Thanking God for Jesus Christ

 Thanking God for Jesus Christ Theworld will soon celebrate Christmas. Everywhere we look, we see reminders of the season—mostly colorful lights, evergreen trees, stockings hung on mantles, and white-bearded men in red and white suits. We are far less likely to see the traditional manger scene, an infant Jesus surroundedby His parents, a few animals, and perhaps some wise men, a shepherd, or a hovering angel. Granted, Christmas is ostensibly about the incarnation of Jesus Christ, His advent or coming into the world. Preachers proclaim how wonderful it is that our God descended from heaven to live among men and save them from their sins. While His birth as a Man is marvelous, the Christmas celebration comes off as somewhat ironic because the Jesus it presents is a helpless newborn baby before He had accomplished any of His work. While recording that it occurred, the New Testament says nothing about celebrating His birth. Instead, the Bible emphasizes commemorating His death when He completed His work as the Son of Man. On the last night of His human life, He reinauguratedthe keeping of the Passover among His disciples, as He says, "in remembrance of Me" (Luke22:19; I Corinthians 11:24-25). As the apostle Paul writes, every time we observe the Passover and its symbols, we "proclaim the Lord's death till He comes" (ICorinthians 11:26). The biblical focus is on His finished work, the triumphant end of His life, not the beginning. In the life and death of our Savior, we have many things to be grateful for. We probably thank God every day for them. But it is good now and then to consider deeply our indebtedness to Him on a personal level, taking the time to contemplatethe finished work of Jesus Christ for us. While we consider Christ's work, we cannot forget God the Father. Jesus willingly sacrificed His life for us, but He did so at His Father's behest (Galatians1:4). It is the Father's desire and purpose to redeem us from our sins and guide us to a better way of life. Since the Father is Supreme (see John 14:28), He could not come to earth as a human and lay His life down for us, so the Son volunteered to do the job. But if the situation were reversed, the Father would have given His life with the same willingness as His Son. Even so, the Father sacrificedthroughout the process, enduring the loss of His sole companion and watching Him suffer cruelly at the hands of sinners. We should acknowledge our indebtedness to the Father too. From the beginning, the Son has represented God to man, a mediatorial role. The Son is called "the Word," Greek logos, "divine utterance or expression" (John1:1), and the fact that "No one has seen God [the Father]" (John1:18), "neither heard His voice at any time" (John5:37; see John 6:46; I Timothy 6:16), supports the idea that humanity has dealt with the same Being all along. The One who became Jesus Christ—the same God of Israel who created all things—fills the role of the divine Communicator or Spokesman between God and mankind. On top of this, the Father gave His Son an immeasurably awesome and demanding assignment, the most vital, challenging, and costly mission ever attempted. The first criterion in the plan of salvation was that our Redeemer must live a sinlesslife to be a fitting payment for sin (IPeter 2:22). The salvation of all humanity depended on His success in this task, or humanity would forever be without a Savior. We need to meditate on how hard this must have been for Jesus, as a human under the pressures of human nature, to resist itsceaseless downward pulls and overcome them to do good. John the Baptist calls Jesus "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John1:29). He had to be faultless—"unblemished," to use the Old Testament word—to qualify to pay for the sins of every repentant human who has ever lived. He could not display one wrong attitude, think one wrong thought, or take one wrong action. By His sinless life, He completely qualified to be the Sacrifice forsin, as well as King of kings and Lord of lords when He sets up His soon-coming Kingdom on earth. The spiritual strength and endurance He showed throughout His thirty-three years of human life are something to be thankful for! Another element in God's plan was that the Son must die for our sins. In John 10:11, Jesus says, "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep." He proved His love for us through sacrificing Himself—not just by suffering horribly and dying cruelly by crucifixion, but by living sacrificially in everysecond of every day of His life (see Romans 12:1). John writes in I John 3:16: "By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." He is our pattern of living sacrificially, and we can be thankful for His perfect example. Yet, He also truly died to pay the penalty for sin. From the first sin in the Garden, humanity was a condemned creation, and the Son was committed to paying the penalty for sin. Revelation 13:8 calls Him "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." The reality of sin demanded payment, the life of the One who became Jesus Christ. As the apostle Paul puts it, "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we mightbecome the righteousness of God in Him" (IICorinthians 5:21). To pay for sin, the Creator had to die to pay for and remove it as only He could so that we might be righteous before God. For this, our gratitude should be endless! He did this, not just for the elect, but for everyone who will eventually be called, believe, and repent of their sinful ways. God's plan is far-reaching, as He desires "that all should come to repentance" (IIPeter 3:9). The apostle John writes, "He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world" (IJohn 2:2). While carnal human beings have always been at enmity with God, His plan will turn that around (Romans8:6-11). With one sacrifice (Hebrews9:28), Christ has paid the penalty for all human weaknesses, transgressions, rebellions, and evils, if those sinners will one day accept His sacrifice for them. We should be thankful for this, too, as we all have family and friends who hate God. We canstill hope they will repent, if not now, then in the resurrection. Paul explains in Philippians 2:8, "And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross." As He suffered, God heard Jesus' prayers, and He could have called an end to His agonizing trial at anytime, but He did not. Jesus asked in His prayer in Gethsemane for His Father to find another way (Luke22:41-44), but He never did so again after that. Our Savior obediently followed His Father's will. We can be thankful that He remained committed to His work of salvation, even to death. Finally, we can be thankful that He accomplished His mission so thoroughly and perfectly that the Father resurrected Him, and He ascended to sit at God's right hand in heaven as our Mediator and High Priest: Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points temptedas we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews4:14-16) As our High Priest, He intercedes on our behalf, much like the vineyard keeper in Luke 13:6-9, who urges its owner to have patience for the plant to bear fruit. Our Savior has lived as a human being; He knows how difficult it is to live righteously in this world and pleads for mercy for us. He endured testing and suffering to learn to be a perfectly empathetic High Priest,and we are the beneficiaries of it (Hebrews2:10-18). That is something to give thanks for. At best, the Baby Jesus of Christmas nativity scenes gives the barest indication of the awesome spiritual potential of the work of the Son of Man, our Savior Jesus Christ. However, in His Word, God calls us to glorify His Son for the tremendousvictory He gained through His sinless life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection and ascension to eternal life to bring us salvation. Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ and His marvelous works! - John Reiss