The First Baptist Church at Conshohocken

Christmas is always for someone special.  The very notion of abstraction is antithetical to its spirit.  It is perhaps the most personal of holidays, even as it is, arguably, the most beautiful of holidays, as well as being characterized by a profundity, made all the more profound by its bearing of mystery and revelation.

Christmas has special significance for children.  Certainly; it brings delight & wonder to little ones, with eyes aglow & hearts pounding as they gaze upon the Christmas tree, replete with gifts with their names on them.  I remember my experience of Christmas past quite vividly; indeed, my brother & I would be up at 4am, awaiting the arising of our parents, wondering what was taking them so long to awaken, no realizing that, having wrapped and assembled our gifts into the wee hours of the morning, that they had most likely just retired to bed as we ourselves were awaking and arising!

But I speak; if not more significantly, then certainly more profoundly when I declare that Christmas is for a different kind of child.  Christmas is for the child of God.

We are call creatures of God, the term and concept of creature being used in the most clinical and constructive sense.  We are not; shall we say, comparable to creatures from the black lagoon (though at our worst, the lagoon may prove to produce creatures more charming than depraved humans!), but we are people who have been created by God, an origin common to all of us.

That which is common to Christians, the very thing that makes us distinct, though through nothing inherent to any of us, as it is the result of His gift, is that we are God’s children.  St. John writes, 

“The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him.  He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.  Yet to all who did receive Him, to those who believed on His name, He gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God” (John 1:9-13).

It is a gratifying & glorious proposition, let alone reality, to claim such identification.  It is in complement to the teaching of Christ that we address God in prayer as “Father,” a gift that the Spirit of God affirms, as the Apostle Paul relates when he writes:

“Those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.  The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.  And by Him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’  The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.  Now if we are children, then we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in  His sufferings, in order that we may also share in His glory” (Romans 8:14-17).

I have come to know this blessing quite well; intimately even.  It is both comforting & ennobling.  The entirety of the calendar year 2019 gave proof to me of its blessing.  I underwent major, even profound, cardiac surgery at the Mayo Clinic in June of that year, having prepared on several fronts over the preceding months and having recovered over the year’s remainder. 

I hadn’t a clue how anything would work out, not least how any of the costs would be covered, who would carry my pastoral portfolio or whether I would even survive, which was for me a very legitimate query.  God took care of everything in stellar, fatherly & even miraculous fashion.  And it was as if I were a child resting in my Father’s arms and coming under his protective & providing care throughout the entirety of the year.  It took nothing from my adulthood to acknowledge that I hadn’t felt so much like a child since my literal childhood.

The great Scottish evangelist of the 18th Century, Billy Burke, used to travel on horseback throughout the Scottish terrain and amongst the people declaring, “I’m a child of the King!”  So am I; praise God! – I bid all my fellow brothers & sisters who are children of our Father a most Happy Christmas; as our British allies, cousins & friends across the Pond would say!

Christmas is for someone else; also.  Such season of good cheer is for the seeker after God, a quest made problematic by our spiritual blindness, an abysmal condition exacerbated by an idolatrous culture that does nothing but obfuscate rather than enlighten or clarify.  Thank God for Christmas, as it brings embodied meaning to our quest.  Christmas is for the seeker after God.

We are all seeking after something; aren’t we?  We all look for acceptance and place, as well as purpose and partnership.  No one wants to be truly alone, even if each of us requires varying degrees of solitude, though never loneliness to any degree.  We want to find our place amongst people, both in community and profession.  A sense of purpose is non-negotiable, lest shallowness consume us and despair ultimately prevail.  The human quest is an existential reality from which we can’t escape.

The ultimate fulfillment of our quest is God.  St. Augustine remarked that we have a hole in our heart, the likes of which can only be filled by God; such was his beautiful prayer.  In Him we live and move and have our being; whether we acknowledge or value this is entirely another issue.

We do know this:  God loves it and us when we seek after Him!  “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me” (Proverbs 8:17).  The encouragement to be extracted from this verse is two-fold:  There is the assurance of God’s love (You are most welcome to come to Him!), as there is the qualification that due diligence, as distinct from a haphazard approach, be applied.

The true seeker seeks after God diligently, continuously (1 Chronicles 16:11), wholeheartedly (Jeremiah 29:13) and earnestly (Psalm 63:1), let alone primarily:  “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).  

