God has given us the mission of Christmas …

Christmas is a mission milestone for God.

That’s because even before He created human beings, He knew we would betray Him for sin, wrecking our relationship with Him. So again, even before He created us, God crafted a perfect plan for a mission to reconcile sinful humanity to Himself:

“Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure,” Ephesians 1:4-5.

“For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake,” 1 Peter 1:18-20.

Christmas is a grand demonstration of just how important to God our being reconciled to Him is!

“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.

And so, as the central part of God’s mission to reconcile us to Himself, Jesus was born into the very world He had created …

“In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God … So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.” John 1:1, 14.

It is through God’s gift of His Son that His mission to reconcile us to Himself has been accomplished. Now, God has passed that mission of Christmas — a mission of reconciliation — on to us:

“And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, ‘Come back to God!’ For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ,” 2 Corinthians 5:18-21.

Christmas is much, much more than a holiday to celebrate once a year, it is God’s ongoing mission continued on through every Christian! A mission that is a ministry of reconciliation as God sends us out into the world as ambassadors for Christ, making His appeal to the lost to be reconciled to God.

That’s your mission from Christmas.

That’s your ministry.

Merry Christmas!

Scotty