What makes the Christmas story/the birth of Jesus such good news, not just for the parents and the people of the day, but for all – even for us today? Especially for us today, some two thousand years later?
To get to the answer we have to ask what is the back story? I don’t know whether you’ve ever tried reading a book by starting in the middle, or started watching part of a trilogy like Lord of the Rings by starting on the second instalment. It makes no sense at all. Who are these people? What’s going on? What’s it all about? Yet so often that’s how we treat the Christmas story.
The Christmas story presents us with another side to our story, that we are part of a much larger story. The hints are there in the story.
1. It confronts us with the thought that this is not all that there is, that there is more to this world than meets the eye. In the Christmas story we are confronted by an abundance of angelic activity, something that challenges our materialistic, flat, monochrome image of the world. When we read the Christmas story, it sparkles. There’s another dimension to it. As C S Lewis author of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, pointed out, “There is a deeper magic” at the heart of the world, something ancient, spiritual and supernatural. Have you woken up to it?
2. Christmas reminds us that there is a God. It’s all about what God is doing. He’s all over the Christmas story. A God who is holy, sovereign, and just; a community of being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – each active in the story. A God who is love… He is the originator of the story. It is His-story. That this world is not an accident, neither are you and I. He is the creator and sustainer. The true life giver. It’s in him we live and move and have our being. A God who is loving, sovereign and committed to the world he created. Do you know him?
3. At the back of the Christmas story there is also the reminder that everything is not as it should be, or was intended to be, that we live in a broken world and need a saviour: “The Saviour has been born,” but a saviour from what? The Bible calls it sin. In another Christmas reading it says he would be called Jesus, because he would “save his people from their sin.” That’s something we are all guilty of. We live in a world that loves to blame everyone but me/ourselves. We are all culpable. I’m messed up, you’re messed up, we’re all messed up. Not only that, but no amount of trying on our part will make it right.
The reality is the good news is a very meager concept if it is not measured against the bad news of our sinfulness and our inability to do anything about it. Only then can we understand why it’s good news. Have you reached that point?
4. It tells us that God has come to do what we couldn’t do. We heard those prophetic words from the Old Testament scriptures promising a saviour, hundreds of years before the event. This is the good news! “Today in the city of David a Saviour was born for you, who is Messiah/Christ, the Lord.” John tells us that the Word was made flesh. We beheld his glory… God had come to save. Emmanuel, God with us. “God contracted to a span incomprehensibly made man.”
God has acted in Christ to do what we couldn’t do, to save us from the clutches of Satan and sin, that downward pull, that dark side of all of our lives. He has come to save us and set us free. Christmas is primarily about God’s action in human history. We couldn’t save ourselves, only God could. The God who created us in his image and for a relationship with himself took on flesh, became incarnate in a virgin womb, entered his very creation to live, suffer and die, for you, for me, for us all. The gospel, the good news means that God is for us. For you and me in Jesus.
Jesus has done what needed to be done and one day he will come again. From the beginning God had a plan, and no amount of rebellion on our part was going to stop it or is going to stop it. This is the Good News. God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, embarked on the biggest rescue mission in human history. Do you know him? Is he your saviour?
Richard Burgess, Christmas, 2025.
The Word 4 Life 