The Christmas story is summed up with a simple thought: God became a man.
But why?
Well, the answer has to do with our sin. Did you know that God couldn’t have solved our sin problem from the Hallowed Halls of Heaven? He had to come to us. And here are two reasons why…
1. He had to be God because only God could live a sinless life to be able to offer a perfect, sinless sacrifice, and
2. He had to be a man because only a man could offer Himself in the place of other men, as their substitute.
So, for you and me to be saved, He had to be both God and Man.
Paul said, “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh…he appeared in a body…”1 Timothy 3:16 (ESV)
“Many people in their day dubbed the Sudan…’The White Mans Graveyard’ because of the high mortality rate of Western missionaries trying to Evangelize this remote part of the world. Diseases like Malaria, Yellow Fever, and Typhoid claimed so many victims, that most missionaries headed to this part of the world would typically pack their possessions in their own coffin. They would say good byes to loved ones to board a ship with the realization that they most likely would come home horizontally and not vertically. Still they pressed on with a God given sense of urgency.”
The sacrifice of these coffin-packing missionaries should inspire us: they came to the Sudan to die so that others might live…but do you know what inspired them? It was this event we call the incarnation…because when God came to earth, He packed a coffin, a coffin that he would only attain by way of a bloody cross.
And he did it for you and me.
For Friday, July 3: Luke 3
Entrusted with the Gospel 