Too Religious for My Taste

Source:  Microsoft Clipart

I love the Christmas carols.  Isn't it wonderful to have secular stations playing songs of praise to our Savior? 

This afternoon I took Abby to hear the local community orchestra and choir perform their Christmas concert.  Other than the challenge of keeping Abby quiet, it was a lovely time.  It opened and closed in prayer and the passages of Scripture were read.  For the most part it was traditional Christmas carols and pleasantly devoid of odes to Santa Claus.  The ministerial association sponsored the performance so this may have been the reason it was more Christ-centered.  Abby and I were the first ones to leave the building as we walked to the performance.  Right behind us walked a father and his son.  "That was just too religious for my taste," he grumbled.  Hmm.  I wonder what he thinks Christmas is about?  And the performance wasn't "religious," but it was Christian.  What I love this man despises.  If he knew my Savior, I'm certain he would have enjoyed this afternoon's performance. 

Christians Awake

Christians, awake, salute the happy morn
Whereon the Saviour of the world was born
Rise to adore the mystery of love
Which hosts of angels chanted from above
With them the joyful tidings first begun
Of God incarnate and the Virgin's Son

He Became Sin For Us

During this Christmas season I'm really trying to study more on what the full meaning of the birth of God Incarnate.  This is not a "Christmas" verse, but it's a verse that has been stuck in my head for the last several days. 

"For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." II Corinthians 5:21

In a sermon on this text Spurgeon says regarding our Savior:

Jesus Christ also, is the son of Mary, a man like unto ourselves. A man subject to all the infirmities of human nature, except the infirmities of sin; a man of suffering and of woe; of pain and trouble; of anxiety and fear; of trouble and of doubt; of temptation and of trial; of weakness and death. He is a man just as we are, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Now, the person we wish to introduce to you, is this complex being, God and man. Not God humanized, not man Deified; but God, purely, essentially God; man, purely man; man, not more than man; God, not less than God,—the two standing in a sacred union together, the God-Man. Of this God in Christ, our text says that he knew no sin. It does not say that he did not sin; that we know: but it says more than that; he did not know sin; he knew not what sin was. He saw it in others, but he did not know it by experience. He was a perfect stranger to it. It is not barely said, that he did not take sin into his heart; but, he did not know it. It was no acquaintance of his. He was the acquaintance of grief; but he was not the acquaintance of sin. He knew no sin of any kind,—no sin of thought, no sin of birth, no original, no actual transgression; no sin of lip, or of hand, did ever Christ commit. He was pure, perfect, spotless; like his own divinity, without spot or blemish, or any such thing.

 Beautiful words reminding me of the perfection of our Savior.  Spurgeon continues his sermon on the text and addresses the unimaginable transaction:

Christ marieth the sinner and putteth forth his hand, and taketh the Church to be his. She is in debt to God's justice immeasurably; she owes to God's vengeance an intolerable weight of wrath and punishment; Christ says, "Thou art my wife: I have chosen thee, and I will pay thy debts." And he has paid them, and got his full discharge. Now, whosoever believeth in Christ Jesus hath peace with God, because "he hath made Christ to be sin for us, though he knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

May our thoughts be Christ-focuses this Christmas!