God's Reconnection Remedy – taken from Making the Christmas Connection
Joy to the world,
the Lord has come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare him room.
(‘Joy to the World’)
So if sin is the problem, what can be done about it? We can do very little about the breakdown in relationship. It’s too major and too complex. On our own we cannot restore the broken contract or remove the barrier that blocks our vital connection to God. But what we cannot do, God can and does do. The Good News is that God himself has acted to remedy the problem and restore the connection. But it cost him.
The Bible refers to God as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit existing in perfect community.
God is the Father lovingly watching over us. God is the Son walking alongside us. God is the Holy Spirit living within us.
In order to reconnect something that is broken, it is essential to have someone on either side of the breakage. So, in a dispute, you may have a meeting between representatives of both sides acting as mediators or negotiators. When it came to re-establishing the connection with human beings we see God adopting the same principle. That’s why we celebrate Christmas, because God himself came to earth.
God literally humbled himself and became a human being and was born into this world.
He came as Jesus the perfect Mediator, someone who was both fully God (and could represent God) and fully human (so could represent humankind). It’s like a bridge over an un-crossable chasm: if he was not God, then the bridge is down at the other end; if he was not truly human then the bridge is down at our end. But he was fully God and fully human. As such, he was entitled to represent both sides.
The four accounts of the life of Jesus that begin the New Testament show, from different perspectives, how Jesus lived on this earth; the Gospels recount what Jesus said and did. Right from the start he showed the kind of God that he is. He didn’t arrive with flashing lights and a huge parade; he was born to a young girl and his first bed was in a stable among the animals. Jesus came in complete humility. But there were many signs that he wasn’t just an ordinary baby. Wise men visited Jesus and brought him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
The precious gold symbolised that this baby was a king, the frankincense was a sign he was a priest and the myrrh indicated right from his birth the significance of his death.
