The Christmas story is all about winning a war that is still playing out after thousands of years.
We feel tortured by the length of time our world has suffered, but it’s really God’s mercy and grace that is allowing all humans the chance to be physically born and be given the opportunity to choose whether to stay on a doomed course or choose to turn back to life with Him. I’m so glad Christ didn’t return before 1953 … I wanted my chance, too!
But it’s not easy living under this evil despot and the entities who follow and help him rule this earth.
Satan does not care about us. He surely knows that he is doomed, but he won’t go out with causing as much destruction as he can manage. He is not omnipotent like God, but he’s too powerful for humans to overcome. And he has great advantages over us, because he has access and can operate in both the invisible and physical realms.
When we chose to subject ourselves to his authority, we took the natural world along with us and sealed the fates of both ourselves and the entire earth. When a hurricane wipes away an entire community, or when cancer ravages the frail body of a child, we rage at God and demand to know why He allowed that. But God had nothing to do with it.
When families get torn apart; when friends betray friends; when politicians use their positions and status for their own gain; when world leaders allow their people to starve and whole groups of people are massacred simply because they look or believe differently; when corporations care more about the bottom line than consumers … it’s us and our leader at the root of it all.
Satan and his cohorts know and understand more about us than we do ourselves. They are hiding in the invisible spaces, whispering in our ears, influencing world leaders and activities, stirring things up as surely as he can stir up weather patterns in our atmosphere.
He convinces us that we are autonomous, that we are only responsible to ourselves, that a day of reckoning will never come. He knows that God designed us to be worshippers, so he sends cheap counterfeits to idolize … celebrities, sports figures, money and material things. He knows that God designed, equipped, and tasked us to serve one another … so he encourages us to take great pride in our accomplishments, to relish the praise of admirers rather than critically assess if our efforts are truly useful to others.
He manipulates our culture, lifestyles and entertainment so that we progressively get more self-focused. He doesn’t tell us outright blatant lies, but rather he justs gives the truth the tiniest little twists, over and over until over time, when we finally see the actual Truth, we don’t believe it. Unless the Holy Spirit Himself steps in to open our eyes and show us, we will reject Truth when it’s right in front of us.
God is holy and righteous and He cannot tolerate our sinfulness in His Presence. So He had to step back from us.
God is just, and He will punish our sin. We will suffer the same fate as the evil one we chose to follow … eternal separation from God and, for us, physical decay and death.
But God also loves us and hasn’t abandoned His original plan, a life with His creation, in full relationship with Himself.
First, He has to deal with His own justice … so His own Son volunteered to come and take our punishment in our stead. Because Christ was pure and sinless, His sacrifice was perfect and satisfied God’s justice. For those of us who will accept and embrace that, we can enjoy His fellowship again. While we still live on earth, He implants His own Spirit inside of us and fellowships with us through our spirit in the most intimate and satisfying relationship you will ever experience.
For the time being we are trapped on a sinful and fallen earth. We’re still at war with a powerful, evil spiritual entity that we have no hope of overcoming on our own, and now we have openly declared our enmity with him! Yikes!
But have no fear … there’s more to the Christmas story …