A Christmas Presence that Provides Our Rescue and Our Adoption...

This week, we are looking at a section of a letter in our Bibles where a man named Paul is explaining that Christmas is about God responding to the problem of selfishness and rebellion with a promise. A promise of His presence being delivered in time to provide an opportunity for the rescue all of humanity. Yesterday, in Galatians 4:4-5, we discovered that Christmas is about God delivering His presence, at just the right time, in order to provide an opportunity for rescue and to experience His presence as His children in spite of our performance, not because of our performance. And to provide further evidence of this reality, Paul states the following in Galatians 4:6-7:

Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.

Here we see Paul explain that we know that God has delivered on the promise of His presence in order to rescue us from rebellion and adopt us as sons because God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying Abba! Father! The term Abba, in the language that this letter was originally written in, was a term of endearment that was used in the culture of the day to describe one’s closeness to one’s father. In our culture today, this would be a word picture of a young child crawling into the lap of their father and saying “daddy”. The word father here, however, conveys the sense of a recognition of God as the Creator and caretaker of the universe.

Paul’s point here is that the Holy Spirit is given to followers of Jesus to us as a gift to enable us to recognize our adoption as sons and to empower us to live as His Sons. It is the Holy Spirit’s presence results in us experiencing God’s presence and empowers us to live our lives in light of His presence. We have access the experience God’s presence and power in our lives because Christmas is about God delivering on His promise to provide His presence in a way that provides us the opportunity to be adopted as a child of the Creator and sustainer of the universe.

And because of that reality, Paul explains that we are no longer a slave who is not a part of the family of God. Instead, we have been adopted into the family of God, in spite of our performance. And as a result of our adoption through God gracious act of sending His Son that first Christmas so that we could experience God’s presence, we are an heir. An heir is one who receives the possession of another. In the Roman culture of Paul’s day, adopted children became co- heirs with the natural children of their parent’s estates. Paul’s point here is that, as a follower of Jesus, we are a co-heir with Jesus Christ of the Kingdom of Heaven? We share now, and in all eternity, with Christ, all the blessings that come from living in relationship with God as part of His kingdom.

And the reason that we can experience those blessings is because Christmas is not about us experiencing presents; Christmas is all about God providing the opportunity for all of humanity to experience God’s presence. Christmas is all about God revealing His presence in the most radical way imaginable, so that all of humanity could know that God was real and that God was present and active in the world. Christmas is about God promising to solve a problem that no present under a tree could ever solve. Christmas is about God promising to solve a problem that only the presence of the Son of God hanging on a tree could solve.

Christmas is about God delivering on that promise at just the right time, by sending His Son Jesus to enter into humanity in order to allow Himself to be treated as though He lived our selfish and sinful lives, so that God the Father could treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life. Because when it comes to God’s presence, timing is everything.