The birth of Jesus was not the ordinary birth of an ordinary man. It was the birth of the most unique Person in history. 

One of the most profound mysteries of the Bible is why Jesus had to be born a flesh and blood human. Why did he, who was the God of the Old Testament, have to live a sinless life as a human

Through His incarnation, God was expressed in a man, Jesus Christ, in the flesh. Jesus, who was born in the manger, fully expressed who God was. God’s love, mercy, righteousness, holiness, compassion, and glory were and still are expressed in the humanity of Christ.

Gods great plan for man is to ultimately create beings like Himself who have 100% free will and who choose to be righteous and obedient to Gods law 100% of the time. But that’s not possible though. Because we all have our own version of what is “good”. What is right. What is or isn’t wrong. So Jesus came as the great neutralizer to level the playing field for all of humanity. Jesus Christ was born more than 2,000 years ago in order to make it possible that we could see and be in awe of just how amazingly awesome God, who wants to love you like a perfect Father, really is. 

 

 

Martin Luther said that as God, He could not die, so He became man in order to die. On the cross, he accepted the sin of man against Himself. As a perfectly innocent man he accepted the injustice of man against man.

The death of Christ accomplishes reconciliation or reconnecting us back to God. Romans 3:25 says, "...whom God set forth as a propitiation" (big fancy church word that just means substitute) for our sins. "Propitiation" literally means "something that appeases a deity." However, in the Biblical sense it means much more than this. It can mean to "accept hurt", to "forgive", to "show mercy." As sinners we miss the mark of God's perfect law and have no legal right to exist. But God himself who sits as Judge accepts the hurt, pays the price, forgives, and offers mercy.

If a husband should say a harsh word against his wife, and the wife does not retaliate, but lets the word fall on her heart and crush her spirit; if she forgives and treats her husband as though he had offered only words of praise she pays the price of his sin against her.

It is this way that God pays the price of our salvation. The Bible does not say that Jesus paid a propitiation, but that He "is" a propitiation for our sins. This means that He, being God, bears the hurt in order to give mercy and forgiveness.

 

 

The resurrection of Jesus (alongside his crucifixion) is the central historical event in the Christian faith. Without the resurrection there would be no Christianity. “If Christ has not been raised,” wrote St. Paul, “then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14).

I am a Christian, more specifically a follower of Jesus, because I believe in the resurrection. I am convinced that after dying a violent death on a Roman cross on a Friday afternoon in 30 A.D., Jesus of Nazareth came back to life and emerged from the tomb on Sunday morning.

This is not easy to believe. But if it is true, it is the most pivotal event in human history. Much has been written in defense of Jesus’ resurrection, N. T. Wright’s wrote, Let us all conclude that Jesus of Nazareth was certainly crucified as a rebel king, Therefore it is extremely strange that the early Christians not only insisted that he was actually the Messiah, but they reordered their worldview, their practices, their stories, symbols, and theology around this belief.”

What is unquestionable is that the first generation of Jesus’ followers did believe he had risen, and were convinced that everything had changed as a result.

When Jesus’ came out of the tomb in a physical body, it was God’s definitive stamp of approval on you! I want to encourage you to research this for yourself. As CS Lewis once wrote: