The necessity of Christmas …

Sometimes we mix up wants with needs. More often, we just prefer pursuing wants over needs. But we are far better at chasing after what we want than giving attention to what we need.

There’s a story about young Thomas Edison, as told in Bits and Pieces, that highlights this preference for our wants …

Early in his career, Thomas Edison invented a vote-recording machine for use in legislative chambers. By moving a switch to the right or left, an official could vote for or against a proposal without leaving his desk. The machine would replace the tedious business of marking ballots, counting them, etc. Elated with the prospects, Edison obtained a patent — his first — and headed for Washington.

Eagerly he demonstrated his machine to the Chairman of Congressional Committees. This gentleman, while complimenting Edison on his ingenuity, promptly turned it down. “Filibustering and delay in the tabulation of votes are often the only means we have for defeating bad or improper legislation.” he told Edison.

The young inventor was stunned. The invention was good; he knew it and the chairman knew it. Still, it wasn’t wanted. Said Edison later: “There and then I made a vow that I would never again invent anything which was not wanted.”

We often dismiss what we need in order to pursue what we want. The same is true when it comes to Christmas. God coming to earth as a man by being born into the world He created isn’t something that happened because we wanted God to be with us; God gave us Christmas because we desperately needed it!

There are three key reasons for the necessity of Christmas:

1. We weren’t looking for God. There’s a myth that people really are searching for the truth, but that’s really not the case. Then, like today, searching for truth — and searching for God, who is Truth — isn’t what we human beings do or long for …

“As the Scriptures say, ‘No one is righteous — not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God,'” Romans 3:10-11.

The single greatest way for us to see and understand our need for God Himself was for Him to come and be with us. And so God wrapped Himself in flesh and was born as a baby one night long ago in the little village of Bethlehem.

2. We weren’t looking for God because we didn’t love God. Humanity’s problem wasn’t that we loved God but had just gotten off track; the problem was that we didn’t have a love for God. It took God loving us first to be awakened to love and life …

“We love, because He first loved us,” 1 John 4:19 (NASB).

In spite of our lack of love for God, that first Christmas was about God lavishing His love on us!

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life,” John 3:16 (NASB).

3. We were all spiritually dead. Scripture teaches us that we have all sinned, and that the consequences for sin is death. Ours was a world populated by spiritually dead people! We desperately needed life …

“In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men,” John 1:4.

Because we weren’t seeking God from our ignorance of any need for Him; because we didn’t love Him; and because we were spiritually dead, God gave us Christmas!

“And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth,” John 1:14.

In the life of Jesus, we see God! We see our need for Him! We see life and truth! And we see His amazing love for us!

And we see that He gives us all this — He gives us Christmas — to reconcile our dead, lost selves to Him in a new life, as new creations in Christ.

We needed Christmas, and praise be to God, He graciously gave it to us!

May we remember this Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of Christ, the wondrous love and grace of God who gave us what we needed when we didn’t even understand our need.

Scotty