the Common Blog

For my family, December is straight up crazy busy!

I know everyone’s calendar is packed in December, but for my wife and me especially. On top of all the normal Christmas stuff like shopping, wrapping, decorating, multiple parties with family and a variety of other parties, I’m on staff at a church that makes a big deal about God becoming a man, and…our first two boys were born in December (the 22nd and the 14^th).

Major planning fail!

It really is crazy what we do for our boys to ensure that their birthdays are separate from Christmas. We don’t want them to feel cheated like a number of other kids who, though they’re older now, have expressed deep emotional hurt over the blending of the two.

Why do we do this? Because my wife and I (like most parents) love our children and think that they are the greatest and most adorable kids ever, but in reality…are they really the greatest and most adorable kids ever?

See, despite what I or my wife think about our kids, the reality is that they are very ordinary and average kids with snotty noses that can’t stand still for Christmas pictures. Every once in a while they do or say something funny right before they get poop all over the bathroom or hurt their sister.

Do you know what else is crazy? The baby whose birth we celebrate on December 25^th, Jesus, appeared to be the same way – very ordinary, very average.

I find it odd how a lot of older paintings of baby Jesus would have us believe that there were yellow glows around Him and a halo over His head. The truth is, in appearance, Jesus was a very ordinary and very average looking baby.

If anything, you could say that Jesus, according to human standards, was born into a below average scenario. His mom was a young, unwed teenager. She was known as the crazy girl whose excuse for getting pregnant out of wed-lock was that the Holy Spirit did it. His dad, Joseph, was a simple, small town carpenter. Definitely not the kind of guy you’d see on HGTV, wearing V-neck t-shirts and designer jeans with a $100 hair cut and a new pair of Chuck Taylors.

Jesus was born in a below average, dumpy, rural, dirty, smelly manger, to a below average, poor family. He grew up in the trashy, hick town of Nazareth (which was said back then that nothing good could come from there) where he was a simple carpenter like his dad.

To me, that’s the amazing thing about the birth and life of Jesus. He would appear to us to be so very ordinary and average when in fact, as the scriptures tell us, He is very distinct and unique, unlike any other person that has been born into this world.

Let’s consider the uniqueness of Jesus from the gospel of John.

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” John 1:1, 14

John refers to Jesus as “the Word” and he starts off his gospel by telling us about the uniqueness of Jesus. The first thing he mentions is that Jesus has a unique past.

Notice he says, “In the beginning was the Word.” In the beginning of what? The beginning of time? The beginning of the universe? John has in mind the beginning of creation. Before the world was created Jesus already “was.”

So John tells us that this “Word” Jesus, whose birth we’re supposed to be celebrating this Christmas season, did not begin to exist at his birth but that he has always existed, eternally existed, before the creation of the world…. now that’s a unique past!

John moves from telling us about the unique past of Jesus to now tell us what a unique person Jesus is. Look at what he says further in this passage “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Now the uniqueness of Jesus unfolds a little further as John tells us that Jesus, though very average and ordinary in appearance, was in fact very unique in person and in nature. He is God!

Notice that John says “the Word was God”! Now it’s pretty unique to be God, because there’s only one!

John’s words here just echo the prophet Isaiah from the Old Testament as he prophesied hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus as to what kind of child this was going to be.

Isaiah writes this:

For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given,

and the government will be on his shoulders.

And he will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. (Isaiah 9:6)

John and Isaiah are not referring to some ordinary person. This was no ordinary baby born into the world. This is Jesus! This is God – a unique person, no doubt!

We read on further in the gospel of John and see that this God, who existed from eternity past, came to us in the form of a baby and became a man. John describes the birth of Jesus this way “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And that’s what this whole Christmas thing is about, celebrating that truth right there, the incarnation, that God became a man. The God who existed in eternity past, created the world and everything in it, exchanged his heavenly throne for an earthly home.

It was this truth that caused Charles Wesley, one of the most famous hymn writers and evangelists of all time, to write this verse of Hark! The Herald Angels Sing:

Christ by highest heav’n adored

Christ the everlasting Lord!

Late in time behold Him come

Offspring of a Virgin’s womb

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see

Hail the incarnate Deity

I would like to think that Wesley was meditating on John 1 when he wrote that.

Jesus Christ, no doubt, is unique, one of a kind, unlike any other, supreme and matchless, God in human flesh, but the birth of Jesus is only half the story; why he was born is the rest. As the life of this baby unfolds in the scriptures we see that this unique person with a unique past also had a very unique purpose in coming.

