Over the 2,000 some odd years between now and the night that an innocent baby boy was born in a quaint town called Bethlehem, the story of that boy has been diluted and commercialized down to stocking stuffers and an old man in a red suit. One empire’s census brought a young couple, Mary and Joseph, to the town of King David in order to fulfill the greatest prophecy ever foretold. That Roman decree laid the foundation for Jesus Christ’s miraculous birth in the city of David to start the most influential social and religious change in all of history. Men and women died for believing in Him, all because of a story that has been devalued and labeled a fable.
The biggest question facing the birth of Christ is: Why? Why does a child’s birth warrant so much attention that it’s been made a worldwide holiday? Why does it matter 2,000 years later? The answer lies in the book of Genesis, chapter three. Adam and Eve, the first people to walk the earth according to the Biblical account, turned from God and ate fruit that they were instructed specifically not to. Their sin is such a big deal because it disqualified humanity from the holiness and perfection of God. We were no longer able to live up to His perfect standard, so something needed to be done to redeem us. In the Old Testament it is laid out quite plainly that an unblemished sacrifice was to be made to the Lord in order to spare oneself from the judgement of his or her sin. Unfortunately the best we have to give to God pales in comparison to His divine standard, so people had to sacrifice often to pay for their unatoned sins. The constant fight between righteousness and depravity was an all encompassing struggle that we could not uphold, which God’s mercy and His grace - not getting what we deserve and getting what we don’t deserve, respectively - gave us our only escape from our shortcomings.
Things changed in quiet little Bethlehem. Isaiah 53 gives us a clear prophecy of our savior. The one man able to overcome what we could not: Jesus Christ. The first paragraph of Isaiah 53 states that He had no physical qualities to set Himself apart from the world, as He was man. Jesus was not born to riches or to comfort; He was not appealing. He didn’t bring to the Jews the physical freedom they wanted from Rome, so He was despised and cast aside. The freedom He brought to the Jews was spiritual: His life was the atonement for the sin that humanity couldn’t conquer, and his death and resurrection overcame the grave and announced His victory. Jesus bore our sin and shame on that old wooden cross and was the holy and righteous sacrifice that lambs and bulls could not be. As Isaiah so eloquently put it, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” Humanity, by nature after the fall, is not a species that looks for God. We were sent Jesus purely because of God’s love for man and His grace upon us to atone for our sins.
The importance of Christmas lies in the miraculous birth of Christ. He was born to a sinful mother and lived in a sinful world. Jesus lived the life that we could not and died a criminal’s death and took on the full wrath of God to satisfy the judgement that we all were supposed to receive. Jesus’s resurrection from the tomb, when that stone was rolled away, shows us that death was defeated and that we all can experience life anew in Christ. He is our salvation and He is our rock. To answer the question of ‘why?’: it is because that fateful night in Bethlehem brought to us our savior. Jesus, 100% God and 100% man began His life on earth to conquer sin, to conquer the grave, and to give us a way out. Now I can only ask, why not remember?
by Walker Robinson
