The Real Reason For The Season

I love the Christmas season, I love the trees, and the lights and the music, the gifts and the gatherings, and if there's snow I'm in heaven. (The best thing about living in Colorado is regardless of the weather, a White Christmas is only an hours drive away) Being human beings squabbles will arise as we overschedule, overtax, and overspend ourselves, and I even like those too because it's family. 

In all the hustle and bustle that happens around this time we all to easily forget what the reason for the season truly is. As John MacArthur points out in his sermon "The Ugliness of Christmas" the reason for the season isn't actually Jesus, Jesus came because of sin, making sin the actual reason for the season. 

"She will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." (Matthew 1:21)

We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. (1John 4:14)

 It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. (1 Timothy 1:15)

What is sin? John Bunyon once said said, “Sin is the dare of God’s justice. Sin is the rape of God’s mercy. It is the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power and the contempt of his love.”  Another, equally as eloquent, description comes from the 19th Century;

“Who is the painted temptress that steals our virtue?  Who is the murderess that destroys our life?  Who is the sorceress that first deceives and then damns our souls?  Sin. 

Who with icy breath blights the fair blossoms of youth?  Who breaks the hearts of parents?  Who brings old men gray hairs with sorrow to the grave?  Sin. 

"Who, by a more hideous metamorphosis than Ovid even fancied changes gentle children into snakes, tender mothers into monsters and their fathers into worse than Herods, the murderers of their own innocence.  Sin.  

Who casts the apple of discord on household hearts?  Who lights the torch of war and bears it blazing over trembling lands?  Who, by division in the church rends Christ’s seamless robe?  Sin.

“Who is this Delilah that sings the Nazarite asleep and delivers up the strength of God into the hands of the uncircumcised?  Who winning smiles on her face, honeyed flattery on her tongue, stands in the door to offer the sacred rights of hospitality, and when suspicion sleeps, treacherously pierces our temples with a nail?  What fair siren is this who, seated on a rock by a deadly pool, smiles to deceive, sings to lure, kisses to betray and flings her arm round our neck to leap with us into perdition?  Sin.

“Who turns the soft and gentlest heart to stone?  Who hurls reason from her lofty throne and impels sinners, mad as a Gadarene swine, down the precipice into a lake of fire?  Sin.”

-Thomas Gutherie, 1857

Jesus came to deliver us from sin, he entered this world knowing full well his position was to become a blood sacrifice to erase our sins. He lived his life, ministering and preaching to His people knowing full well that in the end He was going to die for them. Jesus came to save us from Sin which is the true miracle of Christmas.