|
|
|
The cost of everything is going up these days, and that includes the cost to purchase everything in the Twelve Days of Christmas song. As calculated annually by PNC Wealth Management, that would now run you $24,263 (up from $23,439 last year).
And what would you get for all that money? Certainly nothing that relates to the yuletide season. I mean, what do turtle doves, french hens or swans-a-swimming have to do with the True Christmas Story? You know, the one that doesn’t involve an overstuffed guy in a red suit, flying reindeer or talking snowmen?
Nothing.
The True Christmas Story also has nothing whatsoever to do with a boy named Ralphie or his quest for a BB gun — namely, an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle (as much as I love that movie and look forward to seeing it every year at this time).
Nor does it have anything to do with a lovable elf named “Buddy.”
Indeed, when it comes to the True Christmas Story, there are not 12 days but 3 R’s — and they don’t cost anywhere near twenty-five grand. In fact, they are free.
They are: Redemption. Reconciliation. Renewal.
Redemption means, quite literally, “to be bought back.” We all have to be redeemed if we are to be saved and spend eternity with God, but there’s no price that we can afford or ever pay to do it. That was the reason for the incarnation, the reason that Jesus stepped off of His throne in glory and came into this world as a babe in a manger — to ultimately pay that purchase price with His own precious blood and life.
1st Peter 1:18-19 tells us that we were “not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold [by money], or from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers [by religious works], but by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
The second R is Reconciliation, “to be brought back together as one.” When man rebelled against God in the Garden, all of mankind fell as the sin of Adam and Eve was passed on to all of us (their descendants) and that sin corrupted our nature, separating us from God. The Bible is clear that God is perfectly holy and cannot ever have fellowship with anyone tainted in the least bit by sin. And we are all sinners by nature and by practice.
The cost of everything is going up these days, and that includes the cost to purchase everything in the Twelve Days of Christmas song. As calculated annually by PNC Wealth Management, that would now run you $24,263 (up from $23,439 last year).
And what would you get for all that money? Certainly nothing that relates to the yuletide season. I mean, what do turtle doves, french hens or swans-a-swimming have to do with the True Christmas Story? You know, the one that doesn’t involve an overstuffed guy in a red suit, flying reindeer or talking snowmen?
Nothing.
The True Christmas Story also has nothing whatsoever to do with a boy named Ralphie or his quest for a BB gun — namely, an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle (as much as I love that movie and look forward to seeing it every year at this time).
Nor does it have anything to do with a lovable elf named “Buddy.”
Indeed, when it comes to the True Christmas Story, there are not 12 days but 3 R’s — and they don’t cost anywhere near twenty-five grand. In fact, they are free.
They are: Redemption. Reconciliation. Renewal.
Redemption means, quite literally, “to be bought back.” We all have to be redeemed if we are to be saved and spend eternity with God, but there’s no price that we can afford or ever pay to do it. That was the reason for the incarnation, the reason that Jesus stepped off of His throne in glory and came into this world as a babe in a manger — to ultimately pay that purchase price with His own precious blood and life.
1st Peter 1:18-19 tells us that we were “not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold [by money], or from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers [by religious works], but by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
The second R is Reconciliation, “to be brought back together as one.” When man rebelled against God in the Garden, all of mankind fell as the sin of Adam and Eve was passed on to all of us (their descendants) and that sin corrupted our nature, separating us from God. The Bible is clear that God is perfectly holy and cannot ever have fellowship with anyone tainted in the least bit by sin. And we are all sinners by nature and by practice.
Again, this is why Christ came, to do for us what we could never do for ourselves — to save our souls and give us a home in heaven.
“All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to Himself” by His grace and His mercy alone (2nd Corinthians 5:18, Titus 3:5, Ephesians 2:8-9, etc.), because of what the Bible calls "His great love with which He loves us."
And this brings us to the third and final R, which is Renewal. There is a renewal to come, a complete transformation of believers’ bodies/beings as well as that of the world itself.
It just hasn’t happened yet, and won’t until the final resurrection.
God used the Apostle Paul mightily, including inspiring him to write two-thirds of the New Testament. Yet it was this same Paul who confessed in Romans 7: “For what I want to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.”
This led him to cry out: “O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death [of sin, which produces death]?” Then came the answer: It is only through Christ! Without Him, and faith in His atoning sacrifice for us, we are (and would all be) eternally lost and ultimately separated from God forever.
He is the only answer to our otherwise hopeless situation.
And He always was, even back in Old Testament times, when believers used animal sacrifices instituted by God as a way of showing they were placing their hope for salvation in the future Sacrificial Lamb and Messiah who was to come, and who would be no less than God in human flesh. Hundreds of years before the Incarnation, the prophet Isaiah foretold that this coming One, Christ, would be called “Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).
This is why King David, for instance, though he was an adulterer and murderer (among many other things), was also called “a man after God’s own heart.”
So while believers have been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ and are now reconciled to God because of Christ’s substitutional sacrifice for us on the cross (where He died in your place and in mine as a substitute, as payment for our sins), we know that the renewal promised in God’s Word has not yet fully transpired.
Yes, we are new creatures spiritually by virtue of being cleansed and forgiven in Christ (2nd Corinthians 5:17), but we have not been perfected yet — and won’t be until we’re transformed into our new (glorified and eternal) bodies when this life ends.
Paul also wrote: “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on....” (Philippians 3:12). Indeed, 1st John 1:8-10 declares: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins [to Him], He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. But if we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us.”
God’s Word reveals that creation itself is awaiting its own renewal and restoration from the effects of the Fall of Man and the introduction of sin into the world (Romans 8). The Word also promises that the day is coming, and this is what it will look like: “And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, 'Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away'...” (Revelation 21).
This is the True Christmas Story. And it’s still the greatest story ever told.
e-mail: tom3264@msn.com, or go to tom’s Facebook page to send a message
