God and sinners reconcile

PALO ALTO, California – The choir was singing a medley of Christmas Carols in a recent Sunday service I attended and there it was… a line in one of the songs that captures the real essence of Christmas: God and sinners reconcile. That’s a great reason to be joyful and yet I have never understood the importance of that line for as many years as I had been singing that Christmas carol.

 Indeed, sin has separated God from sinful man.... from the disobedience at the Garden of Eden to that day in Sinai when the recently rescued Israelites decided to build a golden calf to worship.

In Psalm 90, Moses described how sin angers God: “We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence…Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.”

Yet, God’s anger is tempered by His love for us. And that’s why Christmas happened.

I had been struggling for an explanation of the very basis of our Christian faith — why the Son of God must suffer the pain and the indignity of death on the cross to bring salvation to all of us. He who can turn water to wine, multiply the five loaves of bread and two fish to feed 5000 people and make the dead Lazarus rise can surely defend Himself from the Jewish leaders and the Roman soldiers... perhaps blind them as what happened to Saul, who was persecuting Christians, on the road to Damascus.

But Christ had to follow the will of the Father. His mission of redemption must be accomplished and that requires the cross.

God abhors sin. God’s sense of justice makes it impossible for him to simply ignore sin. And Isaiah 59:2 declares: “your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”

Because God so loves us, he has provided a way for sinful men to approach Him. As was explained by Pastor Peter Tanchi in a CCF service, God’s solution to this separation between God and man is the shedding of blood.

During a visit to the Holy Land, we went to a site where they have a replica of the Tabernacle, which has the Ark of the Covenant within the Holy of Holies. The Ark represents the presence of God.Only the high priest approached God by entering the inner room, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people have committed in ignorance. He sprinkles the blood of unblemished animals on the mercy seat (Hebrews 9:6-7).

But when Christ appeared as our high priest, He entered God’s presence through His own blood. Once and for all time. He obtained eternal redemption for us.

 Remember the scene at the Crucifixion at the moment of Christ’s death as recounted by St Luke: “darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two…” The curtain symbolizes the separation of sinful man from God. When it was torn in two from top to bottom, separation ended because man was redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ, once and for all times.

It all makes sense now. That nativity scene predicted by the prophet Isaiah is the expression of God’s love for us despite our sinfulness… God sent his only Son to be born as man on Christmas Day…unblemished by sin, to be the ultimate sacrifice, so that by Christ’s death and resurrection, we are given hope for eternal life in heaven.

 The prophet Isaiah: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned…”

This is the story of Christmas. It is the story of our redemption. It is God’s way of ending our separation from Him. And because Christ was born to us on Christmas Day, we have that hope for eternal life that once was beyond our reach because of sin.

On Christmas day, God and sinners reconciled. Hark the herald angels sing… glory to the new born King. A real joy to the world, indeed!

A Merry and Blessed Christmas to everyone!

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco