It is important that we recognize the great significance of why many people celebrate Christmas. I think so many of us get lost in the Christmas lights, gifts and parties, but forget to stop to actually appreciate what celebrating the birth of Christ is really about. Therefore, I went in search of a Christmas sermon that could help us recognize that it is not about the presents, but about Christ’s presence and His great gift to us. I believe John Piper did a good job to show this in the excerpts of his sermon below titled, The Reason the Son of God Appeared Was to Destroy the Works of the Devil.
Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who has been born of God practices sin, because His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin continually, because he has been born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother and sister. 1 John 3:7-10
So the question I am asking today is: What is the connection between Jesus’s birth and our new birth? What is the relationship between Jesus’s incarnation and our regeneration? To answer this question let me try to build a bridge from last week’s message to this text here in 1 John 3:1–10.
Last week we saw that when we ask why we need to be born again, the answer could look backward to our miserable condition in sin and corruption and say that’s why we need to be born again. Or we could look forward to the good things we will not experience if we are not born again — like entering the kingdom of God — and say that’s why we need to be born again.
Now the bridge between that message and this text today is the great love of God that comes to people who are dead in trespasses and sins and who are his enemies, not his children, and makes them alive. Ephesians 2:4–5 puts it like this: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love [!] with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.” So the greatness of the love of God is magnified in that it gives spiritual life — that is new birth — to those who have no claim on God at all.
We were spiritually dead and in our deadness were walking in lockstep with God’s archenemy — the devil (Ephesians 2:2). The justice of God would have been well served if we had perished forever in that condition. But for that very reason our new birth — our being made alive — is a magnificent display of the greatness of the love of God. “Because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ.” You owe your spiritual life, and all its impulses to the greatness and the freedom of the love of God.
Now, this is the bridge to today’s text. Look at 1 John 3:1–2 and think with me how John magnifies the love of God in this passage.
See what kind of love the Father has given to us [there’s the link with the greatness of the love of God], that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved [loved ones!], we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.
This Christmas, let us examine our lives to see if we are truly born again by accepting the Father’s love which came through Christ’s coming to earth when He destroyed the Devil’s works so that we no longer have to be in bondage to sin and therefore we can have eternal life.
Click here to read the entire Christmas message by John Piper
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