In Luke 19:10 we find the exact reason & purpose for Jesus leaving heaven to come to earth

“For the Son of the Man came to seek and to save the lost”

Any discussion about the coming of Jesus must end up where His very own life ended up, and that’s at the cross. Jesus sought the lost in his coming and saved the lost through the cross.

And while Jesus did a number of wonderful and amazing things throughout his life, it was the cross that was chosen by Christians as a symbol to represent the very life and lasting legacy of Jesus.

The cross was historically a very horrific, excruciatingly painful, shameful, and for most, an unspeakable thing. Because of what Jesus Christ accomplished when he died there, it became for many a very awesome and wonderfully glorious thing – celebrated as the highest expression of God’s love.

John, later in his gospel, says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

See, It was God’s love for broken, lost, undeserving sinners (like me and like you) that sent our good and sinless God and Savior Jesus Christ to the cross. In our place as a substitute, He paid the penalty of death for our sin and was raised from the dead after three days.

In so doing He purchased for us our salvation, (something that we all so desperately need) so that we can have forgiveness of sins, a right standing before a Holy God, a restored relationship with our Creator and eternal life.

This Christmas  see the cross of Jesus Christ as a gift, a gift from a loving God to an undeserving sinful people.

But just like any gift, it needs to be received – personally received by faith.  John says that this gift is available to “whoever believes in him”.

Every once in a while i talk to someone who hasn’t been in a church in a long time and they’ll say something like this – “if I walked into church i’m afraid that the walls would come crashing down on top of me”

translation: “I have done some really bad stuff that I am ashamed of and I’m not sure if God could forgive me for that.”

If that’s you, I want to say to you that there is no sin, nothing in your past that God, through the cross of Jesus Christ, will not forgive. Christ death was sufficient to pay for all sin.

Let me also say that there is no life so jacked up that God, through the cross of Jesus Christ, cannot restore. What is most impressive to me is not just what the cross does for you but what the cross does to you.

How Christmas Changed Me

By the time I was 20, most of my life had been devoted to breaking commandments and living recklessly. My time was spent partying, drinking, frequently, driving while drinking, drugs, being sexually immoral and everything else in between. My life was absolutely saturated with sin.

I had absolutely no regard for anything or anyone else. I continually lied to, offended and hurt those around me and those closest to me. My sin had consequences not only in my life but consequences in the lives of others as well, something that I failed to recognize all too often.

While all this was going on, I was at church every Sunday – this church. I grew up in this church and knew all the things that I just shared… but I lived as if it was all meaningless. I intellectually understood it and at times I seemed to have received it, but it had no effect on my life at all.

And, yeah, there were times when God would start to work and tug on my heart to truly embrace Him and to live for Him. At times I tried and wanted to, but I always loved and treasured those other things more than Him and I just pushed Him away.

Until that one summer night in 2000 (I remember it very clearly) when God weighed down on my heart so heavy with guilt and conviction because of my sin. He literally broke me down. Never before had I felt so personally sorrowful and remorseful over my own sin.

That night He opened my eyes to see beyond the mere facts of the gospel and to truly see the value and the worth of His Son, Jesus Christ, and His sacrifice for me.

That night, with tears running down my face, I said words that I had never said before, “Take it all, take it all.” In that moment all the things that I had held onto and valued over and above God for years seemed so undesirable compared to Jesus.

Leaving everything behind me, I embraced Christ by faith, genuine faith.  I surrendered my entire life to the God that I had resisted for years.

After numerous times of trying to make changes in my life and behavior and failing every time, I finally realized that it wasn’t my actions that needed to change – it was my heart. A very significant and noticeable transformation took place in me because God changed my heart. He gave me a new core, a new center. He gave me a new heart with new desires – desires to love God and desires to change, desires to worship Him and to serve Him.

My entire life changed.

I suddenly became interested in God’s word. I started going to bible studies, studying on my own and having discussions about things concerning God. I started learning about Him and His promises and purposes for me.

People that I used to think I was way too cool for became brothers and sisters to me.  (I was doing stuff now that I used to make fun of other people for doing.) But I didn’t care because for the very first time in my life I had a sense of purpose. I was standing for something true; I was living for something good…Someone good, someone true.

And that’s what this baby came to do. He came to seek and save lost sinners. To redeem and restore broken lives, and He did it through the cross.

The only thing I would ask of you who read this is to consider Jesus Christ…A unique person with a unique past who came with a unique purpose. And he can change any person, forgive any past and give you purpose in this life.