Christmas Is The Proof . . . .
Have you ever given any thought to the idea that God has ever had something to prove or has something to prove? Well, some of the heavy weights in theological circles would say “No”, God being completely free and independent of His creation is under no obligation to created beings in any way, shape, or form. And while I believe the Bible does indicate that God is independent and free and is not obligated to and does not owe us who are created anything including an explanation for anything that He does or does not do—God stepped out of that theological box at Christmas and even though not obligated to—took it upon Himself to prove two very important things through the miracle of Christmas and by extension Calvary. If you’ll turn to Romans 3:25-26, we’ll see exactly what it is was that God had to prove in sending His Son to earth and thus what exactly it is that Christmas proves to us.
Now, in these two verses, Paul poses a question everyone asks in regard to others but rarely in regard to themselves, which is how can God be just and holy and still forgive sinners freely without making them pay for their sins?
To bring it into living color let me rephrase it this way—“How can it be that God is a God of justice when He forgives murderers, child molesters, and serial rapists who truly come to Jesus for salvation without making them pay for their horrendous crimes? In fact, since God Himself in His inspired Word makes the point in Proverbs 17:25 that “He who justifies the wicked . . . . is an abomination to the LORD”, how can God justify sinners like us and not be an abomination to Himself? I mean what would we think about a judge who simply let tried, convicted, and sentenced criminals go free without paying for their crimes? We would say they were unjust and unrighteous judges.
So—how is it that God can remain just and still justify wicked sinners so as to let them go free and not pay for their sins? Furthermore, how can we be expected to believe that God takes sin seriously when He seems to forgive it so quickly and easily? Well, again, that is the issue we have in Romans 3:25-26.
The first part of verse 25 is giving us God’s answer to the problem He brings up in the second part of the verse which was that He appeared to be unjust in freely forgiving sinners for their sins. The problem seemed to be that God in forgiving sinners for their sins and not demanding immediate punishment and eternal punishment at that appeared to be taking sin lightly.
King David is a good example of this. In 2 Samuel 12 he is confronted by the prophet Nathan for committing adultery with Bathsheba and then having her husband killed. David is convicted by Nathan’s rebuke, and in verse 13 he says, "I have sinned against the Lord." To which, Nathan responds, "The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die." Now both of these sins were capital crimes in Israel that demanded the death penalty yet God just lets it go. He doesn’t put David on probation and doesn’t make him do penance—He just forgives him. David did not avoid the natural consequences for his sins but nevertheless he was not punished by God for them. But again—how could God do that and remain just and how does He still do it today and remain just? I mean how many times have you waited for His divine hammer to come crashing down on you for sin and it never does?
Well like I said the answer is found in the same passage as the question so lets dig in and find out what Christmas and the Cross prove. Now, before looking at the these two great things that Christmas proves—let’s take a look at verse 25 and see what Paul means when he says that God publicly displayed Jesus as a propitiation in His blood through faith.
The word “propitiation” simply means something that “satisfies the wrath and/or demands of another against you”. Thus, Jesus Christ was put forth by God the Father as the One Who could and would satisfy His wrath and righteous demands against sinners. The words “put forth” come from a Greek word, which basically means to present something or place something before others with or for a purpose in mind. In other words, Jesus was put forth publicly before the world as the only satisfaction for God’s wrath against the believer’s sin with a purpose in mind. And that purpose was to demonstrate God’s righteousness even though He passed over sins without demanding immediate eternal punishment from the sinner.
The word “demonstrate” used in the NASV and the NIV (“declare” is used in the NKJV) comes from the Greek word endeixis, which means “to prove” or “to provide the proof by way of a demonstration”. So, what exactly did God prove in sending Jesus to earth that first Christmas to die on the cross in order to satisfy His righteous demands and anger against our sin?
In other words, what does Christmas prove?
1. Christmas and the Cross prove that God took our sin seriously and punished Jesus for it because our sin left unpunished would diminish God’s glory.
