Will the real traitor please stand up …

If you’ve watched TV sometime between 1956 and 1978, and even intermittently since, then you may have stumbled across an old panel game show called, “To Tell the Truth.”

The premise of the show was that a panel of celebrities would be presented with three contestants who all claimed to be the “central character” whose unusual occupation or experience was identified by the show moderator. For example, three men all well-dressed in fashionable suits may claim to be a clown who worked at children’s birthday parties, and the panel would have to guess which of the three men was the clown. The “real” clown would have to answer the panel’s questions truthfully, but the two “impostors” could lie to try to fool the panelists.

Finally, the moderator would say, “Will the real _____ please stand up.”

It was a fun guessing game. Sometimes, it was easier to identify the central character than at other times.

When it comes to the Christmas story, there’s a traitor — someone guilty of betrayal — in the story, and quickly people would point to Mary. After all, her fiance, Joseph, was so sure she had betrayed him that he was ready to end their engagement …

“Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly,” Matthew 1:19.

The problem was, while there was betrayal at play, it wasn’t Mary who was the traitor! Fortunately, an angel visited Joseph and cleared up the issue of why Mary was pregnant (Mt. 1:20-21).

Joseph guessed wrong about the traitor.

If Mary isn’t the traitor, who is?

Will the real traitor please stand up!

You and I would have to stand.

In fact, all of humanity would have to stand.

Christmas does address betrayal, but not Mary to Joseph, she was innocent of cheating on her fiance. But every human being was guilty of betraying God by choosing to break our relationship with Him by choosing to sin:

“For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard,” Romans 3:23.

Because of our sin, we would need a Savior to ever be able to be reconciled to God. It’s our betrayal that brought about the need for Christmas …

“But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children,” Galatians 4:4-5.

“For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him,” John 3:16-17.

We are the guilty ones in this story, but thanks to be God for Christmas, when He gave to the world a Savior!

Scotty