We are given every reason to believe that we will find Him (Deuteronomy 4:29, Jeremiah 29:13), as He will not forsake us (Psalm 9:10); indeed, He is Himself looking for us (Psalm 14:2), and will have compassion for us and grant pardon to us (Isaiah 55:6, 7) – “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him” (Lamentations 3:25); as a blessed matter-of-fact, if you “draw near to Him, He will draw near to you” (James 4:8)!

We will lack no good thing (Psalm 34:10) if and as we seek after Him.   He will “rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12).   We will be delivered from all of our fears (Psalm 34:4).  He will make our paths straight (Proverbs 3:5, 6).  Our fortunes will be restored and we will be gathered together, knowing both prosperity and a future (Jeremiah 29:12-14), thereby transforming seekers into beloved children who will “rejoice and be glad” (Psalm 40:16), for our God, the One after Whom we have sought & the One who has reached down and called us, “does great things and unsearchable, marvelous things without number” (Job 5;8, 9), and we are the beneficiaries  of such divine accomplishments!

If we need any further assurance, then one need only look to Jesus.  His teaching is unparalleled in its simplicity & profundity.  He speaks pithily yet powerfully when He says, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7, 8).

I existentially learned this as a troubled adolescent.  I found myself nearly emotionally-and physically-paralyzed from fear when I was young.  It was a long bout that lasted almost three years, but Jesus visited with me in the privacy of my bedroom.  I came to know Him and His love for me.   I was given time to prayerfully explore His truth.  He affirmed me in my inherent value before Him and my calling on behalf of His Gospel.  I cried to Him, and He answered me, came to me, delivered me, transformed me and has utilized me in loving service to Him ever since.  It is not 45 years later, and I have come to know the blessed fact that He sought me out in the first place!

My signature verse from Scripture says it all:  “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek:  That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, and seek Him in His temple” (Psalm 27:4).

 To all who seek Him:  Praise God, & have a very Happy & Merry Christmas!

And Christmas, lest it be forgotten in a world of relativism, amorality and self-righteousness, is for the one who recognizes the horror of his plight and the necessity of her plea.  We are sinners in need of salvation.  Christmas is for the sinner in need of God & the gift of His salvation.

Human beings tend to be keenly aware of their needs, but all-too-often are tragically unaware of their deepest need, the very need that gives spawn to all the other more readily-discernible and in-your-face, I-feel-it-in-my-gut kinds of needs, all of which are derivative of our most fundamental need of salvation, the kind that requires of a Savior.

Sin is the fundamental constituent factor in the lives of every single human being who has ever lived.  It would have been the fact of God’s image, but the arrival of sin has, in the very least sullied and distorted the image of God in us, if not outright destroyed it.  G.K. Chesterton quipped that the doctrine of original sin is the one biblical doctrine that can be verifiably proven, as it is so obvious a reality in the lives of literally everyone!

“’All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ,” (Romans 3:23, 24), a theological and existential truth concerning the human condition as asserted by the Apostle Paul, who offers a kind of one-two redemptive punch when he also writes that, “The  wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Best not to read the Epistle to the Romans if one is self-satisfied and content to dwell in spiritual darkness, but it makes for compelling reading for those who humble themselves before God in the knowledge of their sin and who cry for mercy!  He is merciful to those who have gone wayward and inverted inward (which is essentially what sin is) rather than maintained the straight-and-narrow and remained God-ward.

Mary Magdalene understood this from the depths of her heart.  She knew that she needed Jesus.  She understood with clarity & marvel, both who He was and what He offered her.  She knew it instinctively, consciously and profoundly.  She received Him and the concomitant life that He offered her with gladness & gratitude.  She was a sinner in need of salvation, the likes of which could come only by way of a Savior, the only kind that would qualify being the One embodied by Jesus Christ.  Such is why she loved Him so much, even to the frustration and antagonism of the disciples themselves!  But Jesus said it best:  “The one who has been forgiven much, loves much” (Luke 7:47)!  She loved her Savior most dearly; praise God!

Are you such a sinner as was Mary?  Would you be free from your burdens and sins?  Are you or will you be one who seeks after God with all of your heart, mind, soul and strength?  Does adoption into the beloved family of God attract you?  Will you heed the call of Christ, as He summons you from a life of immersion in sin, both by way of your experience & His vantage point, and as He would lead you away from the fracture of your sinful self & participation in a corrupt world & draw you into right rapport & joyful communion with Him who loves you with an everlasting love? – To all sinners in need of salvation (especially to those who have been saved):  A Happy, Merry & Blessed Christmas to all!

Pastor Bradley E. Lacey (December 2020)