Question: Why did Jesus come to earth on that first Christmas Day?
Answer: In order to reveal what God is like.
Some people say that they would believe in God if he would only make himself known to them. This is a comment that sometimes draws a rather sniffy response from religious types who consider such words as indicative of a lack of faith in the person who utters them.
But to be fair to those who want some kind of sign to prove the existence of God, it should be noted that God cannot be known unless he reveals himself. The mistake of the one who doesn’t yet believe, is not their making unreasonable demands for evidence, but rather a failure to recognise the evidence that God has already provided.
Which includes the universe itself – by which God has been clearly revealing his eternal power and divine nature ever since it was created. [Romans 1:20] Furthermore, as the writer of the letter to the Hebrews tells us, God has long since revealed himself through the Old Testament prophets. But more recently, and more fully, God has ‘in these last days’ revealed himself through his son Jesus who, we’re told, ‘is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature’ [Hebrews 1:3]
No wonder then that Jesus himself said ‘I and the Father are one’ [John 10:30] and ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ [John 14:9]
Jesus then, is claiming to be God – something that John affirms when he describes how, in the beginning, the word who was both with God and was God, became flesh and dwelt amongst us. [John 1:1-2,14]
All of which means that if we want to know what God is like, we need only to look at Jesus ‘in whom the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.’ [Colossians 2:9]
And if we do, we will see him to be one who, as well as giving sight to the blind, heals the sick and brings the dead back to life; we will know him to be one who weeps with those who weep, and laments for those who hate him and therefore want nothing of what he would still gladly give them; and we will marvel at the one who, even as he humbles himself and allows himself to be crucified, prays for those who nail him to the cross,
And if all that wasn’t enough for us to appreciate what God is like, we will also be drawn to worship the one who loves us enough to free us from the sting of death by living a sinless life, suffering that substitutionary death in our behalf, and subsequently being raised gloriously back to life.
For that is how God is revealed to be when he came to earth in human form on that first Christmas Day.
To reveal the secrets concealed behind door 15 of last year’s Christmas Countdown, click here
Some musings 