Preamble: Jack Postma’s Christmas Meditation from 1977 is still relevant today – if not more so. Jack, powerfully, strips away the sentimentality often found in Christmas and links Christmas with the cross and our rebellion with the need for the incarnation of Christ. We trust our readers will be challenged and encouraged as we were. John 3:16-19
Jack Postma, Trowel & Sword, December 1977
Christmas! The celebration of that glorious night in Bethlehem when the endless depths of the Father’s love toward a lost world was revealed in the gift of His Son, who could say, “He who has seen me has seen the Father (John 14:9). There in Bethlehem, God’s heart was revealed in final fulness!
For the “Word made flesh” was not another teacher sent from God, as many prophets were sent in the time of the Old Testament. So Nicodemus had understood it. No, in Him, Nicodemus and we are confronted with God’s final word.
The God who in many and various ways spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by a Son (Heb. 1: 1,2), the heir of all things!
Christmas is the revelation of God’s saving purposes in all its final concentration. The revelation of God’s grace in His unique Son. So great was that love of God for sinners, that God gave all He had to give. Beside Christ, God can’ give no more.
For God so loved the world, His world, the world of His creation. That world of men and women; that world of mountains and seas; that world of schools, commerce, politics and families; that world with all its relationships (Col. 1:20), meant to serve Him, to show His glory. That world of rebel sinners, of people that dishonour God, of people that break one another in their blind rebellious frustration, that have done so ever since the Fall.
That world – the kosmos – God loved it so much that He gave all He had. Amazing, incomprehensible love! For while He was complete without it, yet having made it, He refused to let it drown in godlessness and futility. He refused to let it perish under His wrath in this life and in the life to come.
Therefore the amazing gift of His Son, in whom God’s arms of mercy are stretched out to the widest possible extent to a perishing world. For the last time; in order to bring that world and its life back to Himself. No wonder angel choirs sang in the fields of Ephrathah; for who can remain silent in the presence of this Gift!
Who came not to condemn but to save – God gave “that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
According to the Jews, when God would come to the world, it would be in judgement on sinners. No doubt Nicodemus thought so too. But the Lord Jesus says “No” to that! The purpose of His coming was to save. To save the world by calling men and women to Himself, out of every tribe and nation; who, together with their renewed relationships would constitute the new world.
Had God’s only desire been for judgement – His perfect right – then there would have been no need for the Incarnation. Then all that would have been needed was the manifestation of His final holy, righteous anger. Then He would only have needed to send forth His flashing burning justice, totally deserved by us.
But thank God. His thoughts toward us were different. Thank God that in His free, eternal and sovereign good pleasure, His thoughts were thoughts of peace and salvation, mercy and grace to a lost and rebellious world. To us!
But at what cost! That love was so endless, that intention to save so deep, that hatred of sin so intense, so that rather than give His creation over to eternal darkness and estrangement from Himself, to God’s eternal horror-filled absence, He gave His only Son over to the forsakenness of hell.
For God’s gift at Bethlehem finds its climax in the darkness of the cross. That Bethlehem gift is God’s handing over of His beloved Son into the hands of sinners. Those hands God will use to carry out His righteous sentence on the Son who has come to bear the sin of the world, in order to save the world. Over Bethlehem there is cast the dark shadow of the cross.
But such holy burning love demands an answer. It does not ask for a sympathetic glance at the manger. It is not content with a few sentimental carols this Christmas time, or with a confession from the lips that leaves the life unchanged.
Such final love puts the world before the final choice. It drives the world, and all of us, into the final corner. For in this Son, in whom God gives everything, God also demands everything. His total love is content with nothing less than our total love.
In the shining of this Sun of Righteousness, all sin is clearly revealed for what it is – works of darkness (v.19-21) – works that cry out for God’s judgement. Only in the light of the costliness of God’s remedy do we see the final horror of our sin.
To refuse this gift, to refuse to bow in repentance and faith, that forsakes our darkness and clings only to Christ – to refuse that, surely it is the greatest insult. It is to pronounce our own judgement. “He who believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
When that endless love is refused, then that same gift of Light – meant to show us our darkness and drive us to God for life – keeps shining, showing up our works for what they are. Then that Son can only scorch us. For beside Him God has nothing else to give. He is God’s final Word.
When will the world, when will we all wake up. That every Christmas carol sung, every Christmas service attended, will mean our condemnation, unless we capitulate before this love, by believing in Christ. For that is the answer God’s love requires.
And believing is bowing the rebellious knee. It is the confession that I have no love to give to God in answer to His love, for all I have of myself is works of darkness. But thank God it is also the recognition, that by faith in Christ, His righteousness and obedient love is mine.
Believing means no other Saviour in my life than Jesus Christ alone. His word of promise and demand determining and directing my life. Expecting all in life and death from Him alone. It means that I stop living for myself and by my own strength.
Oh, how impossible is such an answer, such faith, for sinful man!
Oh God, so overwhelm us anew this Christmas time with your gift too great for words, that we can do no other than to capitulate anew and fall in adoration before the Son of your love and give ourselves away to Him and to His service.
So that your word may be our richest possession: “You will not perish, you are no longer condemned, but you have eternal life.”
Hallelujah!
Jack Postma
We wish our readers a blessed and monumentally exciting Christmas in which, together, we are thrilled once again by the incarnation. Bert & Pieter
T&S Revisited 