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CURRENT RADIO SERIES Songs for the Savior   CURRENT TV SERIES Songs for the Savior

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Colossians 1:15 I want you to try to imagine what the world would be like if Jesus had never been born. It’s beyond our imagination, but just try to picture it. We certainly wouldn’t know God as we know Him now. In fact, we’d be fortunate to have even heard about the God revealed in the Old Testament. So what changed on that first Christmas so long ago? Well, when Jesus Christ came, the Bible says He was Immanuel— “God with us.” God was no longer a distant deity. He was no longer an unfathomable, unapproachable image. God became flesh and blood; God was with us! The Lord of all creation came as a baby, toiled as a carpenter and lived His final years on earth as an itinerant preacher. He is God incarnate. That’s why Jesus would later say, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). When Jesus was born into the world, He was God! He wasn’t a man acting like God; not even God acting like a man; but God who was fully man and a man who was fully God! What Christ was seeing, that was God seeing. And when Christ was walking, that was God walking! If Jesus hadn’t come, and if He wasn’t God, we’d never have the knowledge of God we have today. So thank God for sending Jesus to Bethlehem all those years ago so that you might have a clear picture of a God who loves you unconditionally!

According to the Plan

by Dr. Paul Chappell

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
John 3:16–18

Even before the creation of the world and Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden, God’s plan for our redemption had already been established. Nothing in the Christmas story happened by accident or coincidence. It was all arranged and ordered ahead of time. John wrote, “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). The need for a Saviour did not take God by surprise. He was not caught off guard when man fell and death entered the world. There was no search for a solution to the problem of sin—it was already in place.
Jesus made the necessity of salvation crystal clear when He talked to Nicodemus. Every person is born under the condemnation of sin. Our destiny is not determined by our actions, thoughts or intentions, but by our nature. We start out as sinners, opposed to God. The Saviour did not come for the good, but those hopelessly lost without Him. Jesus said, “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Matthew 9:13). Our most desperate need—salvation from our sins—can only be obtained by faith in Jesus as our substitute and Saviour according to God’s plan.
 

Today’s Growth Principle: 

God’s love for us is clearly seen in His plan that brought Jesus into the world at Christmas.