Question: Why did Jesus come to earth on that first Christmas Day?
Answer: In order to take away sin.
For that is what we’re told in 1 John 3:5 where it says that Jesus ‘appeared in order to take away sins.’
Wouldn’t it be lovely though to have our sins taken away? Especially THAT one, the one we’ve spent years trying to justify but haven’t been able to, knowing full well that what we did was not only wrong, but entirely our fault.
Some years ago I went on a speed awareness course and was asked, along with my fellow miscreants, to come up with a list of reasons why we might sometimes drive faster than we should. Between us we produced an impressive list. But having then been asked to listen to a recording of a Dad describing how his daughter had been killed by a speeding motorist, all our seemingly justifiable reasons looked instead like so many lame excuses.
Because the truth is we’re not the people we ought to be, each and every one of us is capable, at least on occasions, of doing bad things – some of us, perhaps, more so than others. But if we like to think of ourselves as better than most, we might do well to recognise that those who fail an important exam aren’t rewarded for merely not coming last.
What’s more, our sin has consequences – consequences that, like the driver of the car that killed that young girl, we all have to live with. Because the guilt is a guilt that, seemingly, we have always to carry with us.
If only there was forgiveness.
And that’s why I say, wouldn’t it be lovely to have our sins taken away.
But the good news is that there is forgiveness because through his death and subsequent resurrection, that is exactly what Jesus came to do. And not only does he take our sins away, he takes them as far away as it’s possible for them to be taken.
For ‘as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.’ [Psalm 103:12]
And there isn’t any place further away than that.
To reveal the secrets concealed behind door 8 of last year’s Christmas Countdown, click here.
Some musings 