A CHRISTMAS COUNTDOWN 2024 – DAY 1

Question: Why did Jesus come to earth on that first Christmas Day?
Answer: Because God loved the world enough to send him.

For that’s what we’re told in the first half of what is, perhaps, the most famous verse in the Bible, John 3.16. ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only son…’

‘Where-ere-ere-ere-ere is Love?’

So sang the titular character in ‘Oliver!’, the archetypal Christmas Day film of my youth. But leaving aside, for the time being at least, the unseasonal yet overwhelming desire that arises within me, to poke that poor whimpering orphan in the eye, the moment he starts to sing that particular song, one has to admit that it is a good question?

Though a better one would be, ‘Who is love?’ – to which the answer is, of course, God [1 John 4:8] – the one from whom all love ultimately flows.

That the love of God is at the heart of Christmas is important for us to realise. Because, unlike all the best detective dramas, where the villain eventually cracks under interrogation by a good cop, bad cop combination, all three members of the godhead are all equally good – and all equally loving too.

As such we must not imagine that an ultra nice Jesus had to twist the arm of his ultra vengeful Father in order to persuade him to save those he wouldn’t otherwise have been inclined to.

Because that would be a huge error on our part.

All three members or the godhead, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, who, each fully God, together make up the one true God, in a way that our finite minds cannot even begin to understand – are all equally loving.

And with that bit of heavy trinitarian theology rattling around your brain, you may find yourself wanting to lie down in a darkened room. But even as you do so remember this – God the Son came to earth on that first Christmas Day, because God the Father loved the world enough to send him.

---

To reveal the secrets concealed behind door 1 of last year’s Christmas Countdown, click here.