Hope comes into special focus each Christmas with the familiar story of God actively intervening in history. This message of good news may be distilled down to five key realities. We need at least a partial understanding of each of these in order to experience this hope.
(1) God—and our quest for ultimate reality
Sooner or later we all wrestle with questions about who we are and the nature of the world around us. We inevitably discover that each of us are unique human beings with our own individual personalities, complete with our own set of natural, inborn desires for such things as beauty, creativity, and justice as well as a sense of meaning and purpose. This awareness of how we are made in turn drives us to the conclusion that there has to be more to life than the material universe we can see all around us with our physical eyes. We live in what is really a supernatural universe created by a great and mighty God. Life only makes sense when we recognize God as our Creator and Ruler. God tells us in Scripture that He is a personal God who has taken the initiative to reveal Himself to us not only through His creation, but also more explicitly through His written Word, the Bible. Consequently, we need to learn all that we can about this great and sovereign God and how He wants us to live here in His world.
(2) Sin—and the problem of evil
There are many amazing things about life and the world in which we live. But we soon discover that things are not as they should be. We live in a broken world. Before long, we also recognize that not only do we live in a broken world surrounded by other broken people, but that we ourselves are broken people as well. God reveals to us in His Word that the reason for all the evil and brokenness of this present world lies ultimately in our broken relationship with our Creator. The Bible calls this rebellion sin. Sin takes many forms: there are both more active sins when we deliberately reject and violate God’s specific instructions to us in His Word as well as more passive sins when we simply exercise our own independence from God and decide to go our own way and do our own things. Our failure to give God the place He deserves in our lives results in all the suffering and tragedies we find all around us in this present life. God also warns us in His Word that sin brings us under His divine judgment. We often begin to experience His judgment right here in this present life, and God warns us we will experience these consequences far more severely in the life to come. Acknowledging our own sin and rebellion against God is one of the first steps in entering into a relationship with Him.
(3) Christ—God’s answer to our deepest need
The most amazing truth we will ever hear is that God has made a way for us to come into a right relationship with Him. We can experience the forgiveness of our sins and enter into a new and restored relationship with Him as our Creator and Redeemer. He promises us we can become His people, and He will become our God. But this relationship is possible only because of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God the Son who took on human flesh and became a human being that first Christmas, He lived a perfect life among us, He suffered a horrendous sacrificial death for us on the Cross, then He was raised from the dead, and finally He ascended into the glory of heaven, from where He will someday return to establish His eternal kingdom. At the time of Jesus’ death, God gathered together all of the sins of all of God’s people—past, present, and future—and placed them on Christ, so that through His payment for our sins, we can become His child for all eternity.
(4) Grace—the means through which we can experience God’s blessings in Christ
Redemption has already been accomplished in Christ; now it needs to be applied in order for it to become effective. God tells us that our being born again into a new and living relationship with Him takes place only as a sovereign and supernatural gift from God. It is nothing we can ever earn or deserve. It is all God’s grace. God’s grace is His goodness in action. He accomplishes what we could never do for ourselves. It is His Holy Spirit who connects us up with Christ and allows us to enter into all the blessings and new life that were secured by Christ. Human energy and effort are no help at all. In the same way that an electric light only gives light if it is properly connected up with a source of power, we too can enter into a proper relationship with God only through a union with Christ. Faith—or a saving belief in God—is the way God has chosen to connect us up with Christ and all the blessings that are His. But even faith is a gift from God so that no credit ever goes to us. God is the One who gives us new desires, including the desire to trust Him in every area of our lives. Yet in some marvelous and mysterious way, God also involves us in this process. Our believing in Christ becomes the desire of our own hearts as well. This is why God invites us, “Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6), Jesus calls us to “repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15), and the Apostle Paul tells us, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31). Salvation is thus always by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.
(5) Glory—giving God the place of obedience and worship He deserves in our lives
Discovering meaning and purpose in life take place only when we understand something of how life actually functions in this God-created universe. We need to come to the place of recognizing that life doesn’t revolve around us and our own personal wants and desires. Rather our lives should revolve around God and His plans and purposes, since He is the One who created us in the first place. Life is ultimately about pleasing and serving God. In the same way that we can never experience true happiness by selfishly pursuing our own personal desires, we can never experience true meaning and purpose in life by following our own plans. God has so designed this present life that it involves an ongoing series of choices where we can choose to give God the place He deserves in our lives. The Bible sometimes describes this submitting of ourselves to Him as “dying to ourselves.” God calls us to trust and obey Him in every area life, even as we worship Him as our Lord and God. We soon discover that this new relationship with God brings us the greatest joy we could ever imagine. So, as we continue to live the rest of our earthly lives in the present broken world, we look ahead to the final restoration of all things, including the gift of living with God for all eternity in new bodies and on a new earth. The principle here is that we begin the Christian life by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone—and we continue to live this same way for all eternity with great joy and rejoicing for all that God has done for us.
The angel was correct that first Christmas: there is “good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10). The question is what will you do with this good news?at will you do with this good news?