I understand
that the original idea of the twelve days of Christmas begins on Christmas day
or the day after. However, since I am using my version as an explanation of Christmas
as the wonderful gift of God, I plan to share some daily encouragement ending
on Christmas Eve day.
When I was a
child, we would make a paper chain with the number of days left until
Christmas. Each day we would cut off a link and share the excitement of seeing
evidence of the day drawing closer. There is something about this day that makes
some form of countdown a common practice.
Whatever we
use to track the arrival of Christmas Day, the focus of my Twelve Days of
Christmas series is to consider the person that Christmas is all about. Christmas
is about Christ.
Now, I know a
lot of people grow up believing in Santa, but Christmas is not about him. If it
was, we would call it Santamas, not Christmas. And then there is the place of
figures like Rudolph, Frosty, and the Grinch; but Christmas is not about them
either. Rudolphmas, Frostymas, and Grinchmas, just don’t cut it.
Because of the
fact that Christmas is about Christ, I’m inclined to call it “About Christ”
Day. Christmas greetings could be, “Have a blessed About Christ Day!” At least
it would keep the focus where it belongs.
Now, why do we
call the day Christmas, when it is about Jesus? Why don’t we call it
“Jesusmas”? Actually, I can’t say why we call it anything at all, but I can
tell you why the day is about both Christ and Jesus. It is because Christ and Jesus
are one and the same person.
Jesus is a
name, and Christ is a title. The person who is named Jesus also has the title
of Christ. As a particular person has the name of Elizabeth, and the title of
Queen, Jesus has both a name and a title.
The title, Christ,
means anointed one. There is much more we could say about that, but anointed is
similar to what we now call “coronation” or “inauguration”. Christ means the
one set apart by God for the specific task, or role, or work, of saving
humanity from our sins. The Christ is the person God approved, the one he chose
to do the job. So, when we call Jesus the Christ, we are identifying that he is
God’s chosen servant to come and do the wonderful, and messy, work of saving
sinners out of their mess of sin.
The name, Jesus
also has a meaning. It means “God saves.” God chose the name “Jesus” because this
person would save God’s people from their sins. As it says in God’s book, “She will bear a son, and you shall call his
name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”[1]
Lots of people
think that we can make up all kinds of religions to create our own way to come
to God. They believe we can think of God however we choose to think of him.
However, the real God wants us to know what he is really like, and so he chose
his own Son to come into our world and show everybody the one true God.
It is kind of
like God looked out over all the ways that people had created their own plan
for coming to him, and he saw that none of them would work. He knew himself, so
he also knew that none of the other ideas about him were true. He chose the
person who would represent him and make him known to the world, the one person
who was most like him, his own Son.
So, Jesus came
into the world to make the one true God known to us. There are many things in God’s
book that we could use to explain this, but we are going to use one verse to
show how God sent his Son, Jesus the Christ, into the world, so that Jesus
could make the true God known to us, and that we could have a way to know him
forever. God’s book presents it like this:
“For God so loved the
world, that he gave his only Son,
that whoever believes
in him should not perish but have eternal life.”[2]
I plan to use
the next twelve days to look at this verse. Each day I will focus on a
different word or phrase, all adding up to the most wonderful Christmas gift of
all, the gift that God gave to the world. Christmas is not really about us
giving gifts to each other, as much as we all love the excitement of giving and
receiving presents. It is really about God giving us a gift
The big
question is, what did God give you for Christmas?
The next
question is, have you opened it?
Remember: Have
a blessed “About Christ” Day!
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures
are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version
Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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