It is hard to say which element of the Gift of salvation that God gave us in Christ, is the BEST.
I think we will just have to each decide which element means most to us as we continue unwrapping our gifts this week.
Last week as we unwrapped Matthew 1:21's promise of forgiveness we saw Christ's amazing, complete and final forgiveness. That is our first gift we are unwrapping this Christmas.
This week as we look onward to Matthew 1:23 we see the amazing second gift God gave us in Christ. This may be the most remarkable gift of all: it is the Gift of God with us.
Christmas is about God who visits us by sending “the Dayspring from on high,” a heavenly sunrise, to provide the critical care that sin-darkened humans need because we are headed to destruction (Luke 1:78-79).
As Matthew unfolds the Christmas story, we can see more and more of God's plan to come and rescue lost humanity. In Matthew 1:21 we learn that Jesus came to “save His people from their sins,” which was God meeting our first and greatest need—forgiveness.
Next, we see that all the rest of the critical needs we have in our lost and fallen condition are compressed into the truth in Matthew 1:23 our second greatest need—regeneration.
From the divine vantage point as explained in the Bible, Christ's death is only for the guilty, the hopelessly stained, and helplessly lost. It is in recognizing that condition in ourselves that we will find Jesus, and God's everlasting grace.
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Pastor John Barnett has been devouring the Word of God for over 30 years. John, now the teaching pastor of Calvary Bible Church in Kalamazoo, Michigan has served congregations in Oklahoma, New England, Georgia and California. He also served on the Faculty of the Master's College...
