“These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing. The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.”
John 1:28–31
Most of us have at least one person on our Christmas list who is really hard to shop for or pick out a present that we think they will really appreciate. We struggle to come up with something that they don’t already have. Somebody told me about a Christmas card display that said, “Only a few more shopping days left until your loved ones find out how little you understand them!”
When it comes to true needs, what you and I needed most of all was a Saviour, and that is why Jesus is the true gift of Christmas. The burden and debt of our sin was beyond our ability to remedy. In Old Testament times faith in God’s offer of salvation was demonstrated through sacrifices. Once a year, a goat was chosen to symbolically take the sins of the people away into the desert. But that was only a temporary solution that did not resolve the problem. “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4).
The Christmas story is the story that was planned before the world was ever created. God knew what we would need most, and His Son carried out that plan so that our sin could be more than just covered. Through His sacrificial death in our place, Jesus paid for our sin. Many people trace the custom of giving Christmas presents to the gifts brought by the wise men, but in reality, the first gift of Christmas was Jesus, who was exactly the gift we needed most.
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