HOME / PROCLAMATION! MAGAZINE / 2010 / OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER / EDITOR'S COMMENTS

October November December 2010
VOLUME 11, ISSUE 4

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D E P A R T M E N T S

Editor's COMMENTS

Christmas brings us the cross
Colleen Tinker

 

It was Christmas time, 1994. Our neighbors with whom we were meeting weekly and studying the New Testament invited us to see their nephew star in a Christmas musical at the Friends Church in Yorba Linda, California. Feeling a new freedom to enjoy a program at a "Sunday church", we enjoyed the warmth of the people and the palpable atmosphere of worship in the performance…until the musical reached its culmination.

I clearly remember my annoyance and even resentment as I watched the lovely Christmas story move into a depiction of the crucifixion and then the resurrection.

"No!" I wanted to call out. "This is Christmas, not Easter! Don't ruin the loveliness of the nativity with the messiness of the cross!"

I'm not sure when it happened—I only know that just a few years later, I could no longer separate the cross from the infant Lord Jesus. Without the cross, Christmas is meaningless, and the sentiment of Christmas carols and nativity scenes is merely a charade.

The faith once for all given to the saints is the truth that Almighty God the Son took a human body. He was born to a virgin; He lived an unremarkable life—until His last 3 1/2 years when He demonstrated systematically that He was the promised Messiah. He possessed every attribute of God, yet He subjected Himself to physical suffering, submitting to His Father as He did so.

The Lord Jesus did not demonstrate how we can resist sin. Rather, He became our sin so we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Cor. 5:21). He propitiated God's wrath toward sin by being the perfect Sacrifice demanded as the only acceptable atonement (Rom. 3:24-26).

The Lord Jesus came to break the power of sin and to destroy death. He did not set aside His "God-power" to show us how to keep God's law as a human with a fallen nature. No! He was eternal, almighty God the whole time He was on earth, just as He was a sinless, born-spiritually-alive human the whole time—and just as He still is.

Baby Jesus is not a sympathetic figure who had "sinful flesh" just like us. The Lord Jesus is our eternal God who literally came and lived with us in a physical body. He died the death only a human could die and defeated our death—something only God can do.

Moreover, the faith once delivered to the saints declares that the Lord Jesus is all we need. We don't accept Jesus and then look for "something more". Contending for the faith means not being distracted by holy days, special food, special power, special knowledge, or theological formulas.

We contend by submitting to the Lord Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word, allowing His Spirit to make His word alive in us, filling us with "all joy and peace in believing" so we "will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 15:13). We surrender to Him during temptation; we ask Him to teach us truth and root us in reality. We seek Him when we hurt; we submit to His healing when we struggle. We offer ourselves as living sacrifices so we can carry His glory into the world.

There is only one gospel: Jesus Christ died for our sins according to Scripture; He was buried, and He rose to life on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3-4). This is the faith for which we contend.

The Lord Jesus is God of the manger and God of the cross, and because of Him—only because of Him—we can cross from death to life (Jn. 5:24).

This Christmas we offer you "Contending for the Faith" condensed from our pastor Gary Inrig's three-part sermon series on the book of Jude. Part two of Dr. Louis Talbot's article on why Adventists are not evangelical applies the once-for-all faith as the standard for evaluating Adventism, and Dale Ratzlaff and Verle Streifling show that there is only one law, thus negating the addition of "holy days" to the once-for-all faith. Ross Cooper shares his story of being found by the Lord Jesus; Carolyn Macomber tells how she realized her "Adventist Jesus" was not the Jesus of the Bible, and Chris Lee challenges us to learn to live in fellowship.

We pray that this Christmas the manger and the cross will be inseparable as you worship the Lord Jesus—the baby whose sacrifice restored life to the human race. †

 

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