmas
Merry Christmas to you all
Daniel Purnomo
25 December 2023
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