The Necessity of Christmas

4 minutes to read

Certainly, Christmas is about the birth of Christ, but we should ask  why we need the birth of Christ. Why was he born? In order to answer this question, we will have to go as far back as the Eden Garden. God made Adam and Eve in His own image and put them in the Eden Garden. God commanded them not to eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil; if they did, they would die. They were obedient until one fateful day, when the fallen angel, Satan, came to them in the form of a serpent. He tempted Eve to disobey God. She succumbed to the temptation. Not only did she eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, she also shared it with Adam. The consequences were unspeakably horrible. They were separated from God and became cursed. Adam was appointed the Head of humanity. So when he fell, all humanity fell. When he sinned, his posterity sinned in him and would be born separated from God and doomed to all kinds of miseries and then eternal death. But God, in His infinite mercy, promised them a Redeemer (Genesis 3:15).

Who could this Redeemer be? The punishment of Adam’s sin is eternal hell; who could come and bear that? Who could be that sinless sacrifice? Even though sin had to be punished in the same nature in which it was committed, no mere human being could do that. A human being, brought forth by the union of sinful man and woman, cannot be sinless. Additionally, a mere human cannot bear the fury of God’s eternal wrath against sin and procure the salvation of sinners. And certainly, God could not do that either in His divine nature (if you will) since He cannot suffer and die in anyone’s stead. He is impassible, as stated in chapter 2 of the 1689 London Baptist Confession.

God solved these problems by sending His eternal son, Jesus Christ, as the God man. Jesus took on flesh and blood through a virgin birth by the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, thus circumventing the problem of sinful generation. Besides, He has two natures. He is one person with two distinct natures,he is truly divine and truly human. By His incarnation, the eternal Son of God humbled Himself before the Father, obeyed Him perfectly as the last Adam, died on the cross to atone for the sin of humanity, and rose from the dead on the third day, proclaiming the acceptance of His sacrifice for the forgiveness of sin before the Father. The human nature of Christ (that was able to suffer and die) drained the cup of God’s holy wrath with the assistance of divine nature. The necessity of two natures is clearly communicated in the Heidelberg Catechism as well:

Q 16: Why must he be a true and righteous man?
A:   He must be a true man because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin. He must be a righteous man because one who himself is a sinner cannot pay for others.

Q 17: Why must he also be true God?
A: So that, by the power of his divinity, he might bear the weight of God’s anger in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.

So Christmas is the miracle that brought about the union of two natures (namely, divine and human) in one person (the Lord Jesus Christ) without mixture or confusion for the redemption of humanity.