Merry Christmas!

I would like to share with everyone the summary of what I shared in youth group last Sunday. I sent this out to the youth as a reminder of what we talked about, and would love to hear comments about how you see what it means that Christ died for us:

During the holidays, remember what we talked about Sunday night….why did Christ have to die? I can’t answer this question fully. I don’t fully understand it. But we can look at this from any number of levels/perspectives. Here are some of them:

1. God’s law must be upheld—there must be a death punishment for sin. God, being not only a God of mercy, but also of justice, could not ignore this or make himself a liar–sin can’t be left unpunished. God allowed for Jesus’ undeserving suffering and death to serve as the punishment due to all mankind. The punishment, which was once our responsibility, went to Jesus instead.
   
2. The power of sin (death) is a curse upon humanity that we cannot defeat, because it is more powerful than us. Yet, the power of sin (death) couldn’t hold Jesus down, because he never sinned. Jesus proved that by allowing death to capture Him, but he overcame death by rising again. And He now chooses to share and celebrate the spoils of His victory over death with all who call upon Him for salvation!
3. God hates sin vehemently, and rather than pour out his wrath on us, He poured out all the built-up wrath against the sins of the world onto His Son, so that He may offer forgiveness to us instead of destroying us. Jesus was tortured and wasted in our place.
   
4. Satan has taken humanity captive through sin. He claims ownership on all humanity, because we’ve all sinned. Jesus offered to place his life into Satan’s hands–for Satan to do whatever he wanted with Jesus–in exchange for ours. Satan couldn’t get the Son of God to sin, but he figured he’d get rid of Jesus anyway, and then continue to maintain his control over us, once Jesus was out of the way. He thought he’d done it when he killed Jesus. Jesus, instead, defeated Satan after Satan and the rest of the world thought it was all over. Jesus took away all Satan’s power that the devil thought was rightfully his. Now we live in freedom to return back to God’s family.
   
5. Just as God gave new life to Jesus after he died, God also gives that same new life to all who are willing to lay down their lives for the sake of God’s kingdom. Jesus commands us to follow his example by picking up our own cross. While we can’t die for the sins of others as only Jesus was able to, we can trust God to give us a new life that will last forever, when we surrender over our brief life on earth to God’s purposes instead of our own.
   
6. Jesus’ suffering and death serve to show us just how much, and to what lengths God will go to love us. There is nothing God wasn’t willing to do–even die himself–so that we might not perish. For God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son. And whoever believes in Him will not perish, but instead have everlasting life.
   

That’s just 6 different perspectives (like the six blind men we learned about who were trying to understand what an elephant is). Some of these may seem harder to understand than others. They may all look different from each other, and it may be hard for us to understand how they are all part of the same “animal,” but what Jesus did on the cross is bigger, and goes further beyond what you and I can imagine. Think about this: what if there are as many angels in existence as there are humans? What if all of these angels have never sinned, and each one chooses to die in place of each of us, so that we wouldn’t taste death? What if 6 billion angels suffered and died for each one of us? That still would not be as great of a sacrifice as the uncreated God himself dying for us. One day, we will understand fully what happened that day, but for now we sing:

And I’ll never know how much it cost
To see my sin upon that cross

Light of the world, you stepped down into darkness (the Christmas story)
Opened my eyes let me see
Beauty that made this heart adore you
Hope of a life spent with you

Here I am to worship, here I am to bow down
Here I am to say that you’re my God
You’re altogether lovely, altogether worthy
Altogether wonderful to me

King of all days, oh so highly exalted
Glorious in heaven above
Humbly you came to the earth you created (the Christmas story, once again)
All for love’s sake became poor

Praise God! Merry Christmas!