The Christmas Story From The Very Beginning

Feature 1 – December 2010 – Grace & Truth Magazine

THEChristmasSTORY
FROM THE VERY BEGINNING

God is timeless, with no beginning and no end. He “inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15);
He always is, “from everlasting to everlasting” (Ps. 90:2).

Creating
One day this infinite God created a tiny, fragile bubble, which He called Time, and set it afloat in the immensity of eternity. It would be the setting for His most amazing, most magnificent work (Gen. 1:1- 2:3). He created a man and a woman in that bubble and He came down to enjoy fellowship with them. And together they enjoyed great times and exciting conversation.

Within their tiny bubble God created an ideal environment, a paradise provided with every imaginable pleasure and comfort: “Now the LORD God planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there He put the man He had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river watering the garden flowed from Eden ... The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the LORD God commanded the man: ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.’ The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him’ ... So the LORD God ... made a woman ... taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called “woman,” for she was taken out of man.’ For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame” (Gen. 2:8-25).

Unparalleled opportunity! Unimaginable freedom! A garden full of lush vegetation! God created all of this to be experienced and enjoyed by the man in intimate harmonious communion with his exquisitely formed and suitable mate. Imagine living in a garden so lushly furnished, with free access to enjoy it all with only one exception!

But the next chapter of Genesis is incredibly sad. Before long the privileged couple became restless, unsatisfied and unfulfilled. Acting on the advice of their Lord’s archenemy they decided they needed more. Though their Protector had warned them of the fatal results of disobedience – eating from the forbidden tree – they decided to “do life” on their own, broke off their relationship with Him, and chose instead a path of ambitious selfimprovement. This tragic decision became a death sentence on all their descendants. Romans 5:12 sums it up succinctly: “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.”

Yet on that very day a brokenhearted Creator promised to rescue His beloved, disobedient creatures. To paraphrase Genesis 3:15: “I will send My special agent to save His fellow humans from the consequences of their foolish choice. He will be mortally wounded in the battle, but He will destroy the enemy who tricked them into this rebellion.” Thus the eternal God set Himself an appointment in time.

Adam and Eve wasted their best opportunity when they chose not to eat from the tree of life – which was not forbidden – but to eat instead from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – the tree of death – which was forbidden (Gen. 3).

Visiting
God never gave up on His rebel creatures, never stopped looking in on and looking out for them, sometimes actually coming down for a closer look or to offer a helping hand. Here are a few examples.

Babel: “The LORDcame down to see the city and the tower that the men were building,” but He could not let them continue in their rebellion so He frustrated their project by confusing their language (Gen. 11:1-9).

Sodom: “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached Me” (Gen. 18:20-21).

Egypt: “I have indeed seen the misery of My people in Egypt ... so I have come down to rescue them” (Ex. 3:7-8).

Wilderness: “The LORD said to Moses, ‘I am going to come to you in a dense cloud ... be ready by the third day, because on that day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people’” (Ex. 19:9-11).

But in spite of His interventions matters got worse, and it broke His heart: “God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one” (Ps. 53:2-3).

Reminding
The Creator continually reminded them of His promise of deliverance:

• “Through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed” (Gen. 26:4).
• “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a Son and will call Him Immanuel” which means “God with us” (Isa. 7:14; Mt. 1:21-23).
• “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6).

But things went from bad to worse with each generation more corrupt than the previous one. How could a Savior come out of such failure? The hope of rescue grew dimmer and dimmer (Ps. 14:2-3).

Coming
Then one day it happened! God fulfilled His promise made many years before: Immanuel was miraculously born of a virgin to “save His people from their sins” (Mt. 1:21). “Today ... a Savior has been born to you; He is Christ the Lord!” (Lk. 2:11). “When the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman ... to redeem” (Gal. 4:4).

We’ve seen that God came down on occasion for a closer look at what was going on. Now He came down this time in the Person of His one and only Son! The Creator stooped down to enter His creature’s tiny time bubble through the womb of a peasant girl, to be born a man. He actually became human!

Mary was God’s special channel to bring into the world the long-promised Savior as a descendant of the first offending couple. One of God’s special messengers, the angel Gabriel, was sent to prepare this virgin: “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a Son, and you are to give Him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High ... The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God ... For nothing is impossible with God” (Lk. 1:30-37).

The Triune God is wonderfully invested in this! The Father sent the Son, and through the Holy Spirit actually created within that virgin womb the human nature that was to embody His Son. Could anything be more miraculous, more expressive of God’s utter commitment to our salvation?

The infant Son grew to manhood and lived a life of perfect obedience: “In Him is no sin” (1 Jn. 3:5). After 33 years of life on earth, among the whole race of fallen humans, this sinless Son of God was rejected by the religious and political forces of the corrupt human race and killed. And this was the fulfillment of that long-ago promise of a Savior (Gen. 3:15). The Son of God was not merely a martyr for a good cause. He was the sacrifice that purchased hope, forgiveness, redemption and eternal life for the whole damned race.

• “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
• “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree ... Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Pet. 2:24; 3:18).
• “God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them ... therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Cor. 5:19,17).
• “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 ... Whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son” (Jn. 3:16,18).

The miracle baby, born of a virgin, grew up and lived for 33 years in perfect harmony with God, then was condemned by the people and died on the cross as though a criminal. That was where God’s Son “bore our sins in His body,” where the righteous One died for the unrighteous ones – for us sinners!

Ongoing
This is what Christmas is all about. It is the setting in motion of God’s cosmic plan to rescue the human race from the consequences of that foolish fatal choice of our first parents, as well as from the consequences of all of our own foolish choices as sinners. They chose death over life. We are born heirs to their fallen nature, helpless addicts to sin and all its consequences. But through Christ, God’s promised deliverer, we now have the opportunity to choose again! To choose life over death! Whoever believes in Him has eternal life (Jn. 3:16).

Eternal life! One day soon our fragile time bubble will burst (whether because our own personal time span expires, or God “calls time” and the bubble dissolves into eternity) and we will be released into the infinite dimension of God’s eternity, to be with Him forever!

By Bill Van Ryn