God chose a family long ago. And no, it’s not the Holy Trinity that is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. God decided before the beginning of time, space, and anything else, that He would redeem a people. This people would be made up humans. A collection of them would come to Him to reverse the curse they would put on themselves. Before anything could go wrong God in His infinite, beautiful, timely, and total wisdom, carved out a portion of the population of the earth for the millennia to come to be the recipients of the greatest gift of all time. Himself. This way could not be sweeping the fall that would come up under the rug; the punishment and distance from God would be deserved by the races of men, and God’s being just and fair would demand punishment. It wouldn’t come by wiping every last one of them off the face of the Earth. It came close to that, but God in His love couldn’t end it all. As I’ve said in many and varied ways, the resolution of what is called the Divine Dilemma is Christ. And seeing as it was always, from before the foundation of the world, decided that it would be Christ, it was really no dilemma at all. This Christmas, of course we all know that He is the reason for the season, but here are three specific aspects/attributes/realities about Jesus and his being born that God has really stuck a pin in for me this Advent season. I could list at least a dozen more things in this format, but for the sake of concision, continuity, and for fear of speaking above my knowledge, I’ll only list these. Take a second today and deliberately linger over these thoughts. Maybe after you get home from your Aunt’s and everyone else is asleep. Maybe early on Christmas morning before everyone is awake. Maybe sometime next week, even. It doesn’t matter. Just let God’s Word about The Son sit on your mind along the lines of these three points in the coming days. I pray you won’t regret it. I haven’t.

1. He came to destroy a factory

Jesus came to destroy a factory. That’s right. This image was one given to me by John Piper. This illustration is an image of the cosmic struggle mankind is in via industrial terms. Piper shows us that Satan is like a factory manager. Every day he has millions upon millions of people working on the assembly line of sin. He then takes the finished products, flies them up to God en masse, and laughs in His face at all the disobedience, distrust, and displeasure that humanity takes in God. Piper sent a foot crashing right onto my toes as he wrote, “sin makes God the laughing stock of Satan.” That’s huge. That’s massive. That my sin, my cheating, lying, dishonesty, laziness, selfishness, pride, and lust makes God actually look bad. Let that sink in. But then, in comes one who starts speaking to the workers. He starts standing up and letting nothing silence Him. He’s faced the worst the manager has to throw at Him, but He’s back. He’s come back to rally the workers. To get them furious and disgusted with the reality of what their doing and show them a better way. “He’s organizing a walk out,” as Piper writes: “no bargaining, no discussion, no union meetings. The workers are lead triumphantly out and taught to hate the work they did.” Meanwhile, in heaven, Christ the rallier, Christ the freer of the factory workers in the mills of sin, comes strolling up with a sledgehammer and smashed the works of Satan, which putrefy the very ground they sit on and offend God’s sight. Now God welcomes the former workers in properly, for he no longer sees their product. In Christ’s death, they are smashed on the floor. This is the image that Piper presented to me of the passage of scripture, which reads, “...The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8b, ESV). The reason for the season is for Christ to free us from laboring at the assembly line of sin and to obliterate with great force the products of sin that filled God’s throne with shame and mockery, and put us under the curse of living misery and eternal damnation.

2. He came to make a family

While that last image struck me with its strength, it’s dramaticism, and it’s very sobering view of the reality of the consequences of my sin, this next one stuck out to me for its intimacy and it’s warmth. Fred Sanders once said, “We [Christians] pray by borrowing the sonhood of the true Son and talking to the Father. When you approach the throne of grace and call on God as your Father, God the Father receives you because you pray in the family style that you learned from the Son.” It’s a truth sort of tucked away in the back of the mind of most seasoned believers, and new Christians (as I did) can come to take it for granted due to its prevalence in biblical language and Christian prayer. But think about from an entirely different perspective. Think as if you’d never heard of God, and all the sudden you’re told that the being which is responsible for literally everything and is in control, owns, and has the right and moral imperative to judge all mankind against the standard of moral perfection as expressed in His law... wants to be your Dad? How will he bring this about? He’ll do what? He’ll kill who? His only son, who is equal with Him in might and power? And He’ll do it for me? Ponder the absurdity of this, the powerfully disorienting nature of this. Jesus Christ, who is part of the Tri-Being which is GOD, sent His son for His people. Forget that these people don’t deserve it. Forget that God did this entirely of His own accord and based none whatsoever on any redeeming characteristics in or about the objects of His love. Forget also, that those very people hated Him, and some of them may have been responsible for his death, and one would later actually be historically recorded as living a life devoted to killing those who followed Christ. Even forgetting the deeper parts of the why, the work of Christ is miraculous in and of itself. Jesus Himself made no bones about it. He declared the reason for His coming not at a ceremony at his coming into the world, but just as He was about to leave it: Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’” (John 20:17, ESV). This is the ultimate humility of Jesus. And the reason for the season is so that Christ can pave the way for His people to become not simply followers or servants (Christians are those things) but sons and daughters of God himself.

3. His coming is extremely ... weird.

That brings me to my next point. This one again comes from John Piper and it’s something that we can and should carry with us all throughout 2017. The coming of Jesus, from all accounts, is really... eerie. Just imagine if someone came up to you and feverishly said that they were pregnant and had never had sex. Ever. Imagine if that baby was going up to church and the random old man asked to hold it and then prayed to God, calling that child “the Lord’s salvation,” and walked away essentially saying “now I can die happy.” Now imagine another old woman doing the same thing! Imagine that same child getting lost at 12, being found days later teaching preachers and theologians things about God that they didn’t know, and the child’s only reply to his dad’s rebuke is, “you knew I would be here doing more important things.” Most parents struggle to discipline their kids when they do something wrong but funny. Imagine having to discipline your kids when they do something right... And supernatural. At the end of the day, Piper’s call was to us was to examine the weirdness, the drama, the eeriness, and the excitement of the birth of Christ. He said that often he had to repent “of being more excited at fantasies and fictitious things and not having genuine joy and emotion at God’s true story.” While it is very good that we cling to the notion that Christmas is not a holiday among many, but that it is uniquely about Christ and uniquely important, it’s even more important we check our hearts against our excitement for other things. My love of sports, fantasy, and gaming all are healthy hobbies in and of their own, but when given the kind of emotional investment and excitement that Christ should get, that the truth of His story should inspire in our hearts, they should be way down the totem pole and Christ should get way more than a great book or an achievement or goal. This Christmas, we can repent of this attitude by doing what I mentioned way up at the top. Meditate. And no, I don’t mean hum to yourself cross-legged on the floor. I also don’t mean clear your mind. Meditation is a biblical idea, and it is the exact opposite. What you’re doing is filling your mind full to the brim with Christ, His love, His power, His truth, His compassion, His whatever you read about in your bible that day, until the oily dribble of small, sinful thoughts runs out. When you do this, your day will be filled with more alignment and conformity to Him, more prayer and more awareness of the way in which you can serve those around you. It won’t mean God will love you more or less, but just as a parent, it is indeed possible for God to be more or less pleased/disappointed with you while still maintaining a deep and passionate love for you. Your ultimate destiny, Christian, is heaven. Your daily joy is in how much you look to that, how much you rejoice in that, and how much you follow after that. This is all, of course, the decisive work of God the Holy Spirit, but God will use our effort like a socket wrench to get us moving. How beautiful of a father do we have? How perplexing and exciting is His story of the redemption of the elect? How awe-inspiring is the leader of our strike against Satan and his mills of sin?

Happy Advent

Christ is Here.