Remember what we saw last week in verse 23: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." And what we must realize is that what is always at stake when anyone sins is the glory of God. When Nathan confronts David, he quotes God as saying, "Why have you despised me?" We could easily imagine David saying, "What do you mean, I despised you? I didn't despise you. I wasn't even thinking of you. I mean the minute I saw Bathsheba bathing all my thoughts about you went right out the window and well after that, You weren't even in the picture." And God would have said, “And that is exactly the problem—you chose sin over me. You put Me out of your mind as sin filled its every available contour. You forsook Me the Fountain of all pleasure and replaced Me with a sin-driven, guilt-laden, empty, temporary, and destructive pleasure that in the end will cost you more than you could ever have bargained for. And in choosing sin over Me—David--You despised me and you belittles My glory."
You see, all sin is a despising of God, before it is a damage to man. All sin is a preference for the fleeting pleasures of the world over the everlasting joy of God's fellowship. And in choosing sexual sin and then murder over obedience to God, David demeaned God's glory. He belittled God's worth. He dishonored God's name. That is the meaning of sin - failing to love God's glory above everything else. Therefore, the problem when God passes over sin is that God seems to agree with those who despise his name and belittle his glory. He seems to be saying it’s no big deal that his glory is spurned. He seems to condone the low assessment of his worth. That is what the passing over of sin -forgiving sin, justifying the ungodly communicates all by itself—God's glory and his name and worth are of minor value, or no value. And that is the essence of unrighteousness.
God would be unrighteous if he passed over our sin and forgave us for our sin without dealing with our sin in such a way that He demonstrated his infinite passion for his glory. And according to Romans 3:25-26, this is the most basic problem that God solved by sending His own Son, Jesus to earth in order to send Him to the Cross. You see, God could have settled accounts by punishing all sinners with hell. This would have demonstrated that he does not minimize our falling short of his glory - our belittling his honor and that would have demonstrated the infinite worth of His eternal glory. But it was not God's delight to eternally punish us-it was His delight to save us! And so God the Father, in His desire to spare sinners like us and yet to ensure His glory was not diminished and in fact was revealed even more vividly in sparing us, chose to crush His own Son in our place.
You see, in sending Christ to earth on that first Christmas to die for His people’s sins—that is the sins of all who would believe in Christ for salvation—(Matt. 1:21)—God the Father demonstrated to the world that He takes sin so seriously the only thing that could appease His righteous anger toward us for sinning and thus despising His glory was the infinite value of the life of His Son the Lord Jesus becoming the payment for our sin. And in propitiating or satisfying God’s righteous wrath toward the believing sinner and his sins by dying on the cross—Jesus vindicated God the Father’s righteousness in forgiving sinners who didn’t deserve to be forgiven. And so Jesus was sent to the cross in the place of all who would believe in Him in order to pay their sin penalty and thus appease and satisfy God’s anger and righteous demands against them and in so doing to vindicate God’s justice and restore the glory of His Name in justifying them.
Therefore, one could say that the reason God took and continues to take our sin seriously is because He takes His glory seriously.
2. Christmas and the Cross prove how greatly God loved us and still loves us right now regardless of how well we have lived the Christian life.
The essence of the Gospel is that God loved us so much that He put his own Son forward to absorb the punishment we deserved so that he could not only demonstrate that he is just in justifying sinners who trust in Jesus but so that He could also show us how much He loved us and still loves us. God sent Jesus Christ to die for us so that He could bring us to Himself. God sent Jesus to die for us so that we could come home to the God whose great delight and joy is to save us from our sins so that we might find Him to be our greatest treasure and pleasure in life. This is love. You see, God’s love for us is proved in God doing what He had to do, at an unbelievably great cost to Himself, so that we might know that He really does love us and wants us and looks forward to us being with Him for all of eternity.
But why did God go to such lengths and such trouble and such sacrifice to prove to us that He really does love us? I think one answer to that question is because we all have such a hard and difficult time truly believing on a consistent basis that God does really love us and desires our best. You know most of us probably have no problem believing the great theological concepts of the Christian Faith such as God becoming a man, the doctrine of the Trinity, Predestination, the Virgin Birth, or the fact that God created everything in six literal days—But what I think we do struggle with believing--that God really does love us and is not mad at us or disgusted with us or wishing He had never saved us.
