Easy to Miss

Gosh, what could be more adorable at this time of year for a father and mother, watching from the audience, a precious child acting in a Christmas nativity scene?

It’s easy at this time of year to have an “Awww!” moment when celebrating with family and friends, the birth of an adorable little baby.

It’s even easier, however, to celebrate a Christmas while missing the sheer power of the manger. Mary obviously didn’t. The highly-motivated, non-Jewish dudes from the East didn’t either. Nor did the well-amplified angelic chorus!

So early on, the power of the manger was evident to a select few, who were hoping that Messiah’s birth signalled even bigger things to come.

The weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks
A new and glorious morn”

While the rest of the world was busy doing other things, that adorable baby grew into a man who healed the sick, calmed the wind and the waves, raised the dead, and challenged the teachings and attitudes of the day that had wandered from the heart of God. How’s that for a resumé?

“But what about you?”, Jesus asked. Who do you say I am?”
~ Matthew 16:15

But then Jesus took it up another notch, willingly offering himself up at the cross as an atonement for sin, sufficient to redeem the whole fallen world. Because only he could.

The bottom line …

The power and humility of the manger is perfectly mirrored in the power and humility of the cross, underlining God’s intentionality to intervene in human redemptive history. How cool is that?

But still, it’s easy to miss.

Here’s a question to consider: Whose sins would the blood of Christ not cover today, given genuine repentance by individuals?

Murderers, rapists, drug dealers, prostitutes?

CCP leaders in China responsible for mass arrests of pastors and Christ-followers just days before Christmas?

Muslims, trapped in the systemic violence of their own Islamic faith?

Doctors who violate their vows by mutilating innocent children?

Cross-dressing, effeminate men in need of therapy, pridefully strutting before an audience of innocent young children?

Or, how about me, having spent the early portion of my adult life as a self-absorbed, womanising traveler down a moral and spiritual backroad?

I’ve struggled a lot with this sufficiency question. But after combing the scriptures, I am not aware of any sin that Messiah’s blood won’t cover, and that genuine repentance won’t make right with him.

So, along with making me right with God at a retreat in Bellingham, WA in the summer of 1991, the blood of Christ covers all those listed situations and more — whether you are lost in an authoritarian faith, or lost in your own sin — provided of course your turn in repentance to the one true God.