AP

John 3:16   For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Christmas is supposed to be a celebration of the Incarnation, when God himself actually became a man. We should always ask: ‘What did the giving of the Father actually involve?’  This ‘giving’ was supremely exhibited in the Crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, and was formulated in the mind of the Father from the foundation of the world (Greek ‘cosmos’ – cf Revelation 13:8, 17:18), and promised through the whole of the Old Testament from the Creation/Fall (Genesis 3:15) through the Law, the Prophets and the Writings) but really took on substance in Bethlehem only 2,000 years ago!  The apostle Paul was aware of the significance of this event in the ‘giving’ heart of our loving God when he wrote concerning Christ Jesus: “Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:6-8)

As someone who as actually descended through a Water Board manhole, and walked two kilometeres through a 1.37 metre diameter pipe while running as a live sewer, I had a taste of this when the engineer in front of me slipped on the circular bottom of the pipe and shoved his foot up in my face! This is but a weak illustration of what it meant for the holy Son of God to come into our in-every-way sin-polluted world, for me!

This is the way God demonstrated  just how much he loved me.  And I can therefore trust my faithful promise-keeping God that he, in this way, has delivered me from everlasting death to everlasting life.  “O the deep, deep love of Jesus – vast, unmeasured, boundless, free, rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me.  Underneath me, all around me, is the current of his love, leading onward, leading homeward to [my] glorious rest above”  (Samuel Trevor Francis).

– Bruce Christian