I think we all have times in our Christian lives where we can identify with the believer who being diagnosed with cancer and being told he had only a few weeks to live said-- I wasn’t afraid of dying, I was afraid of the disgusted look on God’s face when I would meet him face to face for having failed so miserably as a Christian. Because we are all prone to these kinds of thoughts from time to time and some of us most of the time—God went to the lengths that He did in saving us to show us that His greatest delight and joy was in saving us and forgiving us not punishing us.
You know John 1:18 tells us that one of the other reasons Jesus came to earth and gave us Christmas was to show us what God the Father was like and specifically how the Father felt about us who would one day place faith in His Son Jesus. And with that in mind I began to peruse Jesus’ works and words and without a doubt the theme He taught the most and exemplified the most was that God loved sinners and desired to have them be reconciled to Him. And that’s why sinners liked to listen to Jesus.
Look over at Luke 15:1. Now why did the sinners want to listen to Jesus? Why did people who struggled with the thought that God could love them and even desire them find comfort and encouragement in Jesus’ teaching? Well, listen to just this sample in Luke 15: 11-24. Especially, note verses 20-22.
In this story that Jesus is telling sinners about how His Father receives sinners who come to Him acknowledging their sin and looking for mercy—note that there was no look of disgust, or anger, or even disappointment on this Father’s face—just great joy and delight. And if this is how Jesus portrays the reception God’s enemies get when they finally come to Him—why would you think that we who are already God’s children would get any less of a warm reception when we desire to draw near to Him?
Listen, if Christmas proves anything—it proves that God loves us—inspite of the mess we have made of our lives, which is why in Romans 5:8 Paul writes:
But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Note, the verse does not say, “But God demonstrated His own love toward us”. It says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us.”
The cross is not merely the proof that God loved us—it is the proof that He still loves us and will always love us even after we have failed Him as Christians who know better. And this is why God went to so much trouble and extreme sacrifice to save us—He wanted us to know not only that we could be saved but that He really wanted to save us—that it was His greatest joy and delight to save us—that it was His pleasure to save us.
CONCLUSION
A few years ago a very large church was celebrating Christmas with a live nativity program that included the acting out of the Christmas story using live farm animals, huge stage props, and a bunch of toddlers from the church before a live audience. During the program, which also included stage lighting, one of the donkeys got tangled up in one of the floor lights and ended up knocking over one of the props.
Well, this started a domino effect in which three of the props measuring about 12’ tall by 16’ wide and weighing about 50 lbs. a piece began to fall toward the two dozen toddlers who were sitting quietly in front of manger listening as the teenage actors portraying Jesus and Mary were telling them the Christmas story.
Once the parents in the audience realized what was happening—it was too late for them to run up and grab the small children—it appeared as though they were all going to be crushed by the falling wooden flats.
But then the teenage girl playing Mary in an attempt to grab a couple of the toddlers next to her—shoved the hard plastic doll of Jesus she was holding in her arms into the cradle so that it was standing upright in the cradle when the three 50 lb. flats fell on the manger scene.
And then to everyone’s amazement the three flats that fell into the manger scene where all the toddlers were sitting were stopped from falling and crushing the small children by the hard plastic Jesus doll which had been placed upright in its cradle.
And then still in shock over what might have been—parents began to cry and laugh as they heard one of the little tykes cry out—“Mommy, Jesus was crushed and is broken but we’re OK.”
Little did he know—the truth of the Gospel he was communicating.
For us, who believe in Him, Jesus was crushed and broken so that God could prove Himself just in declaring us OK with Him as well as demonstrate to us for all of eternity the infinite magnitude of His love for us who come to Him through faith in Christ Jesus.
So Christmas and the Cross are the proof that God took our sin seriously and loves us with a love it will take all of eternity to fully experience—and even then there will still be more.
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