Advent and Love
Written by Jared Burkholder | Pastor of Outreach and Connections
We can all tell when someone does something nice for us out of obligation, rather than personal choice. They can dress it up with kind words and plastered-on smiles, but the veneer of contrived kindness is see-through. And few things taint kind actions and words like the stink of coercion.
Regardless of the cost of the gift given, the sacrifice of the service rendered, or the loquaciousness of the words shared, kind things done for duty not delight shake our confidence and undermine our joyfully receiving what is shared.
Depending on your religious background, you might think of Christ’s sacrifice more in terms of obligation than choice. You were on his list, and, while he went through with it, he wasn’t really that excited about saving someone like you. Someone with your past. Someone with your present struggles, your uninspired prayer life, your sporadic attendance to church.
But the amazing wonder of the gift of Christ at Christmas is that there is no part of it that is begrudging.
“From God’s first choice to save you, to his promise to send a deliverer, through the death of Christ on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, to the very moment God brought you from death to life in salvation---all of that, from start to finish, comes from love.”
Many of us learned John 3:16 by heart early in life:
[16] “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
It was not obligation, guilt, duty, or any other motivation that drove Jesus to give up his life to save the lost. It was love. But of course, God’s love is more amazing still because he reached down to save not simply good people who make the occasional faux pas but desperately wicked people who hated him. Paul reminds us of this in Ephesians 2:
Ephesians 2:1–3
[1] And you were dead in the trespasses and sins [2] in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—[3] among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
God pursues, saves, and keeps those who were by nature his enemies. It is the force of his love that overwhelms and transforms spiritually dead people who were running away from him. The parable of the Prodigal Son reminds us of the power of this love. There, a son rejects his father, choosing instead to take his father’s wealth and go live a life of lasciviousness. When he runs out of money and is literally living in a pigpen, he slinks home, intending to ask only to become a servant for his father. He is instead greeted with joy and a hero’s welcome which he doesn’t deserve. Why? Because his father loved him and gave him not what he deserved but grace and kindness.
John famously outlines the immense love God has for us in Christ in 1 John 4:
1 John 4:9–10
[9] In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. [10] In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
God’s love is everywhere. It’s why he created. It’s why he sustains. But the greatest expression of love comes in the sacrifice of Christ for sinners. The love of God remains eternally manifested in his sacrificial death on the cross, his wrath-absorbing sacrifice for sin.
“As we celebrate the gift of Christmas, it just matters to know that God has saved us not because we deserved it, not because he felt obligated, not to check some kind of cosmic box. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners because he loved us.”
The gift he gives us of eternal life, forgiveness, and reconciliation emanates from a perfect heart of eternal love. In short, God loves you. And he demonstrates that love by coming to earth to show us the greatness of God and, through salvation, to lead sinners back to God himself.
Many in our world struggle to see God as good and kind. They feel the ever-present weight of their shame. They can’t enjoy their relationship with God because seeing past their own failures seems impossible.
But the wonder of the Christian faith is that our confidence before God and our motivation to follow God in daily faithfulness is rooted in love. God saved, not out of obligation but love, and we follow him not out of a sense of duty but because we love him back. And we love him back because of his eternal love for us.
Which just underlines the joy and delight of celebrating Christmas. The gift of Christmas is the gift of Christ himself, given in love, received in love, sustained in love, culminating in loving fellowship for all of eternity. Friend, remember this Christmas that Jesus loves you so very much.