I've been remiss in sharing from the devotional I'm going through this holiday. I've had time to ruminate on yesterday's and today's devotional and want to share from them both. Yesterday the devotional spoke about why Christmas happened. Today's speaks of God's passion for His Glory at Christmas. They are so beautifully intertwined. We are most satisfied when God is most gloried.
Christmas happened to take away our sin.
So two times John tells us that Christmas happened—the
Son of God became human—to take away sin, or to destroy the
works of the Devil, namely, sin. Jesus was born of a virgin by
the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18–20) and “increased in wisdom and
in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52) and was
perfectly obedient and sinless in all his life and ministry, all the
way to the point of death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:5–8;
Heb. 4:15)—in order to destroy the works of the Devil—to
take away sin.
Our sin. Make this personal and love him for it. Take the
very personal words of the apostle Paul and make them your
own. “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son
of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
This is how he destroyed the works of the Devil and rescued us
from our sin. Don’t leave Christmas in the abstract. Your sin.
Your conflict with the Devil. Your victory. He came for this.
And God is passionate about His Glory at Christmas
The deepest reason why we live for the glory of God is that
God acts for the glory of God. We are passionate about God’s
glory because God is passionate about God’s glory.
And what makes this such good news, especially in the Gospel
of John, is that the glory of God is full of grace and truth.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have
seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of
grace and truth” (John 1:14).
The most glorious thing about God is that he is so completely,
fully self-sufficient that the glory of the fullness of his
being overflows in truth and grace for his creatures. He doesn’t
need us. And therefore in his fullness he overflows for us. Such
is the grace we receive at Christmas.
Don't miss this.
<a href="http://joshgarrels.bandcamp.com/album/the-light-came-down" data-mce-fragment="1" data-mce-href="http://joshgarrels.bandcamp.com/album/the-light-came-down">The Light Came Down by Josh Garrels</a>
All Things Elda 