In the name of Jesus.

Beloved in Christ, it is Christmas day, and we have much cause for rejoicing. While it’s certainly God’s will that we be filled with His joy each and every day of our lives, we rejoice all the more as we gather together with the faithful Christians throughout the world to celebrate the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ: given to us and to all mankind.

The prophet Isaiah foretold this blessed event, saying, “to us a child is born, to us a son is given” (Is 9:6). And that child born of the Virgin Mary, who was wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manager is God the Word, the one of whom St. John says:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (Jn 1:1).

The Divine Word … the Second Person of the Holy Trinity … is eternal. The Word is God. The Word did not become God. The Word was not created by God. The Word has always been. And this is simply one of the great truths that’s also a great mystery to our finite minds.

As the preacher of Hebrews describes the Incarnate Word:
“He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature” (Heb 1:3).

In this Holy Child of Bethlehem, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:14).

The eternal Word of God … the brightness of the everlasting Light by whom all things were made … has come into the world through the womb of the Virgin Mary and in Him we see the “glory as of the only Son from the Father” … who is, as we confess, “begotten before all worlds, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.” The Holy Child born of Mary is also the only-Begotten Son of God.

What could be greater cause of rejoicing this day: The Son of God has become a Son of Man. He doesn’t become man such that He ceases to be God, rather the fullness of the eternal Word united Himself with the fullness of our humanity in the womb of Mary. As St. Paul wrote to the Philippians:
“[Christ,] being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:6-7).

Jesus took on Himself the whole of our humanity: emptying Himself of His divine prerogative and condescending to live a fully human life in which He experienced the same hunger, thirst, temptation, weariness, suffering, and dying that you and I also experience. That’s why it’s the custom among many Christians to bow or genuflect at those words in the Creed that describe our Lord’s Incarnation when it’s said that Christ: “came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man” … the only-begotten Son of God taking on full humanity in order to serve all of humanity … serve us by saving us.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Everything the eternal Word does is for us and for our salvation. The Son of God became a Son of Man so that all who believe in Him might become sons of God.

Adam and Eve rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden and their rebellion is our rebellion. From our first parents down to the present, all people of every generation have been conceived and born in sin: inheriting a sinful human nature that likewise continues to commit actual sins. The fall into sin brought corruption to our souls and brought death into the world.

We die because of sin. And without a gracious and merciful God to intervene on our behalf, we would all be lost to sin and death, and only have the kingdom of the devil as our inheritance.

That’s the who reason for the Incarnation … for Jesus’ conception and birth. Out of love for His fallen creation, and out of divine compassion for sinful people like us, God the Father sent His Son into the world to redeem the world as Scripture says,
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (Jn 3:16-17).

The eternal Son of God became our brother: like us every way, except without sin. And as our enfleshed brother He did what Adam and all we children of Adam are unable to do: becoming the perfect, unblemished sacrifice who suffered and died in our place to be the propitiation for all our sin.

We read in Hebrews that “We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for everyone” (Heb 2:9). God the Son was made a little lower than the angels – He was made man – so that He might suffer and “taste death for everyone.” And St. John writes, “[Jesus] Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 Jn 2:2).

Your attempts at sacrifice, or my attempts at sacrifice – or the sacrifice of anyone blemished by sin – could never atone for the sins of the world. It had to be the sinless,unblemished Lamb of God – fully God and fully man – who poured out His sacred blood to cleanse us of our sin.

That same atoning sacrifice that Jesus accomplished on the cross, He now gives to all who believe in His Gospel. The forgiveness of sins that the Incarnate Christ won for you on the cross is handed to you in the Gospel and received only by God-given faith as we heard in the Holy Gospel for this day: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God“ (Jn 1:11-13).

It’s true that there are many who reject the Good News of salvation in Christ and discard it in unbelief … and such is the prerogative of our corrupt human will. But such people aren’t justified before God and stand accused by the Law of God and its just and deserved judgments. But all who, through God-given faith, receive Jesus in the Gospel and believe that in Christ God is gracious to them, truly have what God has promised: the forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation.

Faith is so important, but so often misunderstood. We tend to think that faith is something we can conjure up within ourselves so that we become the one acting in order to gain forgiveness and salvation. But that’s not how Scripture describes it. Rather, as St. Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8).

So even faith itself is a gift of God and not something we can just decide to have of our own volition. And it’s faith – given to you by the Holy Spirit working through the divine Word – that takes hold of the gifts that Christ won for us in His incarnate flesh.

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (Jn 1:12). Faith in the Incarnate Christ and the salvation He’s accomplished for us is what makes us children of God. On this Christmas Day, our boundless joy comes from knowing and believing that the Son of God became man so that all who believe in Him might become children of God, heirs of His kingdom and all the promises and blessings that go along with that standing.

Jesus is a Son by His very essence and nature. But because we’re children of God by faith and co-heirs with Christ, we’re also blessed to share in the divine blessings which Jesus has by nature: His righteousness, His innocence, and His blessedness.

So let us rejoice this Christmas Day in the Incarnation of the Son of God who has taken on our flesh to cleanse us from the corruption of sin by dying the death we deserved so that even though we die, yet shall we live. What better reason to celebrate and join with the angelic host in singing the praises of God for His great and mighty work of salvation.

So, come, let us go unto Bethlehem to “see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us” (Lk 2:15).

Jesus, the very Son of God, is born a little child so that all who hear this Gospel reality might become children of God by grace, through faith, on account of Christ’s saving work … children that have our Lord’s sure and certain promise of an eternal inheritance in His heavenly kingdom.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Pr. Jon Holst