A Savior Is Born

A Savior is Born – that Christian thought was nowhere near the thoughts of people at the beginning of The Great War.  The glory of war!  That was the thought when war was declared.  It would be a short war.  They had envisioned gallantry, feathered hats, sabers, and glory.  What they found was over 460 miles of trenches (that’s from here to Philadelphia).  Yet, on the Christmas Eve of 1914, just for a few hours.  There was peace.  People called it a miracle!  This evening we are hear to celebrate a far greater miracle – God was born.

Too often people look at Christmas pictures of Mary and Joseph and the babe Jesus in a manger, and they think it’s precious and cute, and they are completely missing the point.  The point is that God himself was born as a man to win peace for people who could not find it for themselves.  That’s why he’s called the Prince of Peace. God had to be born a human, because he had to win that peace at a dear price. Jesus stepped into the No Man’s Land of this world, knowing full well it would cost him everything!  He came, knowing it meant death. That’s because peace never comes cheaply.

Peace with God means somebody paying for all things that I have done wrong in my life.  It means somebody being punished for all the times you shortchanged your family.  It means someone needed to destroy the enemies that hold all mankind hostage: sin, death and the devil. That kind of peace doesn’t come cheaply: it would cost the very life of God’s own Son.  He knew it – and still Jesus came.

You see, that’s why Christ was born in Bethlehem.  The Prince of Peace was also the Price of Peace.  He shouldered your sins, picked up my failings, carried them all to the cross and was nailed there in our place… and he died.  But this warrior who walked in our  no man’s land was different from any other.  Death could not hold him. Christ rose from the dead, and when he did, he broke the back of death; he crushed the head of Satan; he destroyed the power of sin.  The Prince of Peace was the price of peace and the price has now been paid in full!

Want to hear more?  Watch this Christmas Eve’s message taken from Luke 2 – A Savior is Born.